Foreword

The following report by UNESCO expert Mr. Leon Pressouyre addresses with depth and objectivity, changes in Jerusalem wrought by the Israeli authorities, especially in the archeological and historical sites that give form to the city. The political dimension has dominated Israeli efforts to renovate and rehabilitate historical sites in the old city in order to conform to their overriding political interests.

In reprinting this report, we hope this document will be used to focus attention on what is happening in the Holy City, in terms of the changes, forgeries and falsifications of the civilizational heritages of different cultures over the thousands of years of the city’s history. We believe that the human history of the city should be preserved in a scientific, objective and human way, so that the traces of those nations, which have passed through the city, are not lost or demeaned.

This report observes particularly the tragic situation of the Old city, surrounded by an alien civilization, and whose archeological and historical monuments are dealt with chiefly in terms of Israeli political considerations.

Honesty and objectivity are the special characteristics of this report, and have prompted us to present it to all those concerned with peace.

What does peace mean to a city that is a gathering of different world cultures?

Doesn’t its heritage deserve preservation as an enduring testament to all humanity?

30^th Session, Paris 1999 30 C
30 C/ 12
5 October 1999
Original: French
Item 4, 3 of the Provisional agenda

JERUSALEM AND THE
IMPLEMENTATION OF
29C/RESOLUTION 22

OUTLINE

Source: 29C\ Resolution 22

Background: In this resolution the General Conference, recalling UNESCO’S previous decisions and resolutions on the safeguarding of the cultural heritage of Jerusalem, invited the Director-General to continue his efforts to secure the implementation of these decisions, and decided to include this item in the agenda of its 30^th session.

Purpose: Pursuant to 156 EX/Decision 3.5.1, adopted by the Executive Board at its 156^th session, the Director-General appointed an internationally renowned expert, namely professor Leon Pressouyre, former Vice-Rector of the University of the Sorbonne, Professor Emeritus of Medieval History, former evaluator of world heritage sites for the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) and Chairperson of the Commission to Preserve National Monuments in Bosnia and Herzegovina established pursuant to Annex 8 of the Dayton peace Accords . At the end of his mission in Jerusalem from 1 to 10 September 1999, Professor Pressouyre submitted a report to the Director-General who, having read it, has decided to communicate it to the General Conference.

In 156 EX/Decision 3.5.1, the Executive Board invited you “to appoint an eminent expert on the subject to present a report on the question covering all the aspects mentioned in the relevant resolutions and decisions of UNESCO, and to submit it to the General Conference at its 30^th session”.

Following your request, I agreed in principle to undertake a mission to Jerusalem from 1 to 10 September 1999.

The mission’s terms of reference specified that, in close collaboration with the Director of the Cultural Heritage Division (CLT/CH), I should:

• Study the situation in accordance with the relevant resolutions and decisions of UNESCO on the subject;
• Make contact in Jerusalem with the authorities involved in safeguarding the cultural heritage of the Old City;
• Submit to you, by 20 September 1999, a confidential report, which you alone would decide whether to submit to the General Conference.

However, after July substantial changes occurred in the conditions initially envisaged for the mission, which made an already difficult task still more arduous.

In letters dated 6 August 1999 (CLT/CH/99/JER/154 and 155) and in accordance with your instructions, Mr. Hernan Crespo-Torral, Assistant Director-General for Culture, officially informed the accredited representatives of Palestine and Israel to UNESCO of the mission with which you had entrusted me. Only Mr. Ahmad Abdelrazek, Ambassador, Permanent Observer for Palestine, replied to the letter. He agreed to receive me on 31 August 1999 and gave me a list of eminent Palestinians to meet during the mission.

The Culture Sector informed me at the end of August that Mr. Avi Shoket, Ambassador, Permanent Delegate of Israel to UNESCO, had repeatedly opposed my mission. I expressed the wish to meet his successor, H.E. Mr. Uri Gabay, but his secretariat refused to make an appointment for me to see him.

I thus never received, either directly or indirectly, an official list of eminent Israelis to contact during my mission.

