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The most controversial aspect of the rebuilding of Jerusalem derives from the Israeli government's decision to establish Jewish housing projects in the Arab East. In 1968, the year after their victory, the Israelis began confiscating land, and in 1969 the first 200 Jewish families moved into the new suburb of Ramat Eshkol. The Arabs protested, the U.N. voted censure, all to no avail. When the U.S. State Department joined in the protests, the Jerusalem city council responded by adding two more stories to the buildings being planned. Today there are 15,000 Jewish families in ten suburban projects from Neve Yaakov in the north to Gilo in the south, and the number is still growing. In 1967 the population in the 28 sq. mi. of East Jerusalem was 65,000 Arabs and no Jews; today the figures are 115,000 Arabs and 70,000 Jews. By 1990 the Israelis hope the populations will be about equal. As an added touch, Prime Minister Begin has indicated that he may move his office to East Jerusalem.
The new projects are almost defiantly ugly—great Bronxlike blockhouses on what had been bare hills. "The idea always used to be that there would be no suburban sprawl," grumbles Architect Art Kutcher. "That has been destroyed." Says Jerusalem City Planner Joseph Schweid: "We wanted low density for Ramot, for instance, but the Ministry of Housing said, 'We don't build villas.' " Adds one Israeli: "The purpose of this whole program is to make Israeli possession of the united city irreversible."
A few idealists see hope in the social integration of Jews and Arabs, but most people are skeptical. "I have Arab friends," says Architect Kutcher, "but we don't invite each other to our homes. We just live side by side." Kollek's aides admit as much, and one spokesman talks of Jerusalem as being "a mosaic rather than a melting pot." Though Arab and Israeli children now learn each other's languages in Jerusalem classrooms, they still go to separate schools. Officials like to boast not only that many new classrooms have been built (152 last year) but that Arab schools are just as good as Jewish ones (and much better than what the Arabs had in the past). Separate but equal is what that doctrine used to be called in the U.S., and the Supreme Court condemned it forever by ruling that separate schools are inherently unequal.
No Israeli reforms, however, will ever satisfy the Arabs. To accept any benefits of Israeli rule implies an acceptance of Israeli rule itself—an implication the Arabs emotionally resist. They see Israel, in Kollek's words, as "an occupier, maybe the best possible occupier, but an occupier." Like any benign occupier, Kollek leans over backward to be sympathetic to his Arab constituents. Before every election, he courteously asks some prominent Arabs to join his ticket; they respectfully but unfailingly decline. When the Israelis annexed East Jerusalem in 1967, they offered Arab residents the choice of becoming Israeli citizens or remaining Jordanian. About 99% remained Jordanian. All Arab nationalist political movements are banned. Though Arabs are allowed to vote in Israeli elections, only about 10% do so.
Like all peoples in occupied lands, the