‘Israel giving key Jerusalem site to settlers’

Israel circulates photo of Palestinian leader meeting Hitler to battle critics





JERUSALEM: Israel has handed control over much of a key Palestinian area in annexed east Jerusalem to hardline settler groups in a creeping takeover kept away from public scrutiny, a report by an activist group said on Thursday.




Government bodies have transferred both private Palestinian property and national parks in the Silwan neighbourhood outside the walls of the Old City to the settler organisation Elad, said Ir Amim, a non-profit group specialising in Jerusalem issues. "It was done in the dark, in flagrant violation of the rules of good government and in some cases in violation of the law, without open and official decisions by the government or Knesset and without public discussion, inquiry or scrutiny," said the report entitled "Shady Dealings in Silwan".




Elad is dedicated to expanding Jewish ownership in Arab areas of east Jerusalem, which Israel captured from Jordan in 1967 and annexed in a move not recognised by the international community. In Silwan, Elad has acted as an arm of the government for the past 20 years to gain control over a quarter of the land along its main thoroughfare, Wadi Hilweh or City of David. "Silwan is a keystone to a sweeping and systematic process whose aim is to gain control of the Palestinian territories that surround the Old City, to cut the Old City off from the urban fabric of east Jerusalem and to connect it to Jewish settlement blocs" in the northeast, it said.




Elad's impact in Silwan is hard to miss - dominating the city's poorest neighbourhood is a gleaming new visitors' centre and the Walls of Jerusalem national park, an archaeological exhibition. In theory the park is owned by the government, but the operator is Elad. "The site is technically run by the Nature and Parks Authority but all the tour guides are actually Elad people," says Ir Amim activist Orly Noy. "People arrive here thinking they are at a regular government-run tourist site. What they are actually hearing is the settlers' agenda." The Parks Authority entrusted the running of the site to Elad in 1997 in what the report said was an opaque transaction instead of an open tender as required by law.




When the National Antiquities Authority discovered that important archaeological remains had been transferred to settlers, it objected and in 1999 the move was overturned in the High Court. But despite this verdict, the Parks Authority in 2002 handed control of the area back to Elad. Elad wants to turn the Arab neighbourhood into a new Jewish heartland. Such a move could spark violence, as Silwan's location makes it a potential tinderbox in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.




Hitler photo: Meanwhile, Israel has ordered its diplomats to use an old photograph of a former Palestinian religious leader meeting Adolf Hitler to counter world criticism of a Jewish building plan for East Jerusalem. Israeli officials said on Wednesday Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman told Israeli ambassadors to circulate the 1941 shot in Berlin of the Nazi leader seated next to Haj Amin al-Husseini, the late mufti in Jerusalem. One official said Lieberman hoped the photo would "embarrass" Western countries into ceasing to demand that Israel halt the project on land owned by the mufti's family in a predominantly Arab neighbourhood in East Jerusalem. Israel captured East Jerusalem in 1967, annexing it as part of its internationally unrecognised claim to Jerusalem as its capital. agencies