Context and methodology of the mission:

The mission took place in a favourable context, the signing of the Sharm-el-Sheikh agreement (4-5 September 1999) coinciding with my visit to Jerusalem (1-10 September 1999). Despite the attacks that followed the historic negotiations on 5 September 1999, and although the question of Jerusalem is still not on the agenda of forthcoming meetings between Israelis and Palestinians, the hope of a just and lasting peace seems gradually to be gaining ground, as I realized during my official and unofficial meetings with local personalities .

Placed in the difficult position of an envoy mandated by an international organization, but in fact denied access to half of those concerned as a result of the attitude of two successive representatives of Israel to UNESCO, a simple choice faced me:

• either simply to aknowledge the situation, meet the Palestinian representatives mandated by H.E. Mr. Ahmad Abdelrazek only, and give you one-side report,
• or, out of intellectual honesty, to make contact with high-level Israeli colleagues on a personal basis and consult them unofficially.

I chose the second option, making clear to my Israeli contacts on the one hand that the authorities of their country did not approve of my mission and, on the other, that I could not guarantee that my report would be kept confidential. Four of them, whose fields of competence cover archaeology, cultural heritage, town planning and sociology, nevertheless agreed to answer my questions, provide me with information and visit sites with me, under a seal of secrecy. I would like to take this opportunity to express particular gratitude to them, since this report owes much to their sincere and disinterested love of Jerusalem.

At the end of my mission to listen, obtain information and observe, and given the positive developments in the peace process, I felt it necessary to formulate four observations:

1. The Old City is becoming a prisoner of the urbanization of its surroundings

Anyone returning to Jerusalem after an absence of several years will, first of all, notice the transformation of the urban landscape and the environs of the Old City . Large-scale redevelopment work is taking place in front of the Jaffa Gate to join up with David’s Village; huge developments are being erected to the northeast, such as the hotels below Derech Schechem Street, not far from the Tomb of the Kings and the Church of St. George. Large housing schemes in the northeastern and southeastern outskirts have now been added to the resolutely modern buildings of West Jerusalem, which began to spring up in 1948 . They have different names-quarters or colonies depending on their geographic or administrative location, but still correspond to one and the same defintion, forming a vast belt of suburbs equipped with radial and peripheral communication systems.

The latter network prefigures increased urbanization and the gradual disappearance of the intervening landscape.

With the epicentre of the city gradually shifting towards the east, the Old City is no longer in the outposts of the desert but in the heart of an area undergoing urbanization. This change, which began when Mr Teddy Kollek was Mayor of Jerusalem, has been actively continued under his successor, Mr Ehud Olmert, since 1994 . It features prominently in the works of Israeli town planners, the latest of which, by Amir Cheshin, (Municipal Policies in Jerusalem), (Jerusalem, Passia, 1998), is particularly informative inasmuch as its author was one of the official advisers of the municipality from 1948 to 1994 .

During the discussions, which I had with them, Palestinians and Israelis were unanimous in denouncing the risks that the “Greater Jerusalem” project entails for the urban landscape:  much imagination is now required to see in Jerusalem the “town in which the desert dwells” as in the 1983 song by Shmuel Trigano. One of my Israeli interlocutors spoke apprehensively about the near future in which protected areas, such as the valley of Kidron and Gehenna, would be to Jerusalem what Central Park and Fort Tryon Park are to New York today, that is natural and cultural reserves that are strictly delimited and enclosed in an enormous city with shifting boundaries. The same interlocutor – without calling into question the validity of the “Jerusalem Law” voted by Knesset on 30 July 1980 – wondered about the pernicious effects of an urbanization policy, which was leading to the indisputable degradation of heritage values. In this respect, he welcomed the decision taken on 6 July 1999 by Minister Haim Ramon to stop work on a Jewish colony being built in the Arab quarter of Ras- al- Amud, in East Jerusalem, as a first positive measure, which symbolized the road that the government of Mr Ehud Barak would take.

But this confidence was not shared by everyone during my tour of inspection. The statement of principle by Israeli Prime Minister, to the effect that his government would not build new colonies in the West Bank, but would not demolish exiting ones (11 June 1999), seems to be at variance with the facts: the network of existing colonies would appear to be spreading and branching out, even into sensitive areas. I myself went to Maale Adoumim on 9 September where I observed that large-scale construction work was still going on. This, as we know, is the largest communal settlement in East Jerusalem and the number of its inhabitants is now thought to exceed 60,000.

