Settlement Org Eyes a New Target, and Israeli Authorities Go Out of Their Way to Help

A new tourist attraction made its debut in Jerusalem this summer: Farm in the Valley. The pro-settler Elad Association, which operates the attraction, promises on its website to offer “a special agricultural experience, where you can feel with your hands the work of ancient farmers, in keeping with the season, just as in ancient times.”

Its success was immediate. Thousands of schoolchildren, soldiers and volunteers flooded the site, with activities reaching a peak as hundreds of families arrived for tours and workshops on grape-crushing, olive-harvesting and stone-chiseling. In the evenings there are various performances, including a collaboration with the Zappa Club which will feature popular singers Ivri Lider and Yuval Dayan, slated to take place before the Jewish holidays begin in late September.

Activities at the farm are just a small part of the overall effort Elad has undertaken while expanding its reach in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan southwest, to the neighboring Hinnom Valley. Above the farm, a private events venue run by the right-wing group has been operating for a few years; not far away there is a campground and on the other side of the wadi, the association has taken over responsibility for an ancient Jewish cemetery and is conducting comprehensive landscaping work there. The whole wadi is undergoing a face-lift: Elad has built new terraces and fences and other structures, as well as paths throughout.

This energetic activity would not have been allowed without the massive support of some 10 different local and government authorities, which have sometimes stretched the bounds of proper administration to help Elad in the Hinnom Valley. The Ministry of Justice’s Administrator General and Official Receiver took over the land; the Israel Nature and Parks Authority has allowed the organization to operate there in its name; the Jerusalem Municipality has issued landscaping directives for the area; the Israel Antiquities Authority has ignored the excavations that have taken place there without proper archaeological oversight; the Education Ministry sends schoolchildren there while the army sends soldiers; the Jerusalem Affairs and Heritage Ministry funds free shuttles to the site; the Jerusalem Development Authority finances various projects; the Hevra Kadisha burial society is allowing work in the cemetery – and so on.

The Hinnom Valley, also known as the Gehenna Valley or Gai Ben Hinnom, in Hebrew, is a deep valley located between the neighborhood of Abu Tor and Mount Zion. The Green Line that divided Jerusalem until 1967 crosses this wadi in the middle. Until recent years, the area was open and abandoned, but much of it was planted with olive trees cultivated by Palestinian families from nearby Silwan. Elad and the parks authority claim that the area was rundown and full of construction waste, and that Jerusalemites avoided it.

Naomi Sussman, an anti-Elad activist who lives in Abu Tor, remembers a different valley.

“In the western part, which was well taken care of, we used to hike and celebrate our children’s birthdays. The eastern part was less visited but there was a wonderful ancient aura about it and wild nature. Palestinians wandered around there with their horses and it was a fine sight to see,” Sussman recalls.

Elad has been expanding its activities to encompass the area for years, but only over the past two years have those efforts truly paid off. Indeed, the landscape in the wadi has begun to change. According to Sussman, Elad took advantage of the COVID lockdowns to make forays into the area without the opposition of the Palestinians. The efforts bore fruit and the character of the area has now been transformed beyond recognition.

The olive trees are now surrounded by fences and new terraces, signs and flags of Elad and the parks authority have been erected, and groups of volunteers and employees frequent the site every day. Tensions in the area have risen and there have been a few violent incidents between workers and Palestinian residents. The police have usually intervened and removed the Palestinians. This would not have been possible without the outsize assistance by the state and city, and their various agencies.

On January 5, 2021, the Sumarin family of Silwan discovered that Elad employees had entered the olive grove they cultivate in the Hinnom Valley and had begun to work there. A clash ensued, and the police moved the family away from the grove. Three weeks later, the property was registered in the Land Registry Office as belonging to the Justice Ministry’s administrator general – an office which, according to a law passed in 1950, is authorized to take over property left behind by Palestinian refugees in 1948.

In the case of the Hinnom Valley, the administrator general remembered to take over two large plots some 70 years after they supposedly became absentee property, at a time that converged nicely with the beginning of Elad’s activities in the area. In fact, the property in question was registered to the administrator general about three weeks after said work began. However, two years earlier, the administrator general had authorized the parks authority to work there. Ministry sources denied that the administrator general received any kind of request from Elad or any other body to take over the land.

