A 20-year-old man was stabbed to death in the Silwan neighborhood of Jerusalem, Israel Radio reported on Friday.
Israel
Police reported that the man was killed following an argument that
broke out between family members. It is not yet clear which family
members were involved
Neighbors who witnessed the fight told
police that the argument was over the hot-button issue of selling homes
to Jews in the predominantly Arab neighborhood.
...
Fadi Maragha, a local Fatah representative, said he felt that the broker who sold homes to Jews should die.
In the past, Palestinians found to have sold their homes to Jewish organizations have been killed.
In Silwan, there are 90 Jewish families with about 500 Jews, who live among 50,000 Arabs. No one has even discussed a similar penalty for Jews who sell apartments to Arabs in predominantly Jewish neighborhoods. Just sayin'....
Is Givat HaMatos such a big deal? Not in Washington
Shavua tov v'shana tova to all of you - a good week and a good year.
On Thursday, I reported on Prime Minister Netanyahu's reaction to the Obama administration going ballistic again over construction in 'east' Jerusalem. If you thought the article I blogged there was over the top, please consider this one from Haaretz's Barak Ravid.
The latest quandary embarrassed Netanyahu. It destroyed his last
shreds of credibility and gave a strange, almost ridiculous twist to his
speech at the UN and his statement to Obama about integrating the
moderate Arab states in the peace process. The new, strategic idea he
had brought up now seemed like another one of his spins.
President
Obama and his senior advisers go nuts every time they hear the word
settlement. They see Israel’s international isolation deepening and the
Palestinians advancing a unilateral move in the Security Council, while
they have to deal every Monday and Thursday with crises produced by
settlements.
“How do such things help me to help you?” Obama asked
Netanyahu. Obama and his aides cannot understand how Netanyahu thinks
he could advance relations with the moderate Arab states as long as
construction in the settlements continues.
“Those moves not only
poison the atmosphere with the Palestinians, but also with those Arab
states Netanyahu said he wants to build relations with,” said White
House Press Secretary Josh Earnest, shortly after Obama’s meeting with
Netanyahu.
At his meeting with reporters, Netanyahu rejected
Earnest’s criticism, but did not attack Obama harshly or personally. He
used diplomatic clichés to downplay the fiasco. “The tones weren’t
loud,” he said. “The conversation was good and open. I highly appreciate
the president’s attentiveness.”
But it was clear Obama did not
invite Netanyahu to stay for lunch, preferring instead to dine alone
with Vice President Joe Biden. One can only guess who those two gossiped
about.
But Times of Israel's Rebecca Shimoni Stoil, who unlike Ravid lives in Washington, says it's no big deal.
For all the strong language in the Washington statements, according to
insiders here, the administration is not interested in turning the issue
of Israel’s plans to build some 2,600 units on the southeast Jerusalem
hillside into a full-blown crisis.
Veteran Washington Mideast policy folks point
to the fact that during his press availability with Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu, US President Barack Obama did not even mention the
word “settlements,” focusing instead on the warm points in the
ties between the two states. Although he was aware of the building plans
– White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest confirmed that the two
talked about the topic behind closed doors – Obama chose to ignore the
issue, and was, if anything, unusually amiable in his interaction with
Netanyahu during the late morning event.
If Obama had wanted to make a major issue of
the construction plans, it was well within his ability to discuss it
during the press spot, when the cameras were rolling and Netanyahu would
have been caught in the hot seat. Or he could have issued a statement
in his own name. Or Secretary of State Kerry, who was also at the
Wednesday meeting, could have done so. But they didn’t.
Instead, while the two leaders met, the State
Department and the White House were coordinating strongly worded
statements to be delivered by their spokespeople soon after the White
House talks were completed. The decision was to strike a tone that
contrasted starkly with the good-natured Obama-Netanyahu presser during
the daily scheduled press briefings.
State Department Spokeswoman Jen Psaki accused
Israel of being two-faced in its policies by describing the building
project as “contrary to Israel’s stated goal of negotiating a permanent
status agreement with the Palestinians,” and later warned that it would
“poison the atmosphere not only with the Palestinians, but also with the
very Arab governments with which Prime Minister Netanyahu said he
wanted to build relations; and call into question Israel’s ultimate
commitment to a peaceful negotiated settlement with the Palestinians.”
...
