Nadene Goldfoot
Beit Safafa is a Palestinian town along the Green Line, with the vast majority of its territory in East Jerusalem and some northern parts in West Jerusalem. Since the 1949 agreements, the neighborhood had been divided by the Green Line. Its name means " "House of the summer-houses or narrow benches." Right now there is a huge problem with its Al Rahman Mosque in East Jerusalem.
While the iconic Dome of the Rock is lined with real gold, Al-Rahman Mosque in Beit Safafa has only been painted to look like the real thing.
Jerusalem now has a second golden dome, as those driving along the main road to the east of the Beit Safafa neighborhood will have noticed. But unlike the famous Dome of the Rock in the Old City, adorned with 5,000 actual gold plates financed by the late king Hussein of Jordan, this smaller version, atop the Al-Rahman Mosque, has merely been painted to look like the real thing.
One of four mosques in the southern Jerusalem Arab neighborhood, Al-Rahman, built before Israel’s founding in 1948, is being renovated and expanded at the pace at which donations come in from locals and Arabs living in northern Israel. However, the city of Jerusalem plans to demolish it. This came up in the news today.
Since the 1949 agreements, the neighborhood had been divided by the Green Line. Until 1967, the East Jerusalem part remained under Jordanian rule while the northern parts became under Israeli rule. Beit Safafa covers an area of 1,577 dunams. In 2010, Beit Safafa had a population of 5,463.
After the 1948 war, a section of the Jaffa-Jerusalem railway remained under Jordanian control. Following the 1949 Armistice Agreements, it was agreed that Jordan would transfer control of this section of the track to Israel, in order to enable Israel Railways to restart rail service to Jerusalem. As a result, the area south of the railway line was part of the Jordanian-controlled West Bank and the railway line itself and the area to the north, was part of Israeli-controlled Jerusalem. Service on the line resumed on August 7, 1949.
During the period when the neighborhood was divided, a two-foot high barbed wire fence was erected down the middle of the main street with Arab Legionnaires and Israeli soldiers guarding on each side.
In 1961, the Jordanian census showed a population of 1,025 in Beit Safafa.
The 6 Day War over, and these IDF paratroopers see the Wall, the Kotel, in Jerusalem, in commemoration as they are older.
After the Six-Day War in 1967, the whole of Beit Safafa has been a part of Israel, and the fence between the east and the west part was taken down. Residents of the Israeli side had Israeli citizenship while those on the south side were given, like East Jerusalem residents, Jerusalem ID cards and residency, while retaining Jordanian citizenship. Also following the 1967 war, Palestinian Christians with Israeli citizenship from Nazareth, Jaffa, and Jerusalem moved to Beit Safafa, expanding the small community, and several Jewish families moved in as well. Jerusalem was no longer a divided city. It was one whole city once again.
According to ARIJ, Israel has expropriated land from Sharafat and Beit Safafa for the construction of three Israeli towns: First,
1 Dunam=0.247105 of an acre
1 Dunam=10,763.9 sq feet
1 Dunam=3,587.9 sq yards
1 Dunam= 1,000 sq meters
This shows how close everything is and how precious land is, land needed to hold homes, since Israel was "bartered" down to 10% of its original expectation of a Jewish Homeland.
Urban planning has come to this sleepy town, itself causing a raucous. In 2012, an urban development plan, approved by the Jerusalem Municipality, announced a project to build four new roads in Beit Safafa.
In early 2013, the Jerusalem Municipality began construction of an eight-lane highway that would bisect Beit Safafa. Israeli author David Grossman wrote that the plan was adopted without public scrutiny and would harm the character of the neighborhood. The residents claimed that the plan was illegal and construction commenced without warning. After petitioning the local courts and the Israeli Supreme Court, the residents succeeded in halting the project.
