Settlement trouble

[the_future_modernes]

MIDEAST: Stolen Room Offers a Split View

OCCUPIED EAST JERUSALEM, Sep 7 (IPS) - In the early morning sunlight, the smoky window of the plush new apartment reflects back a golden tinge from the Dome of the Rock that stands at the heart of Islam's third holiest shrine.

Down across the valley from the walled Old City, families have already started moving into some of the 91 apartments in this new 240-family compound of Jewish settlers. On the balcony, a woman in a light blue dress and white kerchief is hanging her laundry. She waves away any attempt to strike up conversation.

This is Jabel Mukaber, an Arab neighbourhood of 25,000 Palestinians on the city's south-eastern outskirts. The area of the compound - privately built, but Israeli government-approved - has been re-named "Nof Zion" - "View of Zion".

Oddly, it's the names of the main access roads into the settlement that have created a political stir - among Israelis.

Beneath the balcony the road sign reads dryly, "Road 8070: Temporary Name".

Last week, the Israeli-controlled municipality announced that "8070" will be permanently named in memory of one of the country's most revered comic actors, Shaike Ofir.

His widow Lydia says she wasn't made aware that the new settlement lies in the heart of an existing Palestinian quarter. She was conned into believing that the street named after her late husband is located in a nearby new Jewish neighbourhood that Israel built after the start of the occupation in 1967 just beyond the old dividing line between eastern and western Jerusalem.

For Lydia, like for many Israelis, that would have been acceptable as part of the national consensus around the "United Jerusalem" they consider their capital city.

Now, Lydia is trying to retract her consent: "I'm sure Shaike would not have wanted a street in a settlement named after him," she declares. Their daughter, Karine, calls the decision "bizarre, ridiculous and pathetic."

"Pathetic" is hardly the term Palestinians living under the shadow of the compound would use to qualify their new neighbours: "We've nothing against Jews, but they are crowding us out of here," says Muhammad Hamoudi Issa.MORE