In my opinion, it is in the context of the urban Planning of a “ Greater Jerusalem” that the roads built around the Old City – to which substantial and particularly painstaking parts of Professor Lemaire’s report were consistently devoted – should be put. For such redevelopments, which have serious consequences for an environment that is increasingly being invaded by structures, approach ramps and retaining walls whose carefully dressed masonry does not succeed in masking their technical function, do not stem from a desire to landscape the outskirts of the historic center, but from the ever-growing need to establish selective relationships between the center and a periphery to which the town planners are giving special attention.

2. Changes in its social composition are affecting the consistency of the urban fabric and of the built heritage in the Old City.

The traditional distinction between four major quarters, the Jewish Quarter in the southeast, the Armenian Quarter in the southwest, the Christian Quarter in the northwest and the Muslim Quarter in the northeast, can still be seen in the Old City. But the cultural characteristics of these historic quarters are changing, not without unfortunate consequences for the consistency of the urban fabric and authenticity of the buildings.

The radical changes which affected the southeastern sector may be mentioned here by way of information: after the destruction of the Maghrebi Quarter in 1967, followed by the redevelopment of the esplanade of the Wailing Wall, the reconstruction of the Jewish Quarter was a scenario which was much discussed in the 1970s in all town-planning institutes. The choice made, that of full-scale rebuilding, with structures often being raised above others, left little place for the restoration of old buildings, although that had been envisaged in the classic work by the architect Arieh Sharon, prefaced by Teddy Kollek, Planning Jerusalem (Jerusalem, Weidenfeld and Nicolsoy, 1973). To a great extent, the discovery of the Byzantine Cardo, its partial anastylosis and its transformation into a shopping arcade, which made it a tourist attraction known throughout the world, supplied the belated alibi for a renovation policy, which was not in keeping with the spirit of the Venice Charter.

What is at issue today is the integrity of the Muslim Quarter, which is the only one to have preserved, over a very extensive area, its system of highways and its traditional buildings. It is faced with many dangers, the most visible of which are overpopulation and changes in social composition.

Overpopulation, due to a recent influx of Muslim families which is difficult to quantify, risks creating the insalubrious conditions which could be used, as in the past, to justify action by the authorities who are always in favour of “ slum- clearance”, a slogan used everywhere in the 1970s to justify arbitrary destruction.

Attention must be drawn here to the very positive field work carried out by an NGO, the Welfare Association, which since 1994 has been carrying out a programme to rehabilitate the Old City which, in addition to a series of carefully planned major actions, includes urgent rescue work aimed at ensuring minimum health-and-safety conditions in overpopulated or unhealthy housing areas.

The changes in social composition concern what the Palestinians call the “ Jewish Settlements”. These housing units are visually characterized by raised structures and, above all, by the presence of Israeli flags which can be seen from elevated observation points such as the top of the Austrian Hospice, at No. 37 on the Via Dolorosa. A private overpass system, which links one block to another at terrace- level, was established recently. This system is found in other areas of the Mediterranean world, such as Ghadames (Libyan Arab Jamahiriya ) and Mesta on the island of Chios ( Greece ) , but it does not clearly form part of the architectural tradition of Jerusalem and the authenticity of the Old City cannot but suffer from these redevelopments, which are an expression of the segregationist logic generated by the situation.

Another danger is threatening the Old City: the “open spaces” which are likely to tempt property developers. To give a single example, I should like to draw your attention to the very sensitive Zone of Burj al- Laqlaq, which is situated in the northeastern corner of the wall of Suleyman the Magnificent.

On 6 May 1998, the site was occupied by a group of Israeli “squatters” who wanted to establish a settlement there. In a climate of very great intercommunal tension, reflected in the letter 157/5/98 which was sent to you on 2 June 1998 by Mr Faisal Husseini, excavations carried out by the Israel Antiquities Authority (cf. 155 Ex/11, para. 8). The excavations have just ended, in the summer of 1999, but their results have not been published. In the spirit of your letter DG/4.6/151 of 9 July 1998, I see it therefore as a matter of urgency that UNESCO should once again express its concern about the use of a noteworthy historic and archaeological site.

