To avoid fence, Jerusalem Arabs are making move to Jewish areas
By Dina Kraft Published: 01/24/2008
www.jta.org/cgi-bin/iowa/news/article/2008012420080124jerusalem.html

JERUSALEM (JTA) -- At Cafe Malcha in this city's French Hill neighborhood,
Hebrew and Arabic newspapers sit on the counter and both languages are
spoken amid the din of espresso machines and customers' laughter.

The cafe's back room is a well-known meeting place for Jewish and Arab
businessmen, some of whom live in French Hill, a quiet neighborhood of stone
apartment buildings and pine trees around Hebrew University's Mount Scopus
campus.

"They live here and there are no problems whatsoever," Moshe Feldman, a
retired Israeli army colonel and long-term French Hill resident, said of the
Arabs in his neighborhood.

"It does not matter to me whether they are Jews or Arabs but whether or not
they live according to the law," added Feldman, a former military governor
of Ramallah.

The number of Arabs moving into French Hill, as well as other Jewish
neighborhoods of Jerusalem, is rising.

Wanting to be on the Israeli side of the West Bank security fence, which in
the vicinity of Jerusalem is mostly a concrete barrier some 20 feet high,
thousands of Jerusalem Arabs are heading to the west side of the fence.

Those who cannot find housing in the traditionally Arab eastern part of the
city, where demand has soared and prices have risen as the fence has severed
Arab suburbs from Jerusalem, are moving in increasing numbers to Jewish
neighborhoods of the Israeli capital, where homes are more affordable.

Ziad al-Hamouri, the head of the Jerusalem Center for Economic and Social
Rights, said Palestinian newspapers now carry advertisements for homes in
Jewish neighborhoods.

"It's very expensive to move into the eastern part of the city, and at the
same time there is an increase in unemployment and poverty," he said. "This
is leading Palestinians to seek out less expensive housing."

As a consequence, outlying Jerusalem neighborhoods like French Hill, Neve
Yaakov and Pisgat Zeev -- which are on the Israeli side of the West Bank
fence but east of the Green Line and therefore technically part of the West
Bank -- are becoming mixed Arab-Jewish neighborhoods.

This shift, wrought by the security fence, is profoundly changing the city's
character. In some cases it is prompting Jewish Jerusalemites unhappy with
the changes to talk about leaving their neighborhoods or the city entirely.

Yisrael Kimche, an urban planner and senior researcher at the Jerusalem
Institute for Israel Studies, long has warned that Arab Jerusalemites
eventually would start looking for housing in Jewish neighborhoods.

"Once such a process begins, Jewish residents will start leaving these
neighborhoods," he wrote in a recent study about the implications of the
security fence. "Processes of this kind are known the world over; seam
neighborhoods tend to be the most severely affected. Should the phenomenon
continue to spread, it may have consequences for the future of Israeli
Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish state."

Jerusalem's Jews seem to have mixed feelings about the changing demographics
of their neighborhoods. Jews in some neigborhoods are setting up committees
to prevent Arabs from moving in, and some are circulating fliers in
synagogues against selling or renting homes to Arabs, according to Israeli
media reports.
"It is just weird sometimes when you go, for example, to the shopping center
and it seems like there are only Arabs there," said one longtime resident of
French Hill who did not want her name used. "It does not particularly bother
me that there are a lot of Arabs here now, but the thing that strikes me is
that I did not come from the United States 37 years ago to become a
minority. When I start feeling like a minority it is unsettling."

Most Jerusalem-area Arabs are not Israeli citizens but have
permanent-resident status. They say they are moving to Jewish Jerusalem for
two main reasons: long waits at checkpoints coming into the city and the
possibility that their Israeli identity cards could be revoked if they live
beyond the fence for an extended amount of time.

Furthermore, they say, if Jerusalem eventually is divided as part of a
future peace deal and they end up on the Palestinian Authority side of the
fence, they would lose access to the benefits of having an Israeli identity
card -- including health care, Social Security payments, freedom of movement
and access to jobs.
Jalah Hussein, an electrical engineer who works in Jerusalem but lives on
its outskirts in the Shuaffat refugee camp, is among those looking for a
home in a Jewish area. He says he has started looking for an apartment in
Pisgat Zeev.

"Everyone is moving," he said.

The security fence "bothers all of us," Hussein said. "If I want to travel
to work, or get the kids to school or a medical clinic, it is very
difficult."

He said crossing the checkpoints into Jerusalem can take minutes or hours,
depending on the level of security alert.

As for his six children adjusting to life in a Jewish area, he said, "They
will have to get used to something new."

Benita Raphaely, an agent at Jerusalem Homes Realty, which sells properties
in French Hill, said more Israeli Arabs are seeking her office's assistance.
She described the potential buyers and renters as mostly professionals who
have children in Israeli schools and are fully integrated residents of the
city.

"We encounter apartment sellers who tell us that they only want to sell to
Jews and those who don't mind who buys their property," Raphaely said.
"There is a difference in people's willingness to contemplate selling to
Christian Arabs and Armenians rather than to Muslims. Like most things in
this country, very fine distinctions are made."

Shlomo Sirkus, a retired Bank of Israel executive, said he is considering
leaving Jerusalem to be closer to his children who live elsewhere. For years
he has lived in a cluster of upscale townhouses in French Hill where about a
quarter of the owners are now Arabs, including some from the Galilee. Among
them are doctors who work at the nearby Hadassah hospital.

"I think only Arabs will buy my house because at this point most Jews would
not consider buying in a development where there is such a large number of
Arabs," Sirkus said.

Another longtime resident of French Hill who asked that her name not be used
said she fears that it will become increasingly difficult to find Jewish
buyers in the neighborhood.

"Their intentions are good," the woman said of her Jewish neighbors renting
or selling to Arabs. "But will there be consequences later? That is the
concern."