The Walls of Jerusalem

Preserving the Past, Controlling the Future

Alan Balfour

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781119182313
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: History of Architecture

A complete examination of the men and forces that created and shaped the modern state of Israel over the last hundred years

Walls of Jerusalem is a study of the creation and evolution of the modern state of Israel. This unique work begins with the actions of four extraordinary men — Theodor Herzl, Chaim Weizmann, Ze'ev Jabotinsky, and David Ben-Gurion — and follows with their influence on subsequent leaders and on the political and military decisions that have shaped and changed Jerusalem and the nation. The resulting physical realty has made concrete the shift in vison from the broad utopian ideals of the beginning, to the separation barrier and settlement enclaves that increasingly divide both Jewish and Palestinian cultures.

The author traveled across the West Bank, into the Israeli settlements and along the Israeli security barrier dividing Israel from Palestine. He entered the tombs, mosques and synagogues, experienced the distortion of Jerusalem since the building of the separation barrier - the watchtowers, the welded gates, the shuttered shops, divided highways and back-ways, tunnels, bridges, checkpoints, to better understand evolving reality that defines the stage for the future relationship between Israel and Palestine.

Walls of Jerusalem is a timely book, its vivid narrative journeys through a century and a half of dreams and conflicts that lead to a divided Jerusalem:

• It presents each stage of Israel's evolution, from the 1896 publication of Herzl's Der Judenstaat and the Balfour Declaration, to the opening of the United States embassy in Jerusalem in 2018
• Relates the visions of Israel's creators to the destructive and constructive forces utilized to create a new nation
• Reviews the century long attempts by international organizations to resolve the conflict between Jews and Palestinians
• Makes every effort to present a balanced exploration of challenges facing the state of Israel and its place on the world stage, but in conclusion gives emphasis to the plight of the Palestinians
• Integrates illustrations with text to provide a detailed portrait of central figures in modern Israel's history

1
Herzl, Weizmann and the Balfour Declaration

If you will it, it is no dream;

and if you do not will it,

a dream it is

and a dream it will stay.

Herzl

There is no certainty to the historical time of the Patriarchs described in Genesis, scholarly estimates range between the sixth and tenth centuries BCE, but since the fourth century CE this place on the Hebron road has been the favored location for Rachel’s Tomb. It is befitting that here, on the Way of the Patriarchs – the path, according Genesis, taken by Abraham and Isaac from Jerusalem to Hebron – lies the tomb of the great Matriarch. Rachel is the most revered matriarch in the Hebrew tradition; she was the favorite of the two wives of the Jacob and the mother of Joseph and Benjamin from whom two of the 12 tribes of Israel descend. It is a place of profound veneration for Jews across Israel and beyond. And this Matriarch of Judaism is of particular significance to women; those seeking to conceive wear a red string that has been previously tied seven times round the actual tomb. The tomb is respected by Christians, but within Muslim tradition it is also the site of a mosque built very early in the Arab conquest and dedicated to Bilal ibn Rabah, a revered teacher and companion of the prophet.

In 1996 Israel declared the tomb henceforth to be part of Jerusalem, began to fortify the site and in 2002 incorporated it into the Israeli side of the West Bank barrier. An access road was built and enclosed by two parallel walls 13 feet high.

Figure 1.1 Three photographs: The first (Figure 1.1) shows someone walking down the protected passage to the Tomb within Jerusalem. The tomb is behind the arcades on the right.

(Photo, Sege Attal/Flash 90)

Figure 1.2 The second (Figure 1.2) shows the same wall from the Bethlehem side, covered in graffiti; Rachel’s Tomb is securely imprisoned on the other side. Note the little apartment building on the left from the first decades of the last century.

Figure 1.3 The third (Figure 1.3) has the caption “Palestine disturbances 1936. Scottish soldiers stopping Arab camel‐men in search for arms, near Rachel’s Tomb on Bethlehem road.” It was taken more than 80 years ago from almost the same location; note the same little apartment building on the left and the dome of Rachel’s Tomb on the right. It illustrates not only how close the Tomb is behind the wall, but also how long this place and these peoples have been in the midst of seemingly permanent conflict.

