Apartment takeovers spark anger in East Jerusalem
JERUSALEM — Under cover of darkness, they slipped into apartments in an East Jerusalem neighbourhood and changed the locks.
When the sun rose Tuesday, Arab residents of Silwan found Israeli security guards and young male volunteers hunkered down inside 25 apartment units in their impoverished neighbourhood and an adjacent area — the biggest settler takeover since Jews began buying up properties in the volatile area two decades ago.
The organization that oversees Jewish settlement here calls them legal purchases in a hostile neighbourhood, while Arabs and the international community see it as a nationalistic conquest in land Israel captured in 1967. The practice has sparked yet another spat between Israel and the U.S., months after Mideast peace efforts again failed.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest condemned the occupation of the properties “by individuals who are associated with an organization whose agenda, by definition, stokes tensions between Israelis and Palestinians.”
That organization, the Elad Foundation, says it has settled hundreds of Jews amid an Arab population estimated at about 30,000 in an area it calls the City of David, where Jewish tradition holds King David established Jerusalem as Judaism’s central holy city.
The Palestinians claim East Jerusalem, home to the city’s most sensitive holy sites, as the capital of a future independent state. Israel vows all of Jerusalem will forever be Israel’s capital. But the international community, including the U.S., does not recognize Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem and says the area’s fate must be resolved through negotiations.
Israeli officials have rebuffed the criticism, insisting that Arabs and Jews of the city are free to buy properties wherever they want.
“Definitely Jews can buy apartments wherever they want in Jerusalem, and especially in the City of David, which is the place of ancient Jerusalem 3,000 years ago,” Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat said.
Jerusalem’s Arabs, while free to live wherever they want, say they often encounter resistance or discrimination when trying to buy or rent properties in Jewish areas.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told MSNBC the White House statement deploring the Silwan move was “baffling” to him.
“It criticized individual Jews who bought apartments in an Arab neighbourhood,” Netanyahu said. “Jews buy apartments, private property, in Arab neighbourhoods. Arabs buy apartments in Jewish neighbourhoods.”
The properties in question, however, were not purchased by individuals.
Kendall Finance, a private American real estate investment company, paid millions of dollars for six buildings consisting of 25 property units from various Palestinian homeowners, said Doron Spielman, vice-president of Elad, which according to Spielman served as a consultant to the purchases.
Avi Segal, a Jerusalem-based lawyer for Kendall Finance, said the properties were in the City of David and nearby Mount Zion areas. He said the company owns the properties and will lease them to residents.
“Kendall Finance consulted with many advisers in doing due diligence for this transaction, among them being the Elad Foundation,,” Segal said in an email.
Segal declined to say where in the U.S. that Kendall Finance was based.
Jewish real estate deals in the contentious Silwan area have long been murky. Purchases often go through intermediaries, which those involved say protects the Arab sellers from being attacked by their neighbours.