Into Silwan

Continued from Previous posts:
Part 1: The Priestly Blessing
Part 2: The Yemenite Village
Part 3: Walking Through the City of David

Note: Click on the photographs below to see a larger image.

Walking through an Arab neighborhood is entirely different from walking though a Jewish one. First off, there is absolutely no planning. Since Israel captured East Jerusalem in 1967, there has been wall-to-wall refusal for local cooperation with the Zionist Entity. While the Arabs of East Jerusalem were, and still are, offered full Israeli citizenship, few took the state up on the offer. Anyone who worked with the Israeli government was marked as a collaborator and didn't last long. With Israeli civil servants afraid to enter East Jerusalem, building codes went unenforced, and city planning was all but impossible. The result was an organic, eclectic, third-worldish soup of structures arranged haphazardly on the hillside.

I recognize the logo on the sign as Clalit, one of Israel's major Health Service Providers. And there's no line! But I can't exactly read the rest. Israel still provides socialized health care to East Jerusalem.

Fading posters featuring candidates from last year's Palestinian parliamentary elections still cling to the walls, elections in which the terrorist Hamas gang defeated the terrorist Fatach gang to seize power.

Who will it be, gangster number one?

Or gangster number two?

One can't help but wonder how many of these guys are still alive, since the outbreak of an internal Palestinian civil war following the elections.

Walking along, one also finds ruins, ancient First Temple Period Jewish burial caves, between, often under, the haphazardly built housing.

Entrance to a burial cave, protected with a metal grate, which has been torn off

Alleyways built wide enough for a camel, or perhaps a compact car, are overloaded as semi-trailers push through crowds. It gives the streets a claustrophobic "Black Hawk Down" caginess. Staircases run up and down the hillside, and I have to step aside as a group of children ride a rusted refrigerator barreling down the stairs as a kind of snowless sled.

Steven in Main Street.

Looking down the alley. There's enough room for one-way traffic. Of course, there is no signage, so traffic moves in both directions, resulting in honking, shouting matches, and playing chicken with other motorists.

At last, we have arrived at the Jewish buildings. Coming up next!

Walking through the City of David

Continued from Previous posts:
Part 1: The Priestly Blessing
Part 2: The Yemenite Village

Note: Click on the photographs below to see a larger image.

The Elad foundation, in tandem with Ateret Cohanim, has not only been reclaiming and excavating the city of David at breakneck speed, they have also been hard at work publicizing their work, bringing tourists into areas of Jerusalem once too dangerous for Jews to visit. Standing near the Dung Gate, Elad volunteers hand out flyers to the mass of humanity streaming out through the dung gate, leaving the old city after hearing the priestly blessing. Other volunteers offer free tours throughout the City of David and East Jerusalem, via car, foot, or even Segway.

Flyers announcing tours of the Yemenite Village. This one declaring "We have come home!"

The walk to the Yemenite Village takes us through the City of David. Elad has poured millions into the construction of the new facilities, even though absorbing a substantial financial loss. In order to prevent the re-division of Jerusalem, it is critical to bring Jews into these parts of Jerusalem to live, but on a larger scale, it is important to change the consciousness of Israelis about what this place means, and what is here. The eventual goal is that East Jerusalem is no longer thought of as a place where Jews dare not go, but as integral neighborhoods of the city.

Walking through the newly rebuilt entrance to the City of David.

Performers re-enact biblical scenes for the visiting children.

Elad has built a new road, paved and lined with Jerusalem stone, running the length of the city of David.

Another performer stands waiting for his gaggle of children. The ruins he's standing on are believed, although not yet confirmed, to be the location of the grave of King David.

With the holidays afoot, and throngs of visitors, security was tighter than usual. But these guys don't look too tense.

Despite the changing nature of the City of David, with constant construction and renovation, there is still a need for protection. Here we see a Jewish alleyway, blocked with a gate, and a guard booth at the entrance. It should be noted that the Israeli government itself is far too bureaucratic, lethargic, and post-Zionist to engage in any of this work. Renovation, excavation, and security is run through Elad and Ateret Cohanim, which are funded by private donors.

Street of Jewish Housing in the City of David.

Looking at this street, the paved Jerusalem Stone roads, the new housing, I could swear I've been here before. And then I remember... I have! It was a full seven years ago, in August of 2000, about a month before the beginning of the second intifada. I came out here on a tour with the Aish Hatorah Yeshivah, one of my first forays into East Jerualem, to see the grave of King David. At that time, the government, under then Prime Minister Ehud Barak, was preparing the nation for the re-division of Jerusalem. He had already surrendered the Temple Mount and City of David in negotiations, What I remember was a ramshackle guardpost, a dusty lot with some trailers, lots of dirt, garbage, feral cats, and weeds.

It was accepted knowledge that this place was doomed, that the Jews would be expelled from much of Jerusalem, including the City of David and the Muslim Quarter, and that the barbed wire and guard towers slicing through the heart of the city would soon return as part of a final "peace". Of course, then the outraged Arabs, feeling that they had not gained enough through negotiations, began the second intifada. At that point, as bombs went off weekly, and sometimes daily, talk of a final peace were dead in the water, and nobody came even to the Jewish areas in Jerusalem, let alone east Jerusalem. But the Jews of East Jerusalem held out, and while the inferno raged on, this entire promenade, central street, housing, and just about everything you seen in these pictures was built.

The Shiloach pools, at the exit to Hezekia's Tunel, now being excavated and refurbished.

A sunshade covers an area being excavated at the Shiloach Pools

Finally, we come to a promenade, overlooking Silwan and the location of the old Yemenite Village.
Yours truly and Steven, on the promenade overlooking Arab Silwan and the Yemenite Village.

Silwan. In the foreground is a guardpost on a Jewish Kollel (yeshivah for married men.)

Details outlining the location of the original Yemenite Village. Hass Promenade is labeled for reference.

And that's where we're going next. Into Silwan to find the Yemenite Village! Stay tuned...