Naomi Tzur, deputy mayor of Jerusalem and holder of the urban planning portfolio, said that the residents were "taking advantage of the political situation to turn a local concern into an international story. When the residents of Beit Hakerem, another sleepy town, conducted their fight over their part of Begin Highway, the international media wasn’t interested. This is simply a residents’ fight against its municipality for better compensations and better infrastructure, and it’s a perfectly justifiable fight and part of democracy."
In June 2013, the Supreme Court ruled that the 1-mile stretch of highway crossing Beit Safafa, would cause unacceptable damage to the residents' quality of life. Beit Safafa’s lawyers say the construction of an acoustically insulated tunnel that puts the road underground and protects the area’s geographic integrity might be an acceptable solution.
Mayor of Jerusalem since 2018 Moshe Lion/Leon, and 1st Sephardim, is an Israeli politician who is currently the Mayor of Jerusalem. He previously served as a member of the Jerusalem City Council, director-general of the Prime Minister's Office, Chairman of the Israel Railways, and head of the Jerusalem Development Authority. Lion graduated with a BA in economics and accounting from Bar-Ilan University, and interned in the office of Avigdor Yitzhaki, receiving his CPA in 1990. His brother, Dr. Nissim Lion, is a lecturer in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Bar-Ilan University.
"The Jerusalem Municipality ordered the demolition of a mosque in the Palestinian neighborhood Beit Safafa in east Jerusalem. The Al-Rahman Mosque - built before Israel’s founding in 1948 - reportedly drew criticism from several Israeli NGOs due to its striking similarity to the Dome of the Rock. According to court documents, the municipality approved the demolition based on a floor of the building that was built without a permit and that 700 square meters of the compound were built without a permit or the approval of certified engineers."
I'm asking many questions here in the states that I cannot answer without being in Israel, but right now I'm against destruction.
I remember my old synagogue in SW Portland, Neveh Zedek, started in 1911 as a conservative synagogue and that it was also demolished because of Urban Development."
Starting in the late 1950s with the creation of the Portland Development Commission and under the leadership of Portland businessman Ira Keller, urban renewal cleared block after block of south Portland homes, businesses, bars, churches and rooming houses. It fought suits and paid settlements. And by the mid-1970s, new construction had taken the place of most of the old structures." I was a busy teen and young adult when this happened, but they were putting in a freeway, changing it all, and it was affecting our Jewish section of the day, South Portland, where my father was born, where his parents had chosen to live after coming from Lithuania. Our family had no more "that special" synagogue to call their own since their beginnings there." I remember going in the side-door on Sunday morning for Sunday school. It was a Conservative Shul with white-haired Rabbi Philip Kleinman as our Rabbi. (Notice how the newspaper left out Synagogues when they listed churches? South Portland was our Jewish neighborhood.) We were there along with Italians.
My special neighborhood, South Portland, was populated starting in 1867. Portland even had a Jewish mayor in 1860, Bernard Goldsmith. Oregonians, including Maier Hirsch, attending the Republican Convention in Maryland, 1864. The city was officially founded in 1843 and its name was famously determined by an 1845 coin toss between business partners Asa Lovejoy (of Boston, Mass.) and Francis Pettygrove (of Portland, Maine). We had some connections, being there since the beginning, but it didn't help at all. Progress marches onward, can't be stagnate. OUT went a very special synagogue. It was in the way of the city's progress. It was my synagogue; from Kindergarten on. I taught there as an older person. it's still a loss to me. I could not share it with my children past May 1960 when they completed their final class there in Kindergarten and 1st grade..
A Street in Jerusalem today
Resource:
Israel AM.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beit_Safafa
https://www.timesofisrael.com/a-new-second-golden-dome-graces-jerusalems-skyline/
https://www.oregonlive.com/history/2015/02/throwback_thursday_60_years_ag.html
https://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/media-collections/jews-in-oregon/
https://www.travelportland.com/culture/history/#:~:text=The%20city%20was%20officially%20founded,Historical%20Society%20in%20downtown%20Portland.
No comments:
Post a Comment