The Diplomat
Of Sheikh Jarrah
By Am Johal
18 September, 2004
Countercurrents.org
In
the Jerusalem Hotel in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood of East Jerusalem
near Damascus Gate in the Old City you can hear the music of the oud
wafting through the air on Friday and Saturday nights for its crowd
of hotel guests and regulars. It's an oasis of peace in tense Jerusalem,
the crowd a bit more down to earth than the tonier American Colony further
down the street on Nablus Road. The beer is always cold, the staff is
friendly and you always get pretzels and olives with your drink.
But for Raed Saadeh,
Managing Director of the Jerusalem Hotel, the Municipality of Jerusalem
is once again eroding his ability to do business. Not only do they place
an ugly metal garbage disposal in front of his establishment which he
considers unhealthy and aesthetically unpleasant, but the Municipality
plans to close off Nablus Road to allow only public transportation through.
In his view, it would make parking difficult for his customers and add
to the regulatory burden which already affects businesses in this area
of East Jerusalem.
Since 1991, the
area has been infested with a parking problem. In 1993, the State revoked
the status of the Ramallah bus company and the state run Egged buses
took over the Nablus Road bus station across the street. There was still
illegal transit available into the West Bank. By 1998, the experiment
proved to be a disaster and the municipality removed the Egged buses.
The bus companies which serviced areas of the West Bank and the outer
edges of East Jerusalem reclaimed the Nablus Road station. The issue
of legal and illegal operators double parking and creating street congestion
continued to be an issue.
He views the present
plan to close off Nablus road to private vehicles roughly between the
nearby American consulate and the Nablus Road bus station as a disproportionate
response to the problem.
This isn't just
a parking issue - this is Jerusalem after all. Even a run of the mill
municipal parking issue has everything to do with the Israeli/Palestinian
conflict here.
Saadeh sees these
regulatory burdens as part of a broader Israeli policy to weaken the
Palestinian urban existence in places like Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa
and to shift central services to the Israeli centers of town. He sees
a trend towards depriving the Arab urban populations of their civil,
political, cultural and economic centers. These series of small measures
taken by municipalities at the planning level are either weakening or
suffocating the income of the residents. Where Jaffa was once the cultural
capital of British Mandate Palestine, it is now a marginal neighbourhood
of Tel Aviv according to him.
The Municipality
in his view is doing the minimum required and creating a void which
will impoverish its residents and weaken its businesses. This is the
neighbourhood where the Orient House was once open and holy sites like
the Garden Tomb, St. Stephen's Basilica, the Mosque of Saad and Said,
the White Sisters Convent, Schmidt's Girls College and many other historical
landmarks like the American Colony.
In the 90's more
Jewish housing estates have been established in Sheikh Jarrah and state
run institutions have been built there including the police station
in 1995.
Much has changed
since 1967 when Israel captured the area from Jordan and years later
annexed most of East Jerusalem. French Hill, the nearby Jewish neighbourhood
now has over 25,000 residents. This population expansion inevitably
has an effect on its surrounding neighbourhoods.
As with the rest
of East Jerusalem, there are major issues with gentrification, land
confiscation, receiving housing permits, recognition of land ownership
and approvals for renovations and new construction irrespective of all
the issues associated with the Separation Wall and the movement restrictions.
As the urban planners
make preparations to make Sheikh Jarrah a marginal neighbourhood at
the peripheries, Raed Saadeh, the Diplomat of Sheikh Jarrah, will be
there watching them every step of the way.