Anyone who heard the reports about the approval of a construction plan for the Givat Hamatos neighborhood in east Jerusalem could get the impression that it was a real estate jewel on which the Israeli government wanted to build luxury apartments, make a fortune, and on the way torpedo the dream of a territorially contiguous Palestinian states.
But the neglected caravan site with the impressive view is, first of all, a human story, a social one, a story about domestic issues in Israel. In the 1990s it was populated by hundreds of families who arrived as part of the large waves of aliyah from Ethiopia and lived there until they could move into permanent accommodations. They were joined by a few dozen families in need of emergency housing, and they are the ones who live in the "neighborhood" – a slightly puffed-up name for a twisted road with broken streetlights, stray dogs, and broken-down mobile homes.
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I know Givat Hamatos well because I arrived there in 2009 after I called all the community centers in the area and realized that the neglected site was a former part of Jerusalem. There were four of us, looking to make the world a better place, who came to fill the social and educational vacuum. We set up a clubhouse for children and teens that is still in operation. For some, it rescued them. We became an integral part of the place the responsibility for which has been passed back and forth between the Jerusalem Municipality and the Housing and Construction Ministry's Amidar building company for years.
Once every few years, including this week, the neglected neighborhood makes it into the headlines. "Construction in east Jerusalem," the left-wing organizations cry, and envoys of the European Union rush to criticize the "attack on the peace process." Former US Ambassador Martin Indyk took to Twitter to ask if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wanted to "embarrass" President-elect Joe Biden through controversial construction in Jerusalem.
But the "peace process" hasn't been on the agenda for a long time now, and the "embarrassing" construction includes hundreds of housing units for the adjacent Arab neighborhood of Beit Zafafa, and Givat Hamatos – get ready for this – is in the far south of the city, near Bethlehem and Gush Etzion, not in its east. This perfect disorientation is so symbolic of those who in the name of a dream ignore reality; those who seek out Palestinian "oppression" and are blind to the fact that real people are already living there. Before they run to lay out the borders of an imaginary Palestinian state, maybe they could turn the spotlight (and resources) to the big questions involving the people who live there now: questions of housing and education policies; personal responsibility and government planning; massive investment in certain sectors while others are ignored; historical mistakes and who is responsible for fixing them.
Anyone who has a hammer sees only nails; anyone who has European funding sees only a problem of Israel oppressing the Palestinians. But anyone who stands on Givat Hamatos and screams "Palestine!" is about as relevant as someone who stands on the outskirts of Bethlehem and calls it "east Jerusalem."
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