I note with satisfaction that the Israeli authorities have, on several occasions, expressed their desire to preserve this area as a green space: this view, expressed in 1973 by the architect Arieh Sharon in his book Planning Jerusalem, was reiterated in 1996 to justify a refusal to grant the building permit applied for by the Burj Laqlaq Community Center. When the Center nevertheless proceeded to carry out restoration work, the new construction was demolished under the supervision of the Israeli police, on the night of 27 August 1996.

In this highly divisive situation, the establishment of a small Jewish quarter, with or without a synagogue, on the site of Burj al-Laqlaq, which was mentioned by several of my interlocutors, would constitute both a historical falsification and an extremely serious provocation. Maintaining the status quo - even if it means the continued existence of waste ground -would probably be the most advisable solution, in the absence of any dialogue on the subject of landscaping the archaeological zone of Burj al-Laqlaq.

3. Archaeology and the conservation of monuments in the Old City and its surroundings continue to be approached on an essentially political basis .

The Israeli authorities having failed to act upon 150 EX/Decision 3.4.3 concerning access from the Via Dolorosa to the tunnel running along the western wall of al-Haram ash-Sharif, this matter, which has been discussed at length by the Executive Board and the General Conference since 1996, is still topical, as is the trouble caused by the digging of this tunnel in the stonework of four buildings: the Ottoman madrasa, the Jauhariya madrasa, the residence of Rabat al-Kurd, and the Manjakiya madrasa. Not having had access at that time to the report on the state of preservation of the al-Jauhhariya complex submitted by professor Giorgio Croci on 6 September 1999, I was unable to pass his conclusions on to the authorities of the Islamic Waqf and merely took note of the concern reiterated, on behalf of that organization, by Mr Adnan al-Husseini.

Another dispute has arisen in 1999, connected with the restoration work done on the lower levels of the al-Aqsa Mosque, referred to as the “Old al-Aqsa”, by the Islamic Waqf .

The work, conducted by Mr Issam Awwad, the architect in charge of the conservation of al-Haram ash-Sharif, was completed in August 1999. It is a minimalist undertaking comparable in spirit to that concluded in 1997 in what is known as “Solomon’s Stables”, a large hypogeum fitted out as stables by the Knights Templar in the twelfth century. Improvement of the stonework, minor underpinning operations and the installation of deliberately reversible neon lighting have made it possible to open new prayer rooms, which was a priority for the religious authorities faced with an influx of pilgrims for the major Islamic feast days .

The success of the operation conducted by the Islamic Waqf was nevertheless marred by an incident in early August : an old window of the “Old al-Aqsa”, freed of the material obstructing it and opened on to the southern slope of al-Haram ash-Sharif by Mr Issam Awwad, was immediately closed up by the Israeli police, purportedly as a security measure. The Islamic Waqf authorities provided me with a file on the matter, asserting that security was just a pretext since the restored window was fitted with a protective metal grid, and the aperture could not in any case be reached from the ground . My Israeli contacts, who tended to play the incident down, unofficially told me of an article by Meron Benvenisti, Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem in the Kollek administration, which was published in the daily newspaper Ha’aretz on 12 August 1999 under the title “In whose hands is the Temple Mount ?”. In it the author courageously distanced himself from the views of the zealots constantly seeking to reduce the Waqf’s hold on the Temple Mount.

The recurring question of the Umayyad palaces, whose remains cover a vast platform to the south of al-Haram ash-Sharif, below the al-Aqsa Mosque, comes in the same emotional context, which justifies any amount of identity-based claims and counterclaims . Following a letter of 9 February 1995 to the Director of UNESCO’s Division of Cultural Heritage from the Permanent Delegation of the Kingdom of Jordan, Professor Lemaire paid an on-site visit in May 1995 and gathered information clarifying the objectives of the work under way (147 EX/17, p.5) . He regularly reported thereafter on the progress of the work undertaken by Israeli archaeologists and landscape architects (150 EX/13, p.5), deploring, in his final mission, “the construction of a metalic pergola in the middle of the courtyard of one of the Umayyad palaces, which disfigures the site” (29 C/14, para. 12).

