Israeli mayoral elections tomorrow

Israel prepares for its general election next February with municipal and mayoral elections to be held throughout the country tomorrow. Jerusalem, the largest city, is the flashpoint and the race has highlighted religious rifts splitting the city and, by extension, the entire country. Although the major parties do not contest mayoral elections, the vote will give some indication of the thinking in advance of the national poll.

The two leading contenders for the job are ultra-Orthodox rabbi, Meir Porush, 53, and Nir Barkat, 49, a moderate city councillor and high-tech entrepreneur. Neither is likely to win the race outright and will rely on middle ground. Shmuel Sandler, a political scientist at Bar-Ilan University near Tel Aviv, said the contest has become a culture war and a battle between secular and religious forces. There could be a backlash by voters against religious parties in the countrywide ballot if Porush wins, Sandler said.

Porush has asked not to be judged by the length of his beard but there is little doubt he plans to promote an ultra-religious agenda if elected. Last week he stirred the pot by saying no Israeli city would have a secular mayor within 10 to 15 years. While his speech was delivered in Yiddish and intended for a private audience of supporters, they were taped and shown on TV news with Hebrew subtitles. "We are growing and multiplying at a fast pace,” he said. “Within 10 years there will not be a secular candidate at all in any city, except maybe in an abandoned village.”

If this wasn’t enough to worry people in secular neighbourhoods, they are also concerned their areas have been encroached in recent years by the ultra-Orthodox. Pnina Dadon told The Guardian her west Jerusalem district has seen a steady increase in synagogues and religious kindergartens. The original inhabitants are moving out. "The secular people are running away, especially the young. They just don't feel comfortable any more," said Dadon. "It's not that I hate them. It's just that I want my freedom."

But the campaign of secular candidate Nir Barkat is not without its issues either. His concern, similar to Dadon’s, is young people fleeing the capital in greater numbers. His plan is to build thousands of new apartments in East Jerusalem, which Israel occupied after the 1967 Six Day War and later annexed. Such settlements would not win Israel any friends internationally and would present further obstacles to peace with the Palestinians. But Barkat is not fussed by international opinion. "The young people are leaving Jerusalem," he says. "This is a real danger to Jerusalem's future and causes a decline in the general standard of living in the city."

The third candidate in the Jerusalem election is the Russian-born wildcard billionaire Arcady Gaydamak who is attempted to court the Arab vote. This will be difficult as the elections are a purely Jewish affair. Most Palestinian residents, who make up almost a third of the city's 700,000 population, are expected to boycott the election as they have done since Israel conquered East Jerusalem in 1967. "Our religious and national positions on the issue are clear,” said Mohammed Hussein, mufti of Jerusalem and the Palestinian territories. “They forbid participation as a voter or a candidate in these elections for an authority that represents the Israeli occupation.”

But Jerusalem activist Akram Salhab disagrees with this strategy. He says the boycott is an example of “the lazy thinking” dominating the Palestinian political scene. He says real gains are sacrificed to maintain a purely symbolic boycott that doesn’t achieve anything for the Arab population. Despite having 30 percent of the population, they only receive about 10 percent of council funding. “In the blink of an eye you are transported from a modern, well maintained high street with neatly painted red and white curbs, to a pot-hole ridden road from somewhere in the third world,” he says.

Jerusalem inaugurates the Bridge of Strings

The Jerusalem skyline was changed dramatically with the lavish inauguration of a huge new bridge this week. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert opened the $73 million structure in a gala presentation despite interruptions from ultra-Orthodox Jews who demanded “promiscuous” female dancers be dressed modestly with long skirts and full head cover to cover their hair. The 250 meter long and 120 meter high harp-like structure is known by two names, the “Bridge of Cords” and the “Bridge of Strings”. It has an elevated walkway and will eventually carry a new light rail line. The bridge was designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava and curves from the city’s main western entrance suspended by 66 white cables attached to a spire. Like all new structures, it has attracted vitriol and praise in equal measure.