The first major restoration of Rachel’s Tomb was initiated by the British financier Moses Montefiore. The Ottoman government gave him permission in 1841 after Montefiore and his wife Judith visited the tomb; she was overwhelmed by the sense of being the presence of the “mother of Israel.” (Such was the significance of the tomb to the Montefiores that they chose to create a replica in England as their final resting place.) Two decades later it was Montefiore who took the decisive step in the construction of a Jewish reality in Jerusalem. He was appointed the executor of the estate of his friend the American philanthropist Juda Touro who died in 1854; Touro’s will bequeathed monies to be used to establish a Jewish residential settlement in Palestine.

Montefiore used the money for projects that encouraged productive labor, particularly agriculture. In 1857 he build a windmill (its mechanism designed and fabricated in England) on the barren slopes opposite Mount Zion to provide cheap flour for the poor. Its significance is that in this very first construction two ambitions were evident: that Jews, when they came, should be self‐sufficient, and that their labor should be tied, bonded, to the land. (The mill has had a fateful existence, but now restored it is a symbol of a founding act reasserting a Jewish presence in Palestine.) Montefiore attempted to acquire arable land for Jewish cultivation, but was hampered by Ottoman restrictions on land sale to non‐Muslims. In 1860 he organized the construction of a residential settlement and almshouse on the west side of Jerusalem outside the old walls, Mishkenot Sha’ananim (a reference to Isaiah 32: 18, “My people shall dwell in peaceful habitation, and in sure dwellings and in quiet resting places.”) The project appears in the beginning to have been aimed attracting Jews – the old Yishuv – living in often‐squalid homes in the old city, but such was their fear of leaving the protection of the ancient walls that money had to be offered to encourage the move. This was a simple brick terrace of small homes, looking much too English, exposed on a hillside known for bandits; within a short time it was secured behind a wall and gate.

Figure 1.4 Plan of the Town and Environs of Jerusalem in 1866. Jerusalem in 1866 is a city still contained within 2000‐year‐old walls and dominated by the great rectangular enclosure of Temple Mount, for Islam Ay Haram al Sharif, the Noble Sanctuary. For Jews it will always retain the memory of Solomon’s Temple and its destruction by the Romans in CE 70.

(Source: British Ordinance Survey conducted by Charles Wilson RE, Southampton 1865.)

The old Yishuv (Yishuv – Hebrew for settlement) were the Jewish communities that had for centuries lived in the southern provinces of what was then Syria, including Jerusalem, and it was Montefiore who commissioned an annual census from 1839 till 1875, which not only gave numbers, age and gender of the Jewish population, but attempted to document place of origin, family structure and – significantly – the degree of poverty. This was a very poor population. The Yishuv followed Montefiore’s example and from 1860 onwards began building homes outside the walls of Jerusalem. From this point on there was a gradual rise in immigration into Palestine, driven by a succession of pogroms (literally “to wreak havoc”) which started in Russia in 1881 in “The Pale of Settlement” – the area of Eastern Russia in which Jews were allowed to settle. The practice of pogroms spread into Eastern Europe and persisted until 1919.¹ Most who fled the persecution made for America, but those who came to Palestine appear from the earliest records to have had a vision and a purpose in mind.

In October 1882 Ben‐Yehuda and Yehiel Michael Pines, who had arrived in Palestine in 1878, wrote to Rashi Pin, in Vilna, then part of the Russian Empire:

We have made it a rule not to say too much, except to those … we trust … the goal is to revive our nation on its land … if only we succeed in increasing our numbers here until we are the majority…

From the earliest days this was a plan for conquest:

There are now only five hundred [thousand] Arabs, who are not very strong, and from whom we shall easily take away the country if only we do it...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Prologue
• 1 Herzl, Weizmann and the Balfour Declaration
• 2 Jabotinsky, Ben‐Gurion and the Iron Wall
• 3 “National Homeland”
• 4 Al‐Nakba (Catastrophe)
• 5 Eretz Yisrael
• 6 Settlements
• 7 The “Separation Barrier”
• 8 In Palestine
• 9 Netanyahu, Trump and the Future
• Epilogue
• Index
• End User License Agreement