Jerusalem, March 26: Protests shook Israeli-occupied Palestinian Jerusalem this month and tensions remain high in the narrow alleys of the Old City and could erupt again, confounding US-led peace efforts.
The trigger for the March 16 demonstrations in the Palestinian Holy City was the opening of a rebuilt 17th-century synagogue and rumours that it was part of a plan by Jewish extremists to destroy the famed Al-Aqsa mosque.
But the anger that fueled the unrest had been brewing for months, as radical Jewish settlers have pressed into dense Palestinian neighbourhoods and the Israeli government has defied international pressure to freeze illegal construction in occupied territory.
“Cumulative pressures on the Palestinian population of East Jerusalem, particularly in and around the Old City, raised the level of tension,” says Daniel Seidemann, the head of Ir Amim, an Israeli group that promotes coexistence in Jerusalem.
“When tensions become high and suspicions run rampant even innocent events take on a sinister look.”
Several hundred metres (yards) separate the rebuilt Hurva synagogue from Al-Aqsa, but rumours swirl in the labyrinthine alleys in between, where scattered illegal Jewish settlements have sprouted throughout the Palestinian ancient quarter and Israeli forces maintain a heavy presence.
Muslims are highly sensitive to any perceived change in the status quo of the Al-Aqsa mosque compound, the third-holiest site in Islam.
Fringe Jewish groups have vowed to build a third Temple on the site to fulfill what they claim is a Biblical prophecy.
For Ishaq al-Qawasmeh, a soft-spoken home appraiser born and raised in the Palestinian Old City, the Israeli threat is real.
“If I lose a son, if he is martyred, I can have another … But there is only one Al-Aqsa. It’s a red line,” he says.
Like many Palestinians, he is convinced the opening of the synagogue is part of a plot against Al-Aqsa already set in motion with the digging of a secret maze of underground tunnels throughout the city.
“There is a Jerusalem above the ground and a Jerusalem under the ground,” Qawasmeh says. “There is a vast network of tunnels and the goal is Al-Aqsa.”
Israel has long dismissed such allegations as conspiracy theories, insisting that none of the many digs throughout the Old City encroach on the compound.
But that hasn’t convinced the Al-Zorba family, whose home is sandwiched between the outer wall of the sanctuary and Ohel Yitzak, another recently rebuilt synagogue, funded by the Jewish-American millionaire Irving Moskowitz, an influential patron of hardline illegal settlements across Palestinian East Jerusalem.
“I’ve seen it with my own eyes. They are digging a tunnel under the synagogue next to my house,” says Alaa al-Zorba. “They want to enter Al-Aqsa because they are (Jewish) extremists.”
His mother Salwa points out cracks in the freshly plastered walls of their home, which she says are caused by the digging.
“Four years ago we had the ceiling and the walls repaired and within a year the cracks appeared again. The water comes in when it rains,” she says.
“At night we can hear them digging under the house. It gets very loud.”
The Israeli Antiquities Authority said the digging beneath the synagogue, a 19th-century structure rebuilt in 2008, is part of archaeological excavation and that it was not aware of any damage to the Al-Zorba house.
Hundreds of Palestinian youths took to the streets, burning tyres and hurling stones at Israeli forces.
Palestinian officials of all political stripes protested against Israel in angry public statements. Democratically elected Hamas in Gaza called for a popular uprising.
For Palestinians the synagogue is part of a larger settlement enterprise steadily expanding across mostly Palestian East Jerusalem, under illegal Israeli occupation since in 1967.
To the north of the Old City, several Palestinian families in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood have been illegally expelled from their homes by radical Jewish settlers who claim the land was owned by Jews before Israel’s creation in 1948.
Israel recently gave final approval for the construction of 20 illegal settler units in the same neighbourhood, another project funded by Moskowitz.
To the south, 88 Palestinian homes in the Silwan neighbourhood built without Israeli permits have been under demolition orders since 2005 and are now threatened by a controversial urban development scheme.
Farther out, most of the 200,000 illegal Jewish settlers in Palestinian East Jerusalem live in massive settlements with apartment blocks and shopping malls. Their number is high when comparing it to the 270,000 indigenous Palestinians that live in occupied East Jerusalem.
All Jewish settlements are illegal under international law because they are built on Arab land (mainly Palestinian), illegally occupied by Israel since 1967.
Israel’s controversial and illegal separation barrier meanwhile snakes across a hillside just above the Old City, carving off Palestinian villages and neighbourhoods and completing what for the Palestinians is a panorama of encroachment.
A few days before the demonstrations erupted Israel had announced the construction of 1,600 new settler units in the Ramat Shlomo neighbourhood, infuriating the Palestinians and igniting a diplomatic row with Washington.
But the protests did not erupt until the opening of the synagogue, perhaps because announcements of planned settlements have become so commonplace in East Jerusalem that the Al-Aqsa mosque has become something of a last stand.
“Palestine is Jerusalem and Jerusalem is Al-Aqsa,” says Alaa al-Zorba, as an Israeli police patrol passes in front of his grocery shop in the heart of the Old City. “If there is no Al-Aqsa then we have no country.”
—Agencies