Last week, Jerusalem’s opposition leader urged Israel’s President to boycott the lavish inauguration of the bridge. Nir Barkat said Shimon Peres should not attend the ceremony due to its "wasteful" expenditure of public funds. The inauguration is part of the anniversary celebrations of Israel’s 40 year occupation of the entire city which it took from Jordan during the Six Day War. The bridge celebration is eating up a large slice of the anniversary funds. Barkat wrote to Peres that it would have been appropriate for the public funds for the inauguration be invested in “other burning and more pressing needs in the city such as education, children's meals, city sanitation, job projects, and housing for young couples.”

Writing in ynetnews.com, Jackie Levy agrees with Barkat. Levy described the building of the new bridge as a “tasteless act” and a luxury Jerusalem could ill afford. He said it was difficult to recall a more “huge, pretentious, expensive and arrogant” work built for the sake of so little. Levy acknowledged the bridge was spectacular and of beautiful design. But it was ill-suited to a poor city where 40 percent of the population (Jewish and Arab) live below the poverty – four times as many as in Tel Aviv and Haifa. Levy said it was a pretentious and wasteful bridge “whose inauguration celebrations alone account for more than half of the city’s annual culture budget.”

Others were more favourable. Calatrava himself had no hesitation in calling it his favourite work. The Spaniard had built over 40 bridges around the world including ones nearing completion on Venice’s Grand Canal. But he described the Jerusalem work his “unquestionable favourite.” He said the most important aspect about the bridge was the fact it was in Jerusalem. “I have always loved Jerusalem, which is a universal city for everyone,” he said. “But now that I know the city I love it even more.”

He said the bridge was a unique engineering challenge. A nearby highway tunnel hindered the building of bridge supports there and the span had to be held by cables suspended from the mast, which was complicated by the sharp turn of the train route. The bridge design also had to accommodate the traditional urban landscape of Jerusalem, where all buildings are faced with local limestone under an ordinance dating to British rule at the end of World War I. The ramps leading to the bridge are being clad in stone, and a pedestrian plaza planned underneath will also feature stone benches and stone-faced light fixtures. Calatrava said the bridge “covers the gap between tradition and modernity.”

However the bridge will remain unused for two years due to delays in the provision of the light rail service. Digging in the Palestinian neighbourhood of Shuafat in North Jerusalem has been held up by the discovery of a first century urban community. Coins found at the site date the community to between 70 and 150 AD and it appears to be a joint Jewish and Roman neighbourhood. While the find delighted archaeologists, it dismayed rail planners of the 15km network which will link Mount Herzl in southern and predominantly Jewish Jerusalem to Pisgat Ze'ev, via Shuafat, in the north. Daniel Seidemann, a Jewish lawyer who promotes Palestinian rights in Jerusalem, described the route of the railway as ideological. "It serves the mantra of the undivided eternal capital that few believe in today,” he said. “Given the reality of life here, and the glass walls between the neighbourhoods, it goes against the grain of how the city works."

But finding a solution for the future of Jerusalem is the most intractable element of the Israel-Palestine peace process. Jews demand it never again be divided as it was from 1948 to 1967 while the ultra-Orthodox demand the right to pray at the Wailing Wall. But there is a steady Jewish exodus of the secular population precisely because of the relentless campaign of the Orthodox to remodel the city in their own image. Meanwhile the Arab percentage of the city is slowly growing. The city is slowly being rundown, its infrastructure has deteriorated, and its narrow lanes have become a giant traffic jam at most times of the day. Writing in Dying For Jerusalem, American Jewish historian Walter Laqueur says that it is a mystery why this “problematic holy city should remain the main bone of contention on the road to peace”. It seems too much to hope for the road to peace to be paved by a bridge of strings.

Flashpoint at the Al Aqsa mosque

Israeli soldiers have blocked the entrance to East Jerusalem’s Al Aqsa mosque, Islam’s third holiest site. Security forces manning barricades are now checking Palestinians' identification, allowing only men over 45 years of age and women near the site. The action is an attempt to prevent wide access to the site and demonstrations against a hill demolition near one of the mosque’s entrances in order to build a road for Jewish settlers and pilgrims.

