Word: palestinian
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...called Elad, but also known as the Ir David Foundation, which for the past four years has exerted control over most of the holy city's excavations. Led by David Be'eri, an ex-Israeli commando who used to disguise himself as an Arab for undercover missions in the Palestinian territories, Elad now has the backing of the Israeli Prime Minister's office, the municipality, and the vaunted Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), which monitors all archaeological work in the country and which Elad helps finance. Elad's own funding comes through unnamed private donors. (Israeli newspapers have reported that...
Elad's activities, in the views of its opponents, amounts to turning over Jerusalem's archaeology to extremist Jewish settlers. That has alarmed many Israeli and international scholars, Palestinian officials, and human-rights advocates. On a political level, it complicates efforts by the White House to enable both Palestinians and Israelis to share Jerusalem as their respective capitals, a key demand of the Palestinians. For scholars, it sparks concerns about whether Elad can be independent and objective in its work. And for Jerusalemites it raises a fundamental question: What matters more, the stones and bones of antiquity, or the lives...
...ambitions beyond Silwan. Lawyer Seidemann claims that since mid-2008, the Israeli government has accelerated a policy of "aggressively and covertly expanding and consolidating control over Silwan and the historic basin surrounding the Old City." The plan, he says, involves "the take-over of the public domain and Palestinian private property ... accelerated planning and approval of projects, and the establishment of a network of a series of parks and sites steeped in and serving up exclusionary, fundamentalist settler ideology." In its essence, the plan places a large area of Arab Jerusalem under Jewish control. "It risks transforming a manageable, soluble...
Could Elad's work upset Jerusalem's fragile balance between Islam and Judaism? Palestinian historian and Waqf religious affairs archaeologist Yousef Natsheh believes so. He points out that one of the main triggers of the 2000 Palestinian uprising - which led to the deaths of more than 5,500 Palestinians and 1,000 Israelis - was a visit to the Haram al-Sharif precinct by Sharon, then Israel's opposition leader, along with a phalanx of armed police. "The situation now is very, very tense," he warns...
...Luckily for Syria, perhaps, Israel is dragging its feet even more on the peace front. Having separated themselves from an ever hostile Palestinian population by withdrawing from Gaza and walling off the West Bank, the Israelis have lost interest in land-for-peace deals. So not only are Israeli-Palestinian peace talks largely moribund, but the Netanyahu government has dodged Syrian requests for direct talks, calling instead for indirect talks whose goal would be to agree to a cessation of hostilities rather than a return of the Golan Heights. That's a nonstarter for Damascus; no Syrian government could make...