Jewish Inroads in Muslim Quarter

By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, February 11, 2007; A01

The Israeli government is funding the first construction of a Jewish settlement in the Old City's Muslim Quarter since taking control of it nearly four decades ago. The Flowers Gate development plan calls for more than 20 apartments and a domed synagogue that would alter the skyline of the Old City.

Karain's property is at the center of an accelerating campaign by Jewish settler organizations to change the ethnic and physical character of this city's oldest Arab neighborhoods. The Israeli government is financing projects that dovetail with the settlers' goals, which they say are to secure the Old City and an adjacent valley for Israel in any final peace agreement with the Palestinians.

Resistance is growing. Last week, Palestinians protested throughout the West Bank over an Israeli renovation project in the Old City, leading to some of the worst clashes with Israeli police in years. Surrounded by crenelated walls, the Old City is divided into four quarters -- Armenian, Christian, Jewish and Muslim -- that contain some of the holiest sites in Christendom, Islam and Judaism.

The Flowers Gate development would expand a nearby enclave where two Jewish families now live in red-roofed bungalows just feet from Karain's home. The settler organization Ateret Cohanim has begun showing prospective residents the strip of land designated for the synagogue and apartments.

Karain is watching the project encircle his compound. He said Jerusalem city officials have denied his many applications to add a second story to his home as his family has grown to include 33 grandchildren. His new neighbors, whose children are escorted to school by armed guards, have offered several times to buy his property for millions of dollars. He refused the most recent bid just months ago.

"I wouldn't want anyone in this place except family now," said Karain, born 63 years ago in the house he inherited from his father. "I'd be afraid they'd sell to settlers."

Only a few dozen Jewish families live among the approximately 20,000 Palestinian residents of the Holy Basin, a picturesque crescent that encompasses the Kidron Valley, parts of the Mount of Olives, and the hillside neighborhood that Jews call the City of David and Palestinians call Wadi Hilweh. Israel suggested international oversight of the Holy Basin at the 2001 talks, an informal proposal the Palestinians rejected.

The effort to expand the Jewish presence in the Old City and Holy Basin, a cause of violent protest over the past century, had been largely dormant since a 1992 state commission found that government agencies were illegally channeling public funds to private settler organizations and allowing them insider access to seized Palestinian property.