The problem is that the al-Aqsa and Dome of the Rock mosques sit above the Western Wall of the Temple Mount, Judaism's holiest site and the only surviving part of the Second Temple destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD. The Israel Antiquities Authority has now authorised a bridge to connect the Dung Gate in Jerusalem's Old City to the Mugrabi Gate, located next to the Western Wall and leading to the Temple Mount itself.

Archeologists working on the site claim the work does not directly touch the Al-Aqsa mosque. Yural Baruch, the Archaeologist in charge of the works said “you can see all the ruins. This is the continuation of this excavation in this area. This is nothing connected to the political.” However the Arab states community sees it differently.
Palestinians are concerned it is part of a plan to demolish their religious identity. Qatar’s Peninsula reported that the Islamic Scholars Union (ISU) has warned any attack on the mosque will be a spark which will inflame the whole Islamic world. "It is high time Muslims performed Jihad in the light of the crisis of the mosque and the internal fighting among the Palestinians," a statement published by the union said.

Al Aqsa is the second oldest mosque in the world. Only the Kaaba in Mecca is older. It was built in the 7th century after the completion of the nearby Dome of the Rock. Caliph Al-Walid built a mosque to the south of Dome and called it al-masjid al-aqsa, which means "the farthest mosque".

While the Dome of the Rock was constructed as a mosque to commemorate the Prophet's Night Journey, the building known as Al-Aqsa Mosque became a centre of worship and learning, attracting great teachers from all over the world. The building was damaged many times over by earthquakes and rebuilt and re-enforced each time. When the First Crusaders invaded they set up the Kingdom of Jerusalem and turned the mosque into the Royal Palace of Solomon which served as the palace of the Kings of Jerusalem and then the home of the Knights Templars.

Jerusalem would have many different rulers over the centuries. Saladin took the city back from the Crusaders. It passed into the hands of Egyptian Ayyubids, then the slave dynasty of the Mamelukes before finally falling to the Ottoman Empire in 1517. It would remain in Ottoman hands until the Turkish defeat in World War I. Under the British mandate, the Balfour Declaration gave in principle support for a Zionist state in Palestine. But they also promised the country to the Arabs for their support in the war. The British withdrew in 1948 and left problem to the newly formed UN to resolve. They proposed two separate states in Palestine.

But the two sides could not agree and the situation deteriorated into what Israel called the War of Independence. Five Arab countries Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Transjordan, and Egypt all sent troops to crush the Jews. But aided by Jewish volunteers from around the world (called the Machal) the young country fought back strongly. Arab forces also laid siege on Jerusalem but it was lifted before the UN negotiated a ceasefire. The ceasefire line established through the 1949 Armistice Agreements between Israel and Jordan cut through the centre of the city.

Israel captured East Jerusalem in the 1967 Six Day War and asserted sovereignty over the entire city. But worse was to follow for the Al Asqa mosque two years later. A deranged Australian tourist deliberately set fire to the mosque. The fire caused $9 million worth of damage and gutted the south-eastern wing of the mosque and destroyed a priceless one-thousand-year-old wood and ivory pulpit that was a gift from Saladin. Israeli firemen put out the fire despite attacks by Muslim bystanders, who also cut some of the fire hoses. Two days later Dennis Michael Rohan was arrested for arson. Rohan was a follower of a Christian evangelical sect known as the Church of God. He “hoped to hasten the coming of the Messiah” by his act of arson. To this day, Palestinian authorities still blame Israel for the fire.

The mosque remains a highly contentious symbol in the world’s most politically, culturally and religiously divided city. The current excavations have the power to create a major international incident. Ten years ago an Israeli Government decision to dig open a tunnel beside the Al-Aqsa Mosque led to rioting and the deaths of 100 people. The man in charge of archaeological works around the mosque at the time Meir Ben-Dov, advised against the current work proceeding saying Jerusalem has "three religions so you have to respect everyone and every religion in this city.”