Don't Divide Jerusalem: Roofs of The Armenian Quarter

Last year I started this "Don't divide Jerusalem" series, in which from time to time I post snapshots of what the city really looks like, and where the international community and Israel's Left are so convinced there absolutely must be an international border as a prerequisite for peace.

Today I joined a tour by Eyal Meron, an archeologist and easily one of the best and most knowledgeable guides this city has. At one point we were standing on a plaza in the Jewish quarter, and he quoted Abdullah a-Tel, the Jordanian commander who conquered the Jewish quarter in 1948. (He quoted verbatim and in Hebrew, so my translation is twice removed from the source, and pardon any inaccuracies): "At the end of the battle there were no Jews left in the Jewish quarter for the first time in 2000 years, and there's no reason to think there will ever again be any". The plaza was full of the local orthodox Jewish children who throng the streets of the Jewish Quarter these days; most of their parents are too young to remember the Six Day War which reversed that outcome.

At one point Eyal took us up to a roof from which one can see stuff he wished to show us, and I took some pictures to show what I like to show: the sheer idiocy of dividing the Old City.

Here's the proposed division, as suggested by the folks of the Geneva Initiative:

The rooftop we were standing on is at the lower left (south east) corner of the section allocated to the Israelis, marked in pink:

The first problem with the north-south line next to the roof we were standing on is that it doesn't exist in reality. It's a straight line, you'll notice, but there is no straight line in that part of town that doesn't bisect homes, rooms, windowsills, doormats and kitchen cabinets. Don't believe me? Here, have a look at these two photos. They're both taken from the same roof, though in the second I moved a few steps to the left and the perspective changes a bit. In both of them, however, I'm looking north - so, along that straight line:

Note that both pictures show a high building right in front of a church spire, in the first picture it's to the right, in the second it's to the left. The church is part of the Armenian quarter, directly north of the roof I was standing on. The rooftop is part of the Jewish quarter, and I encourage you to find a straight line that might serve as a rational place to put an international border without bisecting anyone's bedroom.

It doesn't get any better when you look in the other directions. Here, for instance, is the perspective to the southeast:

The rail is an international border, then there's another one between us and the double-towered church. The rooftops below, however, are intended to be in Palestine. In the picture below, the international border will run between the rooftop I was on and the rooftop across the narrow alley, directly to the west.

Looking northwest the perspective is marginally less odd, but only because in the other directions it's so extremely wrong.

Most of what's in the foreground is the Jewish Quarter, with the new white dome of the reconstructed Hurva synagogue. Just beyond the edge of the hill is the Omar Mosque. Palestine, of course, according to the maps. The left half of the hill in the background is Mount Scopus, the Hebrew University, and thus Israel. The right half of the same hill is also Mount Scopus, but since there's a German hospital on the top of it (Augusta Victoria) it will be in Palestine. Finally, let's look due east:

The foreground is part of the Jewish Quarter, so Israel. The background is the Mount of Olives. Most of it is taken by the ancient Jewish cemetery, which has been growing up the hillside since early Biblical times. According to the Geneva Initiative folks, since the only people there are dead Jews, it belongs in Palestine. To the right of the top of the hill is an area which was purchased by Chabad before WW1, when it was an empty hillside next to the Jewish cemetery. Eventually Chabad sold it to Irwin Moskowitz who has been building Jewish apartment buildings there, commonly referred to by the Arab name of Ras el-Amud. Google it and you'll find lots of sources which will tell you these apartments are an obstacle to peace.

The American government, the EU, the UN, all of the international media, and Israel's Left are all convinced the idiocy I've reported on here is sane, reasonable, plausible, inevitable, and of course, it will be a fundamental cornerstone of peace. Apparently they all know something I don't know. After all, if everyone agrees on something, it surely must be true.