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November 21, 2008
House near Damascus Gate
Like the man, Ariel Sharon's house is a cause for controversy.
RHONDA SPIVAK
Twenty years ago, member of Knesset (and later prime minister) Ariel Sharon caused great controversy when he purchased an apartment in East Jerusalem's Arab quarter, in a building known as Wittenberg House. At the time, Sharon even lived there several days a week with his wife, Lily, who later died of cancer in 2000.
I recently saw Sharon's house for the first time, after entering the Old City through Damascus Gate, a route that relatively few Jewish Israelis or Jewish tourists take. I can now understand just how symbolic and provocative its location is, smack in the middle of the main artery of the Arab market. It towers over the Arab merchants nearby and has a commanding presence over all of the market. On the roof, there is a large menorah and an Israeli flag, the only one in the immediate vicinity. It virtually screams out to the East Jerusalem Arabs all around it – "East Jerusalem belongs to Israel!"
As I approached the house, I casually asked the Arab merchant sitting opposite it, "Is that the house Sharon purchased?" He looked at me seething with anger, "Sharon did not purchase this house. He stole it."
His answer prompted me to look a little closer at the doorway. There is a Star of David etched into it. It doesn't look like something that was put there very recently.
Sharon's name came up again later in the same visit, when my daughter wanted to ride on a donkey near Jaffa Gate. When we paid the Arab owner of the donkey for the ride, we asked him what the donkey's name was. He replied, "Sharon, the donkey's name is Sharon." No one could miss the political overtones of his comment.
The building is named after Moshe Wittenberg, who bought it from a Christian owner more than 120 years ago. Wittenberg was assisted in the purchase by the reviver of the Hebrew language, Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, whose knowledge of French made him a valuable middleman.
Archeologists have now concluded that Wittenberg House was once an exclusive hotel, where renowned visitors chose to stay when they spent a few nights in the Holy Land. For example, Mark Twain arrived there in 1867 and wrote at least one of the 50 letters that later became the basis for his legendary book The Innocents Abroad.
When we passed by the house, both my 10-year-old daughter, Leah, and nine-year-old-son, Dov, who know that Sharon is currently in a deep coma, asked who lived in the house now. "Is it empty?" Leah asked. "When Sharon dies, will his family sell the house?" Dov wondered.
Sharon's house is indeed a microcosm of the Israeli-Palestinian argument over Jerusalem. Will it always be a part of the capital of Israel? It's a hotly contested question, one that will inform the upcoming Israeli elections on Feb. 10.
It is widely assumed that Tzipi Livni, leader of Kadima and currently Israel's foreign minister, who has been in charge of the negotiations with the Palestinians, is in favor of returning parts of East Jerusalem. One of the reasons that the ultra-Orthodox Shas party reportedly refused to enter a coalition with her is because they feared she would be too flexible when it came to Jerusalem.
Are Livni's opinions about East Jerusalem the same as those of Ehud Olmert? They are likely pretty close. On the eve of Rosh Hashanah, Olmert gave an interview to Yediot Aharonot, saying that Israel had to withdraw from almost all of the territories, "including Jerusalem, with special solutions that I can visualize, for the Temple Mount and the historical places." Olmert also said in that interview: "Anyone who wants to keep all of the territory of the city will have to put 270,000 Arabs behind fences within sovereign Israel. That won't work."
On the other hand, if Binyamin Netanyahu, leader of the Likud, who is currently ahead in the polls, is elected, I think I could safely tell my children that "Sharon's house" will remain exactly as it is.
Today, part of Sharon's flat serves as a classroom for the Ateret Cohanim Yeshivah and several students and their families live there. Netanyahu has already said that, if he is elected, he believes it is premature to talk about a final peace deal and he will instead step up efforts to develop the Palestinian economy. He maintains that economic peace must come first and that sharing control over Jerusalem is out of the question. If he is elected, the large menorah sitting on the roof of Sharon's house will continue to be seen by all passersby.
Rhonda Spivak is a freelance writer who divides her time between Winnipeg and Israel.
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