We Demolish Only When There Is No Alternative
(Opinion by Mayor of Jerusalem Ehud Olmert, "Yediot Ahronot", May 9, 1999)
Reply to letter of Dalia Rabikowitz -- re: Demolition of Homes in
Jerusalem -- published on this page last week.
Dear Dalia,
In your public letter to me you wrote: "The Arab homes were built without
legal permission because there is no law that permits Arabs to build
without a blueprint. The sting is that this absence of blueprints does not
and has never existed, because you and not a few other Jews... simply want
the Arabs out."
The facts are different. The Jerusalem Municipality, during my tenure, has
prepared 31 blueprints for the eastern city for the benefit of its Arab
residents. Twelve of these plans have been approved and ten more are
undergoing the approval process. They concern building plans for the Arab
neighborhoods Shuafat, Beit Hanina, Arab a-Suwahara and Sur Baher. The
include two projects for Waqf employees to be built in Wadi Joz; a project
for the construction of 400 residential units for Arabs in Sur Bahar now
undergoing approval and a lottery of some of the building sites in the
blueprint for this neighborhood, which has enabled an additional 1,800
residential units there; approval of a plan to build 57 villas for the
Arab Teachers Building Association in Beit Hanina, and hundreds of
building permits for Arab residents of the city over the past few
years.
During my term of office, 180 new classrooms have been/or are in the
process of being built in the eastern city and 130 more have been budgeted
and will be built in the coming two years. Over the same period, some NIS
200 million has been invested in accordance with the municipal city plans
under my direction to improve infrastructures in the eastern city (double
the total amount invested by the Jerusalem Municipality in the eastern
city in the 28 years under Teddy Kollek).
In 1997 and 1998, a total of 80 administrative demolition orders were
issued for the eastern city and 29 homes were demolished, while at the
same time, 27 illegal structures were demolished in the western part of
the city.
Where is the discrimination here? Who wants to expel the Arabs from the
eastern city? I personally have fought against the policy of the Interior
Ministry to revoke identity cards from Arabs who live in Jerusalem, so as
to prevent their deportation
In light of these figures, the meaning of the statements by Feisal
Husseini in June 1997 to the Egyptian newspapers "al-Ahram" are clear:
"The most important Palestinian activity today is construction, even
without permits..." So too is the statement by Hatem Kadr Eid, a member of
the Palestinian National Council, in April 1999 on Palestine Radio: "6,000
apartments in Jerusalem were built without permits, and I hope that there
will be 12,000 such apartments next year."
This construction is not a consequence solely of a housing shortage, but
mainly due to an effort to make political facts on the ground, as part of
the struggle for Jerusalem. Fortunately for us, Feisal Husseini knows that
there will always be found a suffering image by an Arab poet whose
sufferings and cruelties can be blamed on the person whose duty is to
uphold the law, and when there is no choice (and only when there is no
choice) to demolish illegally built homes as well. Therefore, your charge
that "there is law that allows Arabs to build" is spurious, which even a
poet who prefers to ignore reality has no authority to make.
All in all, what is the connection of these issues to my dinner in a Jaffa
restaurant? What is their relationship to the cigars I smoke or my Volvo,
or Shabbat or even the games of Betar Jerusalem? Imagine if instead of
responding with proven facts, I were to talk about your hair-do and
cosmetics. Maybe, you decided to act in the famous manner of the late
Moshe Sneh, who in one of the drafts of a speech wrote in his own hand:
"At this point, I should raise my voice because the point is weak..."
Indeed, both our parents were supporters of the Betar youth movement in
Harbin, China, who immigrated to Israel as dedicated Zionists. I have
remained faithful to my parents' heritage, who taught me according to the
principles of Jabotinsky to act with respect towards all the country's
residents, Jews and Arabs, and to protect the equal rights of all citizens
regardless of their parentage.
I do not know what you have left of all this. Dignity, civility and a
little respect to your opponents you no longer possess.