by Abraham Rabinovich
(member of The Jerusalem Post editorial staff)

Following the Six Day War, 5,000 Arabs - mostly refugees from the 1948 war - were evacuated from Jerusalem's Jewish Quarter in order to permit its restoration and resettlement. Arabs were not permitted to purchase apartments there, even if they had owned property in the quarter before it was expropriated.

Most of the Jewish quarter had previously been owned by Arabs who rented their property to Jews until the quarter fell to the Arab Legion in the War of Independence. However, even Israeli liberals favored the exclusion of Arabs because they understood that a mixed Jewish-Arab neighborhood would, given the tensions in the city, be a formula for permanent friction.

Thus the argument offered this month by Deputy Housing Minister Meir Porush that the Jewish housing project proposed for the Arab neighborhood of Ras al-Amud is intended to promote coexistence between Jews and Arabs is not simply cynical but an insult to the intelligence.

Porush's own haredi community, which has repeatedly used violence to oust non-haredi elements from its midst, has made very clear its own attitude toward "coexistence."

Nor is Interior Minister Suissa any more convincing when he contends that the project deserves support because it will be beneficial to Arab residents of Ras al-Amud. Jewish-owned land there, he notes, would be dedicated for parks and other facilities serving the adjacent Arab neighborhood.

If the Arabs thought the project beneficial they would not be warning that its approval will ignite the Arab world.

The Arabs view the Ras al-Amud project, particularly in the atmosphere engendered by the present government, not as an attempt at coexistence but as Israel trying further to dilute the Arab presence in Jerusalem.

That coexistence is possible is demonstrated by the hundreds of Israeli Arabs who live peacefully in Jewish neighborhoods in west Jerusalem, but that is possible because those circumstances are not politically charged.

Since 1967, Israel has expropriated more than one-third of eastern Jerusalem for the construction of Jewish neighborhoods containing close to 200,000 residents. This was carried out as part of a geopolitical strategy aimed at ensuring Israeli control of the expanded city.

The Ras al-Amud project, a private initiative funded by a US supporter of far-right causes, serves no geopolitical strategy but one: making mischief. It would constitute an open sore, worsening Jewish-Arab relations and almost certainly leading to bloodshed. Those eager to derail the peace process hail it.

Netanyahu's demand that the Palestinians negotiate without recourse to violence carries with it an obligation that Israel likewise act with restraint during the peace process, that it not use its power and its laws to impose something on the Palestinians they cannot swallow. Reciprocity, which Netanyahu demands of the Palestinians, also means that we do not do to them what we would not permit them to do to us.

Instead of improving Israel's strategic position in Jerusalem, the insertion of a few score Jewish families into Ras al-Amud will remove any shreds of credibility the government may yet retain in the Arab world about its declared objective of achieving a "secure peace" and bring us a significant step closer to conflict.

To argue that the land at Ras al-Amud has been legally purchased from Arabs and the project duly approved by the planning authorities is to dodge the issue. It would also be legal for a left-wing extremist to purchase a tract in the heart of Rehavia and build apartments there for militant Palestinians wishing to make a point - but it is highly doubtful any Israeli government would permit that to happen.

To permit the Ras al-Amud project to proceed would be an act even more foolish than the opening of the Western Wall Tunnel exit, and much more dangerous.

Netanyahu does not need to consult his security advisors to understand that.