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May 2008
Jerusalem, undivided?
In an irony that seems to be lost on Israeli pundits and politicians, Jerusalem Day — the commemoration of the 1967 reunification of Jerusalem — is again heralded this year with hand-wringing and warnings over the very nature of the reunification: Arabs and Jews living in one city, undivided.
The national holiday, marked according to the Hebrew calendar, falls this year on June 2.
In its annual report released today, the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies says that the Arab population of Israel’s largest city has grown to 256,820, or 34 percent. Continuing a decades-old trend, more people left the city (18,750) than moved there (12,360). The vast majority of these people are understood to be Jews.
Jerusalem, compared with cosmopolitan Tel Aviv, is much poorer, far more religious, and has far fewer private sector jobs.
In a recent op-ed piece in the Jerusalem Post headlined, “Make Jerusalem a livable city,” Colette Avital, deputy speaker of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, calls for more employment training programs, affordable housing and government spending on cultural programs in Israel’s capital city, as well as government incentives for biotechnology and new media companies to move there.
Two-thirds of the 40,000 university students living in the city plan to leave after graduation, she writes.
Since 1990, 284,850 Jerusalemites have left the city, compared with the arrival of 174,560, leaving a net migration loss of 110,290, according to the Jerusalem Institute study.
Palestinians, who live on the east side of Jerusalem, have few options to leave. They are bound by family ties, grinding poverty, and Israeli laws that make it difficult for them to live elsewhere.
Those who fret over their growing presence, however, take comfort in these statistics, included in today’s report: the fertility rate among Arab Jerusalemites decreased to 4.0 births per woman over her lifetime in 2006 from 4.3 in 2000, while increasing among the Jewish population to 3.9 in 2006 from 2.7 in 2000.
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Olmert and the Golan … and politics.
As American businessman Morris Talansky was testifying in a corruption probe that threatens to end the political career of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, the Jewish settlers on the Golan were smiling.
Israeli cynics, of which there are many, say Olmert’s public pursuit of peace with Syria — which is widely assumed to hinge on giving back the Golan Heights, land Israel seized in 1967 — is a desperate ploy to detract attention from his political woes. (Olmert has professed his innocence, as well as his earnest interest in peace with Syria, as well as the Palestinians.)
In a public opinion poll conducted a week ago by Israeli Channel 2, 70 percent of Israelis oppose giving up the Golan in a peace agreement.
“Nobody here believes it’s actually going to happen,” Astrid Hasday, 46, a spokeswoman for the Golan Residents Committee, told a group of foreign journalists. “The local population doesn’t take it seriously. We keep building and keep investing.”
Damascus is a lot closer than Jerusalem when you’re standing on Ben Tal mountain, an Israeli military observation point, and that’s just the point to critics of a land-for-peace deal with Syria.
They point to the Golan’s strategic importance as an elevated buffer between Syria and Israel’s population centers. Plus, few people here seem to trust Syria as a peace partner. Instead, talk was of the potentialities of war.
“This is the place the battle will take place and both sides know it and are preparing themselves,” said retired Israeli Brig. Gen. Zvika Fogel, pointing toward a valley where the jagged demilitarized zone divides the Golan Heights and Syria.
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Tasting the Middle East in Amman.
This weekend I met a friend in the Jordanian capital, Amman, and we spent two days eating our way through the otherwise bland Arab city.
Iraqi refugees — an estimated 700,000 live in the kingdom — have brought their cuisine with them. In the neighborhood of Rabia, Iraqi restaurants dish up such delicacies as tashreeb — lamb shank stewed in a tomato broth layered with strips of pita. Traditionalists ask for loomi Basra, a citrus fruit with a hard, black skin that comes from the southern Iraqi city of Basra. I crushed the fruit over the lamb with my spoon.
We tried qeema, a lentil stew with pulled lamb, which is said to have been banned by Saddam because it was closely associated with Shiites. We also enjoyed Mosuliyah, a version of Middle Eastern kibbeh — bulgur-encrusted ground lamb.
Amman also serves up some of the finest Lebanese cuisine in the region, including Lebanon. For breakfast: manaqeesh, a light Middle Eastern pancake stuffed with cheese, thyme or vegetables; and fetteh, a morning vehicle for yogurt, bread and chick peas.
The highlight was Fakr El-Din, an up-market Lebanese establishment with a 120-item menu, well known to Levantine foodies. The centerpiece of our table was raw ground lamb — kibbeh nayeh — some of the best we’ve ever tasted.
Our wait staff was a hopeful pan-Arab emblem of coexistence: an Egyptian Christian, and Egyptian Muslim, a Syrian Druze and a Jordanian Muslim.
And they got along with each other, they told us.
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Running on fumes in Gaza.
Maher’s car is supposed to run on diesel, but it doesn’t. It runs on propane. That is not unusual in the Gaza Strip.
Gasoline and diesel have become scarce in Gaza as a result of Israeli sanctions and a strike by Palestinian fuel distributors and, Israel claims, hording by Hamas. As a result, there is a booming business adapting car engines to run on household cooking oil or propane that is normally used for gas stoves. (Many Palestinians now cook over burning scraps of wood or garbage.) Vegetable oil exhaust smells particularly bad.
Problem is, cars can’t travel too far before needing a new propane canister or more vegetable oil. Good thing the Gaza Strip is a small place.
He apologized profusely in formal Arabic. I told him not to worry. It was perfectly normal, I insisted.
We pushed his car back to his house, with the help of neighborhood kids. His father emerged in a tunic and called me an honored guest.
Maher switched out the propane tank in the trunk and we were on our way.
“I used to make clothing in Israel,” he told me. “My father, as well.” Gaza’s economy was once closely tied to its Jewish neighbor, but since Israel has sealed the borders of the tiny, overcrowded territory, in an attempt to pressure Hamas to stop rocket attacks — so far without success — unemployment has soared.