The Sumarin family filed a lawsuit in the Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court through attorney Mohanad Jabara, which is still under review. For its part, the state responded by claiming that the property belongs to people defined as absentees and therefore the burden of proof is on those who brought the suit. Jabara argued that even if this were absentee property, which he totally denies, the administrator general still has to act according to law, and demand that the land be evacuated with the assistance of the Bailiff’s Office, and that access to it cannot be allowed without permission of those who hold it.

Politicization trend

The most dominant government body in the area is the Israel Nature and Parks Authority, because most of the land surrounding the wadi in question is part of the Jerusalem Walls National Park. In August 2020, the parks organization and Elad signed an agreement permitting the latter to operate in the authority’s name in the Hinnom Valley. Elad has enjoyed close cooperation with the parks authority for many years now, and because this is a “joint project,” no tender was issued. Indeed, in its name Elad operates the City of David National Park.

The whole wadi is undergoing a face-lift: Elad built new terraces, fences and paths. This energetic activity would not have been allowed without the support of some 10 different authorities.

When left-wing groups have criticized this cooperation, the two organizations have claimed that Elad already owns much of the property in the City of David and it is therefore logical that Elad would be chosen to run the national park as well. But Elad owns no property in the Hinnom Valley.

“In the City of David the claim was that they have property rights, but what preference does Elad have in the Hinnom Valley over other entities? This is not clear,” a senior official in the Environmental Protection Ministry says.

Although the contract between the parks authority and Elad covers a period of five years, another contract was signed extending the cooperation until the year 2030 only a year and two months after the first was inked. The Environmental Protection Ministry, which oversees the parks organization, believes that the reason for this is the desire of its previous director, Shaul Goldstein – the former chairman of the Yesha council of settlements, who has close ties to Elad – to ensure that the association has exclusive control over the East Jerusalem project until the end of the decade. At the same time, as Miron Rappaport revealed in the online magazine Local Call, Goldstein also extended the contractual relationship between the parks authority and Elad for 10 more years.

Environmental Protection Minister Tamar Zandberg claims that Goldstein acted contrary to her position and in violation of proper administrative procedures. During Goldstein’s term in office, the minister says, “the parks authority underwent a dangerous process of politicization, especially in

“The height of the process was when Goldstein exploited his last weeks in office to sign off, secretly, on an extension of the agreements with Elad, the extreme right wing, to manage and operate large tracts of land in East Jerusalem a decade in advance, in a manner that seriously deviates from previous procedures and therefore goes against proper administration – and although the agreements were already in effect for many more years.”

Zandberg adds that Goldstein “did this without informing the minister above him of those agreements, which raises the suspicion that this was not done innocently. He was well aware that these activities are in complete opposition to the minister’s views on the subject, so that Elad could drive away certain communities and influence professional activities for political reasons.”

Illegal construction

On the other side of the wadi, Elad needed permission from another body – the Jerusalem Municipality – to operate there. In this case, Mayor Moshe Leon signed “landscaping orders.” Such directives are a legal tool that allows the city to take over neglected parts of town and create gardens there. This type of order is usually issued for small areas in the heart of urban neighborhoods, to allow the “greening” of the city. In the case of the Hinnom Valley, the mayor was referring to a plot of some 200 dunams (about 49.5 acres) – apparently the most extensive landscaping-related directive ever issued in Israel.

Moreover, the city did not do the work itself, but turned it over to the care of the parks authority, which in turn handed the project over to Elad. Last week, Jerusalem District Court Judge Rivka Friedman-Feldman rejected a petition against the undertaking by local residents and green-lighted the municipality’s scheme.

Over the past year, various groups have showed up at in the valley, including individuals that look like the “hilltop youth” who roam the West Bank. In one case, in May, young Jewish men assaulted Riad Sumarin and his son, Laith, who were on their way home. The two were injured and required lengthy hospitalization. No one was arrested, although the family gave the police a video in which the assailants can be seen. One of the Jews was caught on camera saying “We are from the City of David.”

Ze’ev Hacohen, head of the Jerusalem district of the parks authority, claimed in response to a complaint by the archaeologist’s association Emek Shaveh, that the assailants were not associated with either the parks organization or Elad, and that they had visited the site independently.

Abutting the area taken over by dint of the so-called landscaping orders is the Samboski Cemetery on the slopes of Mount Zion, a burial area used in recent centuries by Jewish paupers who did not have the money for a gravestone. Elad received a permit from the Sephardi Hevra Kadisha, the burial society that manages the cemetery, to rehabilitate the site. The land was plowed and simple stone markers were erected to designate the graves. However, according to Elad’s critics, this was not a real rehabilitative effort, but rather creation of a “stage set” of a cemetery, since no serious work was done to locate the old graves, and stones were simply placed at equal distances from one another.