Earnest repeated Psaki’s criticism almost verbatim, warning that “the
step is contrary to Israel’s stated goal of negotiating a permanent
status agreement with the Palestinians. And it would send a very
troubling message if they were to proceed with tenders or construction
in that area.”
Deja vu all over again: Netanyahu slams Obama for speaking without checking the facts
Where have we heard this story before? A White House meeting between Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Hussein Obama is accompanied by an Israeli 'announcement' that it would 'move ahead' with the construction of 2,610 housing units in 'east Jerusalem.' The White House and the State Department blast Netanyahu within an hour after he leaves the White House.
Officials chose to publicly admonish the Israeli government only an hour
after its premier left the building, presumably deciding on the
language as the two leaders met in the Oval Office.
"This
development will only draw condemnation from the international
community," White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said afterwards.
"It also would call into question Israel's ultimate commitment to a
peaceful negotiated settlement with the Palestinians."
State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki came out with similar language as Netanyahu departed for Joint Base Andrews air force base.
But the apartments were approved in 2012.
The homes will be built in Givat Hamatos, an area of the city that Palestinians believe should be a part of their future state.
The
Jerusalem Municipality approved the project in December 2012, but
waited almost two years - until the date of the bilateral meeting - to
place news of the approval in a local Israeli paper, according to Peace
Now, an organization opposed to Israel's presence beyond its 1967
borders.
Netanyahu, in a briefing in New York with reporters who accompanied him
on his trip to the US, said that as Israel’s prime minister he did not
understand the criticism of Jews legally buying and moving into
property in Jerusalem.
“Arabs in Jerusalem freely buy
apartments, and nobody says that is forbidden. I will also not say that
Jews cannot buy property in Jerusalem. There cannot be discrimination
between Jews and Arabs,” he said.
Netanyahu said that nobody
“stole” the houses in Jerusalem or took them over by force. “This is a
normal process, and I see no reason to discriminate,” he said.
Just
hours before, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said the US
condemned the “occupation of residential buildings in the Palestinian
neighborhood of Silwan in east Jerusalem -- this is near the old city
-- by individuals who are associated with an organization whose agenda,
by definition, stokes tensions between Israelis and Palestinians.”
Earnest
said that the moves by Elad are “provocative acts” that only serve “to
escalate tensions at a moment when those tensions have already been
high.”
Earnest also slammed Israel in very harsh language for
moving forward with planning for homes in the Givat Hamatos area in
south Jerusalem. The anti-settlement Peace Now group made another
technical step taken at the local planning level last week on Givat
Hamatos public on Wednesday, just prior to the Obama-Netanyahu meeting.
“This
step is contrary to Israel's stated goal of negotiating a permanent
status agreement with the Palestinians,” Earnest said.
“This
development will only draw condemnation from the international
community, distance Israel from even its closest allies, poison the
atmosphere, not only with the Palestinians but also with the very Arab
governments with which Prime Minister Netanyahu said he wanted to build
relations.”
Oh, and by the way, it wasn't Netanyahu's government that made that 'poorly timed' announcement about Givat HaMatos during the meeting. It was 'Peace Now.'
Without mentioning Peace Now by name, Netanyahu said the group
demonstrated a “lack of national responsibility” by publicizing this in
order to “harm the meeting.” He said that it was not a “coincidence”
that Peace Now publicized the information on Wednesday morning, and
that it was meant to sabotage his meeting with Obama.
Netanyahu also said that neither Silwan nor Givat HaMatos came up during his meeting with Hussein Obama. But Israel Radio reports that they did come up.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu reportedly leveled unusually stern
criticism of the White House's decision to criticize Israeli plans to
build 1,610 homes in Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem during his
meeting with President Barack Obama.
Israeli public radio quoted Netanyahu as telling Obama in talks in
Washington Wednesday to "study the facts and details before making
statements" about the building plan.
...
Netanyahu's reported comments to Obama echoed similar statement he made to journalists following the meeting, in which he rejected US criticism as discriminatory.
"It’s worth learning the information properly before deciding to take a position like that," he said of the statement.
But the bottom line is that as much as it may bother Obama, both he and Netanyahu now recognize that the 'Palestinian question' is not a high priority item. The difference between them is that Netanyahu still regards Iran as the priority, while Obama is much more concerned about Islamic State. Of course, Obama is not concerned enough to take effective action against Islamic State, but we've heard that one before as well.