Development work is continuing today in the south-east sector in the spirit of the operations started in 1995, after the opening to the public in 1997 of the complex laid out to the south-west, which was the subject of a letter to the UNESCO Secretariat from the Ambassador of Israel, H.E. Mr Avi Shoket, dated 21 April 1997 (151 EX/9 Add., para 2). Having examined both those areas, I share the reservations expressed by the late lamented Raymond Lemaire about the spirit in which the site of the Umayyad palaces has been rehabilitated. After years of neglect, the vast area excavated by Professor Mazar has gradually lost the archaeological features that showed up so clearly on the old aerial photographs (Nahman Avigad, Discovering Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Shikmona Publishing Company, 1983, p.19, Fig.4) and were familiar both to Israeli archaeologists and to the general public (Meir Ben-Dove, In the Shadow of the Temple, Jerusalem, Keter Publishing House, 1985) . Today’s presentation, in which modern materials are conspicuous, is both complicated and simplistic. For in the guise of highlighting the remains of previous periods it indisputably trivializes the Umayyad palaces, major monuments in the area, over which the Waqf has constantly affirmed the validity of its jurisdiction . As Amos Elon wrote, and he could hardly be taxed with anti-Israeli prejudice: “Profound psychological reasons no doubt underly the characteristically political and sometimes even chauvinistic approach to (…). Patriotic archaeology, like faith in Freudian analysis, has a therapeutic effect; people overcome their doubts and fears and feel rejuvenated once they have rediscovered their origins, real or supposed, which are always hidden” (translated from the French). The fact that this quotation was supplied by one of my Israeli contacts makes one feel there is some hope that awareness of former ideological excesses may gradually persuade the Israel Antiquities Authority to adopt a more scientific and impartial approach to the city’s centuries-old past .

The Christian communities are preparing, in unity of faith but a diversity of calendars, rites and places of worship, to celebrate the second millennium of the birth of Christ . Information from the Christian Information Center in Jerusalem suggests that the influx of pilgrims and tourists will converge not just on Bethlehem but on all the Christian sites in the region, and particularly those in Jerusalem and its surroundings.

No concerted action between the Christian communities - let alone between the different religions - seems to have been planned so far, leaving a question mark over essential considerations of security, and even of the preservation of the monuments concerned.

Security problems must not be underestimated, since the concordant celebrations of the three religions of the Book may give rise to unprecedented concentrations of people in the narrow streets of the Old City, particularly the Via Dolorosa. These security problems must nevertheless not be solved by means of ad hoc but irreversible alterations at the major sites of Christian Jerusalem, whether for intra muros monuments such as the Holy Sepulchre or the Ecce Homo Basilica, or for such extra muros as the Coenaculum and the Church of the Ascension.

My attention was drawn to new projects concerning the Holy Sepulchre, apparently involving the provision of an emergency exit . This solution, which does not seem to have been agreed to by the three communities concerned, should on no account be imposed at the last minute without careful prior study . The Holy Sepulchre’s position, in the heart of the Christian Quarter would call rather for study of a pedestrian flow plan to rapidly reduce the risk of a bottleneck occurring on the steps leading to its main entrance from Christian Quarter Road . Highlighting the old entrances in the historic topography of a well-known quarter should, at some later date, improve the incorporation of the monument in to the surrounding urban fabric . This does not seem to have been considered since the report submitted by the architect Jean Trouvelot on 20 August 1956.

With regard to the outlying places of worship, many of which are situated either on the Mount of Olives (Church of Saint Lazarus at Bethany; Bethpage Church; Gethsemane Church; Tomb of the Virgin; Churches of the Ascension; Convents of Pater Noster, Dominus Flevit, etc.) or on Mount Zion (Coenaculum, Saint Peter’s in Gallicantu, etc .), specific problems of access and numbers of visitors should be dealt with case by case . Special attention should be given to those sites which are holy for two religions, such as the old Church of the Ascension, the site of a highly venerated mosque, or even to all three religions of the book, such as the complex of buildings on Mount Zion, comprising as it does David’s Tomb, the Coenaculum, an ancient mosque and the Muslim cemetery of the Dajani family, which used to own the whole Jebel Nabi Daud area.