Blaine or I went with the BYU Jordan students who are staying at the Jerusalem Center for a week. I went with them on Thursday and Blaine Friday while the other stayed at the center to give tours. I went on a tour of Silwan/ City of David settlements. This area is Palestinian but over the years, the Jewish people have taken control of the City of David for archeological reasons and have bought property in Silwan. It is often through a 3rd party and there are 2 points of view how this has been accomplished. Our tour guide was an American Jew who is sympathetic to the Palestinian point of view. He showed us a home just inside the City of David that is still occupied by a Palestinian family and other homes that were once Palestinian. Our guide pointed out homes in Silwan with Israeli flags that have been purchased by Jewish settlement groups. The guide is involved with the Wadi Hilweh Information Center that is about 3 buildings south of the City of David entrance. To quote, "Since the occupation of Jerusalem, the valley has transformed into an excavation site for artifacts as tunnels have eaten away at the foundations of its homes and streets. Settlements have spread through-out the valley as has violence and hostility towards its residents while hundreds of buildings are threatened with demolition under the pretext of lacking permits." That afternoon we went into the Old City where we met a Jewish woman that identifies herself to the settlement cause. She gave a completely different perspective of the settlement homes in Palestinian areas of the Old City. Her logic was rational as well. The old adage, it doesn't matter how thin the pancake is, there is still two sides, is still true. It was an interesting day hearing two Jewish people with such opposing views. It was a last minute decision to go with the Jordan students and I didn't even have time to grab the camera. On Friday, Blaine went on a tour of Lifta and Mea Shearim.
This is the remaining village of Lifta. According to our Palestinian guide, the Palestinian village of Lifta, before the 1948 war, was about 12,000 times the physical size of Jerusalem. This is where the houses in the main village were located. Most of the area, which stretched to French Hill and the current police headquarters building, was agricultural land. You can tell a Palestinian village was here because they often used cactus for the fence.
A few of the houses are occupied by Israeli settlers. After the 1948 war, the Israeli government passed the Absentee Property Laws which allowed the government to claim the Palestinian property. It prohibited the previous Palestinian owners from returning to claim it. Our guide said his father returned several times during the war to check on his property. He kept his key, expecting to return
after the ward ended. Even though he still has a legal deed to his property, he could not and cannot claim it under Israeli law. The home in this picture is occupied by an Israeli. Our guide said if he tried to occupy his father's home, the Israeli police would escort him off the property within a few hours.
This is the entrance to one of the Israeli occupied homes in Lifta.
These are the remains of some of the homes.
The government is building a train bridge across the Lifta valley which will run through this tunnel to the Central Bus Station
This is another Lifta home occupied by an Israeli.
Gil Parkinson put a map of Mea Shearim on the screen for the students to put on their phones so they wouldn't get lost in the neighborhood.
I walked through Mea Shearim with the Jordan students. I walked with 2 of the professors, Quinn and Josh. This is a sign in Mea Shearim asking for our cooperation to respect the residents. We broke into small groups of 3, separated by several minutes, to try to comply with this request.
Josh said the posters on the wall are notices of someone's death in the community, like an newspaper obituary but posted on the street.
Before we left the Jerusalem Center in the morning, Dil Parkinson asked the students to dress modestly. Dil is the director of the Jordan intensive Arabic program.
We stopped at the overlook by Seven Arches Hotel. This workers were doing something in the Jewish cemetery - it looked like they were either repairing an old or preparing a new burial place.
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