'Palestinians' call for death penalty for broker of seven buildings sold to Jews in 'east' Jerusalem
One night in the summer of 1964, we came home and found a delegation of neighbors on the doorstep of our Natick, Massachusetts home. I was a little kid at the time, but I heard afterward what had happened. Our family was moving to Newton - another Boston suburb which is closer in - and my parents had sold our house to a black family. The neighbors were furious and wanted to buy the house to keep the neighborhood lily white. Yes, in Blue Massachusetts. My father z"l (of blessed memory) told them where to get off.
I think of that story every time I hear a story like this one.
Under police guard, Jewish families moved into seven buildings in the 'east' Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan - right outside the Old City - on Tuesday, as the former owners of the building and the broker who sold them fled, and a 'Palestinian Authority' official called for the death penalty for the broker.
In the latest case, all of the homes were purchased legally by Elad via
intermediaries, usually Palestinian brokers who buy the properties from
local families at inflated prices.
At one house, Khaled Karaeen,
62 and a father of six, sat with his head in his hands in the courtyard
of his home, edgily flicking worry beads, unable to believe what had
happened.
Relatives said one of Karaeen's sons had sold a
dwelling inside the grounds of the family home to a Palestinian broker
about a year ago for 1.2 million shekels ($300,000), around twice as
much as the property was probably worth.
Karaeen refused to
speak to visitors on Tuesday, with family members saying he was too
ashamed by what his son had done. Karaeen's brother said he had spoken
by phone to the son, who had fled to the north of Israel.
In the past, Palestinians found to have sold their homes to settler organizations have been killed.
The
broker had then sold the apartment to Elad, which then rented it out to
the Jewish residents, who moved in during the early hours of Tuesday
morning with the help of Israeli police.
The Jewish family, which
declined to be interviewed, had barricaded themselves inside, blocking a
yellow door that opens onto Karaeen's courtyard. Karaeen sat three
meters (10 feet) away.
I was going to make a sarcastic remark about how giving the 'Palestinians' a 'state' would make them more willing to live among Jews. Alas, even that remark is out of place.
"They want to make a joke of us," said Fadi Maragha, a local
representative of the Palestinian political party Fatah, who said he had
come to offer support to the family.
"They think they can drive
us out. But we are the landowners. We were here and we will be here
until we have all of Palestine without any Jewish people in it," he
said.
Asked what would happen to the son and the broker to whom
he had sold the property, Maragha said he felt they should die, but he
did not expect that to happen.
"We know who the broker is. He's
living in a town south of Jerusalem," he said. "But he's rich and he's
protected, including by the Israelis."
Funny. I once owned a home in New Jersey and I sold it 23 years ago. Does that mean I'm not the landowner there anymore? Or would the 'Palestinians' still consider me the landowner? Hmmm.
Photographic evidence: Jews lived in Shiloah (Silwan) in 1901
The pictures above are from the Library of Congress. On Friday, Picture A Day published the picture above with the following note (Hat Tip: Joseph S).
The caption on this Library of Congress photograph reads, "The village of Siloam [i.e. Siloan, Shiloah, Silwan] and Valley of Kedron, Palestine." But whoever wrote the caption, perhaps 110 years ago, missed an important fact. The man standing above his village is a Jew from Yemen.
...
But another migration took place 70 years ago in 1881-1882 when a group of Jews of Yemen arrived by foot to Jerusalem. They belonged to no "Zionist movement." They returned out of an age-old religious fervor to return to Zion.
The new immigrants settled on Jewish-owned property in the Shiloah Village outside of the Old City walls of Jerusalem.
The gentleman in the photograph above wears the distinctive Jewish Yemenite clothing of the time, according to a Yemenite expert today.
The blogger (my friend, Lenny Ben David) has other pictures of Yemenite Jews from the period that prove he's correct, and has also received emails from Yemenite Jews regarding the photograph.
'Palestinians' claim 17-year old shot and killed in Silwan on Friday
'Palestinians' are claiming that a 17-year old boy was shot in the stomach in Silwan on Friday and died Saturday morning. The 'Palestinians' refused to allow an autopsy to be performed. Israeli police reported that the boy suffered a shoulder wound on Friday and that his condition 'deteriorated' overnight.