Moreover, during the work, excavation was carried out with heavy mechanical equipment, although this is an officially declared archaeological site in Jerusalem’s historic “basin.” The Israel Antiquities Authority had no involvement in the project. A number of people, among them Palestinian residents and members of Emek Shaveh, approached the authority and were told that the fact of the work was known and it had been authorized. As part of its activities there, Elad also built the foundations of an electric barrier that could block access to a neighborhood home to hundreds of Palestinians.

Extensive construction has thus been carried out in both Hinnom Valley compounds – the farm and the cemetery – including walls, roads and terraces. All the work was done without permits from the Jerusalem Municipality, which made no effort to supervise the goings-on. Deputy Mayor Yossi Havilio stated in a letter to the parks authority’s director general, Raya Shurki, that the work in the cemetery requires a construction permit, which has not been issued, and thus it is being done illegally. Hacohen, from the organization’s Jerusalem district, admitted in a letter that in at least one instance there were construction infractions. He also wrote that Elad had closed the farm to the public during hours when it was supposed to be open.

Tourism competition

Tourist officials in Jerusalem are concerned that Elad’s expansion in East Jerusalem is coming at the expense of attractions in the city.

“Jerusalem is a very poor city and its many tourism bodies are dependent on funding from the state. But a good part of that funding goes to Elad, via all sorts of methods and budgetary allocations, [such as through] the Tourism Ministry, the Jerusalem Development Authority, The Jerusalem Affairs and Heritage Ministry and the army, which brings groups in as part of organized tours,” says a source familiar with local tourism, who did not wish to be named. “In fact, they set the tourism agenda today. They have made inroads in areas that have no connection to the development of the Old City basin, such as culinary tours of the Mahane Yehuda market, or Bayit Ba’Gai, an events venue.” According to the source, the result has been that Elad is talking over large swaths of the tourism market and shunting aside smaller operators.

One of the biggest boons to Elad is the free shuttle launched in 2013 to the Western Wall in the Old City by the Jerusalem Affairs and Heritage Ministry. Its staring point is the First Station in the western part of the city; it continues along the Hinnom Valley to Silwan, to the City of David and the Dung Gate quickly and efficiently. During the COVID pandemic, service was suspended, but about two weeks ago the ministry announced its resumption – with the addition of a new stop, the farm in the Hinnom Valley. Thus Elad can receive a steady stream of visitors to two of its sites. In addition, the organization, among the wealthiest associations in the country, underwrites half the cost of the shuttles.

According to the tourism official, there is no other shuttle service that operates for free to local attractions. “All the tourism sites in Jerusalem are in a tough spot. After two years of COVID there is no funding, nothing – and this [the shuttle] comes at the expense of other sites,” he says.

Ora Pikel-Zabari, director of the Isaac Kaplan Old Yishuv Court Museum in the Old City’s Jewish Quarter, says that she asked the Jerusalem Affairs and Heritage Ministry to include the museum in the shuttle route. “They didn’t even answer me. And we asked to extend the line to reach the Jewish Quarter and solve parking and access problems on Mount Zion,” she notes.

For her part, Eilat Lieber, director of the Tower of David Museum at Jaffa Gate, agrees. “The shuttles are a welcome initiative and thought should be given to the whole Old City. Shuttles should operate to the rest of the sites in the area,” she said.

The enthusiastic assistance offered to Elad by various local and national bodies is expected to continue and grow. The Education Ministry sends schoolchildren on trips there; the army sends soldiers for seminars and work at the farm. The Jerusalem Development Authority is expected to pay for a rope bridge over the Hinnom Valley, to start at the events venue run by Elad, at a cost of 10 million shekels (about $3 million). An additional 4 million shekels will be allocated by the authority for development work in the valley.

This past Jerusalem Day, the government approved an extensive initiative to deepen cooperation with Elad at a cost 16 million shekels that will come from the Jerusalem Affairs and Heritage Ministry and the finance, interior and culture ministries. Out of this funding, 2 million shekels are earmarked for development projects in the Hinnom Valley. Another huge and controversial project that Elad is promoting is the construction of a cable car to the Western Wall, which was recently approved by the High Court of Justice and is due to pass over the Hinnom Valley. The final stop on the route will be on the roof of the large visitor center that Elad is building in Silwan.

