The Sovereignty Youth Summer Seminar opened with a visit to the complex designated for a new neighborhood in Atarot, in northern Jerusalem, to learn about its Jewish past and plans for the future.
Dozens of members of Sovereignty Youth opened their Summer Seminar with a short walk to the Prime Minister’s office, carrying signs calling for the application of Israeli sovereignty over Judea and Samaria.
At the end of the short walk the participants of the seminar went to the complex of the deserted airfield in Atarot in northern Jerusalem, an area designated for the establishment of a neighborhood of 9000 housing units. While there, the participants met with three of the promoters of the project in the city council and outside of it, who spoke of the place’s Jewish history and about plans for the future.
Benny Shafran, a citizen with vision, who took upon himself the struggle to establish the neighborhood, told the dozens of seminar participants about some of the political steps that occurred behind the scenes in order to obtain the building permit for the neighborhood in a period of great diplomatic pressures on Benjamin Netanyahu, who was Prime Minister at the time, not to build a neighborhood in an area that the PA viewed as a key airfield for themselves. Germany led the pressure on the Israeli government.
Shafran described the strategic importance of the place in the heart of a heavily populated Arab area - in nearby Aqab there are about 120 thousand Arabs and right after it, the city of Ramallah, which has about 400 thousand people. This situation creates a stranglehold which blocks the development of the city to the north.
Political upheavals of recent years, says Shafran, led to political contacts, which went through Member of Knesset Miki Zohar, a close associate of Netanyahu, in an attempt to bring about a political deal where the Jewish Power party would give up its candidacy, which was hopeless, but might have brought about the loss of more than a twenty thousand votes.
The proposal that was brought by Member of Knesset Zohar was to build in the neighborhood of Givat Hamatos, in the southern part of the city in exchange for dropping out. In a meeting in Rav Dov Lior’s house, maps were displayed in the spirit of Moshe Merhavia, who is responsible for building in the area of Judea and Samaria, and who stated that while building in Givat Hamatos is indeed important, building in Atarot is more important, especially because Ehud Olmert also designated the place as an airfield for the Palestinians. Donald Trump, notes Shafran, views the place as designated for joint control by both Israelis and Palestinians.
There were political ups and downs, by Shafran’s initiative, pubic opinion shapers, politicians and public figures were brought to the place and told about its history, which created pressure leading to the approval in principle, for the building plan, which was approved in the local and district committees.
Shafran gave a summary of the Jewish history of the neighborhood that was established on lands purchased by Jews, among whom were Levy Eshkol and Berel Katznelson. In 1921, when the British came to the Land of Israel, they decided to establish an airfield next to the neighborhood, which, over the years, was a significant landmark for senior figures of the Mandate and their guests.
In the annals of the place, Shafran noted that the decision to abandon the airfield in 2000 came as a result of a single bullet that hit the terminal building. Because of this incident, planes were forced to circumvent the place and the way from here to a decision to abandon the place was very short.
The participants of the seminar heard the expanded story of the neighborhood’s Jewish history from its inception until its abandonment in the War of Independence, and the continuation of the story of the airfield up until its abandonment, from Yossi Spanier, a lecturer and expert in the history of Atarot, who stated in the beginning of his remarks, that “an injustice was done to northern Jerusalem in the history of the People of Israel.
Spanier noted that the town of Atarot existed for more than thirty years, the nearby village of Neve Yaakov was five years younger. The four kibbutzim of Gush Etzion, whose story is much better known, had existed for about five years. “Everyone knows the story of the Commander of the Thirty Five and despite this, Operation Shmuel is unknown despite the fact that 16 soldiers fell. To talk about sovereignty, you have to know the history of the place. It is important to know that only 75 years ago, there was a Jewish presence in Atarot, before any Arab presence”.
Spanier also noted that in all of the towns surrounding Jerusalem, from Atarot and Neve Yaakov in the north through Kibbutz Beit Ha’arava in the east, Gush Etzion in the south and Har Tov in the west, there were fewer than two thousand Jews at the time just before the War of Independence broke out and at the end of the war there were no more than 500 Jews.
Spanier said that the moshav’s planner, Ricard Kaufman, came up with the design months after he had planned Nahal, and looking from above at the structure of the moshav, one can see a ring road and behind the residents’ homes there is a number of agricultural plots, resembling the layout of Nahal. When the British decided to establish the airfield, there were about forty families in the moshav, and part of the children’s life was to run to the jets that would, from time to time, sink in the mud.
“This land was bought at full price by Jews and those who came to settle, bought the land”, emphasizes Spanier, in the story of the place. “They had no water. A pool was built but if it did not get filled, they had to buy a barrel of water from the Arabs of Ramallah every day in order to fill the cisterns. It was like this for ten years. The residents had stands of fruit trees and a barn with Dutch cows that produced milk. They sold the milk to Jerusalem, competing with the Arabs’ cheap market price. Lacking means of refrigeration, the milk had to be marketed quickly, which is why they joined Qiryat Anavim and later, established Tnuva Yerushalayim”.