“We can’t live except by working in Israel,” Maher said. “The two countries are linked together.”
Near the crossing, we stopped at a gas station where a line of 100 or more Palestinians with their empty propane canisters had been waiting since morning. The gas station was waiting for a fuel shipment from Israel. It hadn’t yet come.
Maher left the empty canister with his brother, who had a place in line, and took me to the crossing.
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Shopping in Ashkelon, looking out for rockets.
The lingerie store reported a 20-30 percent drop in sales.
The orthopedic shoe store was doing half volume since it reopened on Monday, five days after the rocket struck. It was supposed to reopen on Sunday, but the store clerk, Ina Kosenkov, 24, was too frightened to come to work. She said she’s looking for a new job outside Ashkelon.
During the height of the Palestinian suicide bombing campaign six years ago, there was a calculus to survival: Don’t ride the bus. Avoid outdoor cafes. If you must enter a cafe, sit near the wall, away from the door.
The rockets are different. They strike at random.
Since 2001, thousands of rockets, mostly crude, homemade varieties, have landed in southern Israel. They have killed 13 people.
This year, longer-range rockets made in Iran and smuggled across the Egyptian border, according to Israel, have reached Ashkelon, a city of 120,000 located 10 miles from Gaza.
Last Wednesday, a gynecologist, her patient and her patient’s daughter were severely injured when a rocket struck a women’s health clinic in the mall. Their conditions have improved, according to Israeli media.
While some of the scant shoppers on Tuesday vowed to keep shopping despite the risks, Yossi Portal, 26, rejected the nationalist refrain — giving in to fear means the terrorists win — and said he would be foolish to stay.
“We need to get out of here,” he said. “I think maybe toward Tel Aviv. They haven’t reached Tel Aviv yet.”
Portal is a producer and an on-air impersonator at a radio station, which has offices in the mall.
“I have a friend who left two days ago,” he said. “It’s scary here.”
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Escaping from Israel — or finding it — in Tel Aviv?
In Tel Aviv, thousands of residents were touring historic homes and “architecturally significant” buildings in the second annual Houses From Within Tour.
From neighborhood to neighborhood they strolled, beneath a gentle sun, amidst sidewalk cafes bustling on the Jewish Sabbath, discovering anew the urban spaces of Israel’s metropolis.
It was downright normal. For a moment, I felt as if I was seven time zones away.
Among more than 120 sites: the modest 1930s apartment of Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion; the Heichal Yeyuda Synagogue that resembles a giant sea shell; the just-restored 1924 home of Israel’s national poet, Hayyim Nahman Bialik; and the Square Building, a recently-completed 42-floor hotel and office tower.
Outside 46 HaCarmel St., close to 100 people queued up to see Jerome Mandel’s restored three-floor 1928 apartment. Like much of Tel Aviv’s early construction, it was designed in the modernist Bauhaus style.
It had fallen into disrepair before Mandel and his wife bought it a few years ago. Its most distinctive features: large picture windows, 12-foot high ceilings and original, multi-colored floor tiles.
HaCarmel Street is home to a colorful, but loud, outdoor market, which over the years made the area less desirable. “Doesn’t the noise outside bother you?” the Tel Avivians wanted to know. “I get up at 6 and the buzz starts about 15 minutes later,” he explains. “It’s not as noisy as the sound of an ambulance, or the sound a bus or the sound of a car.”
In fact, Jerome insisted he quite enjoyed walking down his steps into the shuk — the Hebrew word for market — and buying three tomatoes.
An hour later, I returned to Jerusalem, to the real world — or was it? — to interview a visiting U.S. congressman.
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Shimon Peres throws a birthday party … for Israel.
Shimon Peres, Israel’s elder statesman, who more than anyone alive embodies his nation’s past, decided, on the occasion of Israel’s 60th birthday, to look forward.
He assembled an impressive roster of scholars, innovators, business leaders, rabbis, authors and past and present peace negotiators to ponder Israel’s future. They include Henry Kissinger, Rupert Murdoch and the French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy.
Among the issues they’ll tackle: Jewish identity (unraveling or renewing?); Jewish civilization (thriving or declining?); a “moral” foreign policy; Jewish-Muslim relations; the meaning of a Jewish state; and whether Jews outside Israel should play a role in determining its future.
President Bush will address the three-day conference Wednesday night. He is scheduled to speak of “Sixty Years of Friendship” between the United States and Israel.
The event, called Facing Tomorrow, kicked off today, somewhat inauspiciously, with a collection of B-list foreign leaders — Nambaryn Enkhbayar (Mongolia) and Tommy Remengesau (Palau) aren’t household names in Israel or most places — offering thoughts on globalization, platitudes on peace in the Middle East and praise for Israel.
Blaise Compaore, president of Burkina Faso called Israelis “a peace-inspiring people.” Danilo Turk, the president of Slovenia called Israel a “place of ancient civilization and great modernity” and envisioned a cooperative community of nations in the Middle East akin to the European Union.
Yoweri Museveni, president of Uganda, said: “The African Union supports a two-state solution in Palestine.” Or, Israel?
Mercilessly, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair closed the session reiterating a hope for peace, and several hundred conference attendees poured into the lobby of Jerusalem’s convention center and circulated among servers offering finger food: thinly sliced rare tuna, extremely rare sirloin on a bed of seaweed, smoked duck with sweet potatoes cut in small cubes, smoked salmon, herring, sushi rolls — all perhaps an indication of where Israel sees its future. Or where it doesn’t.
The only Middle Eastern food was grilled lamb kabobs. “I don’t know what that is,” one hungry conventioneer said to another in American-accented English. “Do you want to try it?”