The 17-year-old Palestinian youth who was injured during "Nakba day" disturbances in east Jerusalem on Friday died early on Saturday, Palestinian medical sources at the Makassed hospital in east Jerusalem said. An official at the hospital said the teenager had been shot in the stomach.
The Israel Police said it requested permission to carry out an autopsy on the body, but the request was refused.
Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said the youth was treated for a shoulder injury on Friday night, and that his condition deteriorated over night.
"It's not clear what the injuries were, and how he sustained them. An investigation is underway," Rosenfeld said.
Israel Radio reported on Saturday night that the 'Palestinians' claimed that the shots came from Beit Yehonatan, a Jewish residential building in Silwan, but there was no evidence that was true.
Here's video from Silwan on Friday.
Let's go to the videotape.
I'm so glad the kiddies know how to shout Allahu Akhbar. That's a critical skill for getting welfare money when they're older.
On Saturday, at the 'funeral,' 'Palestinians' threw stones at police and at Jewish homes in Silwan.
There were also riots over the weekend in other Jerusalem neighborhoods, including Issawiya, Ras al-Amud, Shuafat and at the Kalandia checkpoint.
Did anyone check that coffin? Anyone else think this is yet another case of Pallywood?
City of David excavations cause problems: They prove the City belongs to Jews
Haaretz has a lengthy article complaining about the exposure of a sewage tunnel from the Temple Mount to the City of David (Silwan). Haaretz complains about the 'political' manner in which the archaeological excavations are being carried out, but what really concerns them is that the tunnel proves Josephus' narrative that Jews controlled Jerusalem, and that Jews tried to flee from the Roman armies who destroyed the Second Temple. Read the whole thing.
If you check back here later, I hope to have a video tour of the City of David excavations (the one that's mentioned in the Haaretz article). Unfortunately, it's Hebrew only.
Recall this incident in October 2010 in which a Jewish resident of Jerusalem's Silwan neighborhood was ambushed by stone-throwing 'Palestinians' and photographers who had been tipped off about what was going to take place.
The 'Palestinian Authority' recently claimed that the ad above was made from a picture of the incident and asked that it be removed. There's just one problem: No one knows who made the ad. Could it be the 'Palestinians' themselves?
A Subaru logo sits in the bottom right-hand corner of the ad, accompanied by the sentence, “Let’s see who will stand in your way.”
A spokeswoman for Japan Auto said on Thursday that the company had nothing to do with the advertisement, saying, “We strongly condemn these elements that are trying to harm the good name of the company.”
She added that the company did not plan to take any action over the advertisement, as it has no idea where it originated from.
The advertisement, which does not appear to have been published in any mainstream media outlets, was sent to media this week by the PA Government Media Center, which called on Subaru to “take all necessary steps to stop the circulation of this despicable and disgraceful ad and condemn it.”
However, the PA, although not revealing where it had obtained the advertisement, also acknowledged that it is not clear whether the ad is genuine or whether someone not connected to the company has made use of the Subaru logo without its approval.
Finally: 'Palestinian' given eight months in jail for throwing rocks at Jewish car
One of the reasons that 'Palestinians' continue to throw rocks at Jewish cars (on Sunday night they stoned a bus bringing friends of the Fogel family home from their funeral) is that they are rarely caught, and when they are caught, they are treated leniently. This also allows the 'Palestinians' to maintain the myth that their actions are 'non-violent' even though they often throw stones at cars.
Please recall this incident from October. Let's go to the videotape.
Notice the adult in the black shirt and the jeans throwing a rock at David Beeri's car as he is driving off (it's around when the narrator is pointing out photographer number 4). That adult was sentenced on Sunday to eight months in jail for the incident you just saw. It's about time. But it's only a beginning.
The 22-year-old who was involved in the attack admitted to throwing a rock at Be'eri's car, but claimed that he was not part of the mob that attacked Be'eri – with cameras filming the whole time – but rather, was innocently making his way home from prayers when he stumbled into the situation. He attacked Be'eri after seeing him hit a child with his car, he claimed.
“I'm sorry for what happened. It was a reaction to what I saw, I didn't recognize the driver. Apparently I made a mistake,” the man said in court. His attorney argued that what had happened was “an unusual incident.”