One of the residents, says Spanier, was Shabtai Luzhinsky, who, after eight years of agricultural life together with his family, felt that it was not enough and that he had to go out to support Jewish children who were refugees of the war in Europe. Luzhinsky went to the refugee camps in Italy to train young men and women for agricultural work in the Land of Israel. He was killed on the way between two refugee camps in Italy. To commemorate his name, a refugee ship that was originally named Suzana was changed - a name that was the inspiration for the well-known song, Shoshana.
Luzhinsky was buried in Italy and later was brought for burial in a communal grave in the Atarot cemetery in a grove next to the terminal. On the 4th of Iyar, 1948, Gush Etzion fell and its fall had tremendous impact on the future of the moshav Atarot. Spanier adds, regarding those days: On the 5th, the declaration of the state. The last British commissioner traveled from Armon Hantziv to the Atarot terminal, and from there flew to Haifa, where he boarded a ship and gave the final British salute in the Land of Israel. The British Mandate was over.
As his plane took off, the people of Atarot took over the terminal building and reported, regarding it, “We have an airfield”. They requested soldiers to guard the building but were surprised, at six in the evening, to receive an order to abandon the place. Ben Gurion was concerned that another defeat similar to Gush Etzion would happen in the north of Jerusalem too.
The residents accepted the dictate and left lights on in the houses so as not to show the Arab neighbors that it was abandoned and set out for a night journey east of A-Ram and from there, to the village of Neve Yaakov. They were received by the residents of Neve Yaakov and remained there for two days, among which was the 6th of Iyar, when they looked toward the neighborhood that they had left behind and saw their homes go up in flames. On the 8th of Iyar, a convoy of 150 people set out from Atarot and Neve Yaakov to the hospital on Mount Scopus. The moshav and the village were totally destroyed.
Another speaker during this part of the seminar was Yosef Speizer, a member of the City Council, who is one of the initiators of the new neighborhood in City Hall, who explained its importance to the future of the city in addition to its being an expression of the necessary historical justice after the expulsion of the Jews of Atarot and the destruction of their homes.
“Most of the people who leave Jerusalem are Jews because of the price of housing and they move to ultra-religious towns and cities”, he said, noting that as of today, 38 percent of the residents of the city are Arabs who remain there to keep their Israeli ID cards.
“This is how urban monsters like kfar Aqab happen, which is the largest neighborhood in Israel. None of the skyscrapers in the area are legal”, stated Speizer. “Israel and the municipality can’t control it. terror, drugs, crime, etc. and the city does not get involved. It is chaos. Aqab Shuafat and Anata in the north of the city are uncontrolled and Jews cannot enter, the schools are uncontrolled regarding content and incitement”, he said, noting the event that happened recently when one of the boys from the village of Aqab died in a fire that the emergency services could not reach, also because of the unregulated building at the place.
Speizer described the Jewish housing crisis in the city as the city becomes almost surrounded on all sides and the neighborhood of Atarot constitutes almost the only land reserves that might bring down the cost of housing in the city and allow the younger generation to stay, along with its importance in blocking the contiguity of Arab building that threatens northern Jerusalem.
“The city is trying to build. The project came to the local committee , where it was approved with a majority of votes and with the blessing of the mayor and head of the opposition. Afterward, it went to the regional committee, with the confidence that it would pass, but the environmental department is held by Meretz, and the review is stuck there”.
At this point, Benny Shafran requested to speak, seeking to moderate the remarks and claimed that it was not necessarily a “trick” and there is indeed a matter of environmental quality that must be investigated, among which are nearby quarries, etc. According to him, perhaps it is a trick, but in fact, the Ministry of Housing, which is responsible for the investigation, is indeed carrying it out. “The investigation must be both in the summer and the winter so it will only be able to be approved in another six months or a year”, he said.
Speizer and Shafran agreed on the need to keep the issue of the neighborhood’s approval in the headlines, and this can be done with constant contact with public figures, politicians, journalists, rabbis and making the Israeli street familiar with the Jewish history of the place, which many politicians prefer not to deal with, if there is no real pressure from the public.
The co-chairwomen of the Sovereignty Movement, Yehudit Katsover and Nadia Matar, stress the importance of the Jewish return to the lands of Atarot, as a vital act of practical Zionism, which restores the State of Israel’s pioneering momentum, as well as being the proper ethical step of returning Jews to their lands, which were acquired by the Jewish People, and finally, strengthening the critical Jewish demographic of the city. “Jerusalem could lose its Jewish character if critical steps are not taken, such as building in Atarot, freeing up the area of E-1 for additional building and more than anything else, establishing the project of Greater Jerusalem, which would add about two hundred thousand Jews to the city from Ma’ale Adumim, Gush Etzion, Givat Ze’ev, etc., under one municipal roof. Sovereignty Youth is aware of Jerusalem’s plight and as part of the act of implementing the vision of sovereignty over the entire land, the youth is leading and will continue to lead effective hasbara throughout the entire Land, a momentum of consciousness for a sovereignty revolution”.