“The simple fact is that the landowners and inhabitants of Silwan are afraid to go there. Instead, people are brought in who fall into a trap. They have fun with their children in a space that belongs to others,” Sussman, of Abu Tor, says. “So they tell us that the land belongs to the administrator general. To me that’s worse; it’s a matter, as the biblical saying goes, of ‘have you killed and also taken possession?’ They destroyed the area to a point where it can’t be fixed, the ancient landscape can’t be restored.”

“We always took care of the land,” says Shadi Sumarin, one of the owners of the property affected by the city’s landscaping directives. “We plowed with a mule and after the winter we took a sickle and cleaned the area; when the trees needed pruning we pruned them. Now, if we tell them [Elad and other groups] not to go in, the police come and make us leave.”

According to members of the Sumarin family, for decades, since the beginning of the Israel-Palestinian conflict, the state has been East Jerusalemites like them from all directions – whether creating problems in obtaining building permits, renewing a taxi or other motor vehicle license, and so on. “They choke any member of the Sumarin family,” Shadi says.

The archaeologists group Emek Shaveh, which has been monitoring events in the wadi, says that “the continued policy of erasing the Green Line and privatizing heritage sites and placing them in the hands of an extreme right-wing group does irreparable harm to Jerusalem and the ability to reach an organized peace agreement. To this end, the State of Israel is willing to risk even its democratic character.”

The organization adds: “The private Elad association allows Israel to bend values of human rights and heritage, and in exchange Israel helps it with resources, and taking land, whitewashing its activities to change the demographics in Silwan, turning the valley into a new point of friction in Jerusalem.”

Responses

In response, the Elad association provided this statement: “The Elad association, headed by an Israel Prize laureate, works to develop Jerusalem and is proud to participate, together with state authorities, the Jerusalem Municipality, the Israel Nature and Parks Authority, the Israel Antiquities Authority and many others, in the development of ancient Jerusalem in general and of the Hinnom Valley in particular, and in providing access to the public in Israel and throughout the world, to the inhabitants of Jerusalem and those who love the city.”

The Jerusalem Affairs and Heritage Ministry said “Over the summer vacation and the Jewish holidays, the ministry operates a free shuttle service for the public, by means of the East Jerusalem Development Company. The purpose of this endeavor is to ease access to tourist sites in the Old City basin, for tens of thousands of visitors who come to the Western Wall, the Jewish Quarter and the City of David National Park during those times. This project is funded equally by the East Jerusalem Development Company and the Elad association. The ministry does not contract directly with Elad or any other association, but rather works in keeping with regulations … to apply government decisions and government policy in the Old City basin.“

Emek Shaveh: ‘Elad allows Israel to bend values of human rights and heritage, and in exchange Israel helps it with resources, and taking land, whitewashing its activities to change the demographics in Silwan, turning the valley into a new point of friction.’

The administrator general’s office said that “The land in question is registered according to the Absentee Property Law. As for the project under review, the administrator general has no connection to it; it has not been approached and has given no permit for it.”

According to the Israel Nature and Parks Authority, “The extension of the agreement with Elad for the development of the Hinnom Valley as a tourist attraction was approved by law and as is acceptable in cases of contracts of this type, as per the committee overseeing the authority’s competitive bidding process, in October 2021. The extension of the agreement for 10 more years was required because of the essence of the work and conservation in the area, in keeping with the long-term processes and according to work plans that were formulated, presented and approved.”

The Israel Antiquities Authority offered this comment: “The work of the Elad association to clean the area in question was done in coordination with the Israel Antiquities Authority and as of this time it [the work] has not penetrated the ground or damaged ancient remains. The authority is closely monitoring the activities.”

The Jerusalem Municipality responded: “The land in question is owned by the administrator general, under the management of the Sephardi Hevra Kadisha, which began work to restore the Samboski Cemetery together with Elad. Over the past few decades, the cemetery has been vandalized and desecrated, and become a garbage dump, in a manner that is disrespectful and improper for such a site. Rehabilitation work is therefore underway there. This work was checked by municipal inspectors and found to be lawful. The municipality will continue to monitor the area to ensure that the work is carried out according to the permit granted.”

The former director of the parks authority, Shaul Goldstein, did not provide a comment on this article.