The court decided to sentence the man to jail despite his claim that the attack stemmed from a simple mistaken interpretation of what was happening. Prosecutors had argued for a 10-month jail sentence, “for the purpose of both punishment and deterrence: punishment for the severe and dangerous act described in the indictment, and deterrence so that he does not do this again.”
Notice the attitude. If you - God forbid - see a car hit someone, do you start throwing stones at the car? Of course not. Civilized peoplr (i.e. not Arab savages) would write down the license plate number of the car and call the police. Civilized people don't adopt vigilante and mob violence tactics.
But the sentence is too short. What's the punishment for attempted murder? Surely more than eight months or ten months.
And for those of you wondering what happened to the kid who ran in front of the car to throw a stone at it....
Be'eri was detained for questioning after the October incident, but police quickly released him as video evidence showed that the child Be'eri hit had deliberately run in front of his car. MKs suggested that the parents of the children involved in the attack on Be'eri should be questioned instead; the child hit by Be'eri's car then began to claim that he could not remember the incident.
Of course. And he got off scot-free. Great education they give these 'Palestinian' kids, isn't it?
The picture in this post is my screen capture from a video (which I learned from the article linked below was shot by al-Jazeera - who else?), but the still photograph of the event has been honored in an international photography competition for the “spot news” photo of the year.
The dramatic photo of a boy being thrown onto the hood of Be’eri’s car earned Ilia Yefimovich, a photographer for the Russian News Agency Itar-Tass, an award of excellence. The final winners of the Pictures of the Year International competition will be announced on February 23.
Yefimovich said he wasn’t surprised that his photo was cited, because “it so perfectly captured the moment” in an otherwise “lame” year of news in Israel.
The photo was greeted with suspicion around the world, with many accusing Yefimovich and the other photographers of “setting up” the situation, and even encouraging the youths to throw rocks so they would have something to photograph.
“I went to Silwan every week for the past eight months, every single Friday,” he told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday.
“So it’s not like, ‘Whoa, what were the journalists doing there?’ They send us to these places because things happen here.
“I pass there lots of times, and kids throw stones not because photographers are coming to shoot them, they do it because they want to do it.
You can see them not just on Friday, but on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, morning, noon, and night.”
Yefimovich added that rocks were thrown at his own car on the way to Silwan that day, without any photographers present.
I'd bet that if they had no expectation of photographers showing up, there would be a lot fewer stones thrown. Does anyone really believe that the kid below isn't being encouraged by all the photographers?
Two months ago, we got a call one day from one of my children's school. One of our children, we were told, had been throwing rocks at passing cars, and could we please come get him. My oldest child is 27, so I have had children in school for a long time. This was the first time we had ever been called to school to pick up a child. We would have read the child the riot act (and the principal did read him the riot act), except that it turned out that the story was grossly exaggerated. The child and three of his friends were having a competition during recess to see who could throw the inedible fruit produce of one of the bushes the furthest. They threw too far and hit some parked cars belonging to some people who have an office in the school's basement.
Knowing how I reacted to hearing that my child was throwing rocks at passing cars - even though it turned out to be wrong - I cannot understand the indifference with which other parents in another part of town react when their children are caught throwing stones and the police come and get them at 3:00 am.
In a report to be released on Monday, B’Tselem – The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, slammed the Jerusalem Police for “systematically violat[ing] the law” for treatment of east Jerusalem minors being investigated for their role in stone-throwing.
B’Tselem accuses the police of waking boys as young as eight in the middle of the night and taking them to the police station for interrogation, not allowing parents to attend their questioning, and using extreme violence and handcuffs on children.
B’Tselem said these rights for children were protected by the Youth Law, an Israeli law that adopts most of the UN’s positions on children’s rights.
The Jerusalem Police dismissed the report.
“It is known that the role of the police is to maintain public order and defend the peace, including in instances when the public order is disturbed by children,” the police said in a statement. The police said that they always gave parents the option of attending interrogations, and that children were only awakened in the middle of the night for questioning “for accepted operational reasons related to the good of the investigation.”
According to B’Tselem, from November 2009 to October 2010, 81 minors from Silwan were arrested or detained, many of them more than once. Nearly 40 percent of these boys were arrested or detained in the month following the September 22 death of Silwan resident Samer Sirkhan, who was killed by an Israeli private security guard.
