Europe says ancient sites are driving settler agenda
Archaeology - and how to interpret it - is at the heart of the latest row between the EU and Israel
TOURISM ON both sides of Jerusalem’s divide has become the latest focus of the EU’s Middle East policy. Its diplomats have issued a new report criticising some of the visitor sites in the city for advancing a settler agenda, according to a leak to the Guardian.
The newspaper reported that the EU sees some of Jerusalem’s tourism as a “political tool to modify the historical narrative and to support, legitimise and expand settlements.”
EU Heads of Mission in Jerusalem are said to have claimed in the report that tourism projects in Jerusalem are promoting a “narrative based on historic continuity of the Jewish presence in the area at the expense of other religions and cultures.”
It is not a new claim, but the EU’s focus on it seems to represent a move to firm up opposition to the view that Jerusalem is a unified city under Israeli sovereignty — after Donald Trump’s December announcement that he recognises Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
The EU rejects the Trump position and opposes anything that makes Jerusalem look like a run-of-the-mill city under the sovereignty of a single jurisdiction.
This is one of the reasons that EU diplomats profess concern over plans to build a cable car that would link tourism sites in western and eastern Jerusalem.
To Israel, all of these sites are on the The City of David, in east Jerusalem, is the focus of EU ambassadors’ concern
same sovereign territory. To the international community, the sites in the west of the city are Israeli, but the sites in the east are occupied.
To Israel, linking the sites in the simplest and most convenient way is common sense.
To the EU, it is a provocative move to obscure the lines of where Israel ends and occupied land begins.
The EU’s stance echoes a claim that some left-wing Israeli groups have been making for years.
“The issue is that tourism is used as another element of settlement,” Betty Herschman, spokeswoman for the Ir Ammim activist group, told the JC.
Tourism in eastern Jerusalem, especially when funded or supported by the government, “normalises and legitimises settlement, and provides land for settlement”, she said.
Israeli officials do not see a problem, because they consider all of Jerusalem — so long as land is acquired according to the law — as fair game for development.
They also reject the claim of critics like the EU and Ir Ammim that tourist
sites are ignoring the history of nonJews in Jerusalem and that they are wrongly using the sites to support their political messages for today.
Israel says the sites are focused on Jewish history because of its genuine importance to the area, and they say that any political message flows directly from the findings.
A few months ago Jerusalem mayor Nir Barkat took a group of UN ambassadors to the most controversial of all the tourism sites, the City of David.
At this eastern Jerusalem location, which is managed by a right-leaning organisation, Elad, visitors are shown a 3D video.
“Welcome to the place where it all began,” the narrator booms, before going on to tell visitors that it is here, and not within the walls of the Old City, that the beginnings of Israelite Jerusalem are to be found.
Archaeological findings suggest that David established his kingship at this site, the narrative says, where pointing visitors to newly uncovered sites mentioned in the Bible.
The Jews living in the city today are portrayed as reviving that original Jerusalem.
When Mr Barkat took the UN ambassadors there he told them: “The coin you see in my hands, found in the City of David excavations, is emblazoned with the inscription – ‘For the Liberation of Zion.’”
He continued: “This coin is one of thousands that we find at our feet which indisputably prove the Jewish and Christian roots in Jerusalem.
“Today, we work to fulfil the imperative emblazoned on the coin: Jerusalem, under Israeli sovereignty, is free and open to people of all religions, beliefs, and backgrounds.”
Is tourism in eastern Jerusalem opening up treasures for all to see and drawing an obvious conclusion, or reading the past selectively and serving a political agenda that should not be tied to history?
The EU and Israel look poised to fight it out.
A cable car linking the sites is a cause for concern