Jerusalem is for suckers

Amiram Barkat

It's good that the US has adopted Jerusalem, because Israel has abandoned it.

Thank you, Mr. President, for your decision to recognize the city where I live as the eternal capital of the State of Israel, and for the moving speech in which you made the declaration.

You must surely have heard many wonderful stories about Jerusalem from your Israeli friends, and from your Jewish friends in the US who in the past few years have bought grand houses in ghost neighborhoods with amazing views of the Old City walls. Allow, me, all the same, to share with you a few things that your friends haven't told you, because they didn't want to spoil the party.

120,000 of Jerusalem's 900,000 residents are invisible. 120,000 people - that's about the population of a medium-size city in Israel. 120,000 women, men and children in Jerusalem live in abandoned zones, in areas beyond the separation wall but within the city's municipal boundaries. Those who live in Kafr 'Aqab and the Shuafat refugee camp are residents of the capital of Israel, but the only official representatives of the State of Israel who visit them are from the Border Guard and the police anti-terror squad, who carry out raids every few months to make arrests. The municipality does not provide these neighborhoods with regular water and sewerage services, there is no education infrastructure, and planning and building laws are not even recommendations.

These neighborhoods are ruled by clans, Fatah Tanzim terrorists, and drug dealers. According to security sources, thousands of weapons are in circulation there. In this respect, Jerusalem might perhaps remind you of Baltimore, or even your own capital, Washington DC.

Last Jerusalem Day, the government passed resolution number 2684, which has since disappeared without trace. You may have heard that the mayor of Jerusalem, the kind of person you would certainly take to, has been conducting a campaign in recent years to obtain budgets from the Ministry of Finance. We have data and presentations and reports produced for him by some of the world's leading consultants. He would be happy to explain to you how the city's needs rise by NIS 143 million annually from population growth alone, how the municipality loses NIS 700 million every year from municipal rates exemptions, why it has no sources of income, and how a cumulative deficit of 4,500 school classrooms has arisen, mostly in the east of the city.

What he won't tell you is that on May 28 last year, the government of Israel resolved to budget NIS 400 million a year for five years for education, waste disposal, and sewage treatment in east Jerusalem - the most urgent needs of the poorest areas (not including the abandoned areas of course).

Implementation of this decision is being frustrated not by the UN or the Palestinian Authority, but by Jerusalem mayor Nir Barkat. Why? Because Barkat cannot allow anyone else to decide for him how budgets should be spent in the city. Because however deserving the city's poor may be, the mayor's prestige and status come first. Actually, that too may sound familiar to you.

Of the 140 government units that were supposed to move to Jerusalem by 2015 under government resolution number 1661, four have actually done so. You think moving the US embassy to Jerusalem is a bold step? You think you've stood up to some stiff opposition? Let's see you succeed in moving to Jerusalem the six employees of the Interior Ministry's "Matzilla" department for combating crime. Although, if you think about it, their resistance is understandable.

Would you be prepared to swap the espressos and cappuccinos of Tel Aviv's Sarona compound for cold, dirt, depressing streets, and endless traffic jams? A Knesset report released in July revealed what had happened to 127 of the government units that were meant to transfer to Jerusalem: 40 managed to obtain exemptions from the move, and 97 have employed various stratagems to delay it. So what does the government do? It keeps putting back the deadline for completing the transfer by another few years. Better not mention this report to your friend Benjamin Netanyahu. Let him continue declaring his commitment to Israel's eternally united capital. He makes it sound so good in English.

Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on December 11, 2017

© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2017

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