Statistics from previous years were not available from either B’Tselem or the police, though police agreed there was a “worrisome increase” in violent incidents, especially rock-throwing, in the past year in east Jerusalem. The widespread problem was captured by the international media when Elad (Ir David Foundation) head David Be’eri ran into two youths who were throwing rocks at his car on October 8.
At a meeting of the Knesset’s Committee on the Rights of the Child following the Be’eri incident, police said they were frustrated that their hands were tied when dealing with younger and younger boys who were throwing rocks. In October, police examined the idea of holding the parents responsible for their children’s actions, but have not finalized any new plans.
...
In October, police called Gnaith’s father to tell him to report with Gnaith at the police station the next day for an investigation into a second stone-throwing incident. Gnaith was kept in detention for one day, and released after his parents left a NIS 5,000 guarantee, a check that the police did not deposit but will hold in case Gnaith is arrested again.
Well, how do you deal with these kids? No one here really knows. You can't exactly lock up an eight-year old. On the other hand, giving a 15-year old stone thrower a few days in jail ought to put a little bit of fear into him. But it doesn't.
The bigger issue is how to deal with parents who are apparently indifferent to the fact that their kids are in the streets throwing stones. Here's the end of this story. "Arouri" is Amer Arouri, B'Tselem's 'east' Jerusalem field worker.
Gnaith’s story is just one of hundreds. According to B’Tselem, the Jerusalem District Police opened 1,267 criminal files against Arab minors living in east Jerusalem who were accused of throwing rocks. Though the police only took action in a fraction of these cases, 32 youths from Silwan were arrested or detained in October 2010 alone. Some have been arrested several times.
The question remains, if the youth in Silwan are suffering so badly from the punishments and harsh treatment by police, why do they continue to throw stones at cars driving through their neighborhood every day.
“Even after the punishment, they still live in the same situation – there’s an occupation, there are settlers...there’s the wall, checkpoints, no work,” Aruri said.
The children will continue to throw stones, he said, because there’s no other action they can take. “There’s no hope in the future,” he said.
Sorry but I don't accept the last two paragraphs. An 8-year old doesn't know about the wall or checkpoints. A 15-year old may not either. These kids aren't throwing stones because they feel 'oppressed.' They're throwing stones because grown-ups - including their own parents - are sending them out to be canon fodder. For that, the parents should be sitting in jail.
Here are a couple of interesting tidbits about Jerusalem from Marty Peretz
I believe there will be awkward but porous lines drawn when (and if) Jerusalem is finally discussed at the conference table. But the Israeli stamp on the future of the city cannot be erased. Nor should it: this is the price the Arabs are paying for their long decades of rejectionism. Still, do not think that the Palestinians fail to exploit opportunities as they have in changing Jerusalem realities.
An ironic one is that Arabs from the West Bank are continually making themselves residents of Jerusalem. This is a part of the demographic pressure on the city. But the irony is that they are leaving territories that will soon be Palestine to live in a city they expect (and truly hope) will be Israeli. Of course, the Palestinian Arabs want a Palestine to be established. But if they have a choice they’d rather live in Israel. You might think that given the national Palestinian upsurge among Israeli Arabs that they would crave to live in Palestine. In fact, some Zionists want to surrender the land on which these Arabs live precisely to Palestine. They are no takers.
A different form of sub rosa Palestinian change in the demography of Jerusalem is the influx of Arabs from Hebron, a result of bitter struggles among clans and political groupings. (This is something, thank God, which we cannot blame on Hebron’s fanatic Jews.) Most of these Arabs moved to the Silwan neighborhood of Jerusalem where they build housing for which no plans have been made, and they build them without electricity or running water or, for that matter, toilet facilities. It is mostly these Arabs for whom the mayor of the city, my friend Nir Barkat, has helped develop a scheme, designed by Palestinian city planners and architects, that would settle them in new and modern housing. They prefer to stay in fetid Silwan.
The second paragraph is common knowledge. One has to wonder who will live in a 'Palestinian state' if God forbid there ever is one. The short answer is terrorists, and 'refugees' forced out of Arab countries. To me, that doesn't sound like a good reason to establish a 'Palestinian state.'
But the third paragraph is even more intriguing. Just when you think you know it all.... I had no idea that 'Palestinians' from Hebron had settled in Silwan, nor did I know that Nir Barkat (who looks smarter by the minute) had hired 'Palestinian' city planners and architects to try to get them to move.
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
