CONFERENCES

1994

SUMMARY:

Dr. Mahdi Abdul Hadi of PASSIA gave a keynote speech in which he addressed the concerns and problems with maintaining harmony in Jerusalem.

He raised the recent problem of Israeli Yeshiva students who had moved 8 mobile homes onto the Mount of Olives pointing out that the Kollek administration had this area earmarked for an Arab school to compensate for its granting of 15 dunums to the mormons to build a religious college.

 

The current municipality seemed to have altered the zoning regulations and this was seen as an invitation to confrontation and a disturbance of the law which upset the security and safety of all Jerusalem Residents.

It was also a violation of all UN resolutions which spoke of a corpus separatum and was a violation of the current peace process which leaves Jerusalem to be expressly unchanged from now until the final negotiation start after two years. Dr. Abdul hadi warned that Palestinians would not watch the capital taken and this could weaken the current stage by forcing them to go in a different direction form that of the current process.

The municipality changing zoning regulations is a further act to Judaise the city and people of the world must realise that the city is Christian , Muslim and Jewish and should not be owned by any one of these groups.

If current Israeli policies continue it will mean changing the structure of the city to the extent that it will lose much of its cultural and historical visual significance.

No authority has changed the Mount of Olives for many decades keeping it as a place of particular heritage and an unchanging face of the City.