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Every Monday Make a Reservation
Departure time: 12.30pm (12.30)
Return: 3.30pm (15.30)
Departure location:
Versavee Café, near Jaffa Gate, Old City, Jerusalem
Cost: Shekels NIS 145
The tour begins at the historic Jaffa Gate of the Old City. The group meets at the Versavee Cafe for a briefing by the guide. This includes an introduction into Israeli rule and settlement efforts in the Old City and the surrounding Holy Basin.The tour will emphasis the centrality of the Old City of Jerusalem to the three monotheistic religions and visit some of the visible icons of the Israeli Occupation. This includes existing and future Jewish settlements in the Muristan (Christian Quarter) and Muslim Quarter, with discussion of their background and implications. Homes are purchased by the settlement organization, Ateret Cohanim, and populated by young, often radical national religious seminary students, creating uneasy neighborly relations with the mostly Palestinian residents surrounding them. The sources and outcomes of this agenda will be analyzed.
The group will also visit the Western Wall Plaza, the very heart of the Old City and a major holy site for Jews and Muslims alike. A brief explanation of the sources of the adjacent Temple Mount's holiness in Judaism and Islam will be given. Discussion will focus on Muslim and Jewish archaeological and development ventures on and around Temple Mount, which are sources of extreme tensions and mutual discontent.
The tour will conclude at City of David National Park, situated in the Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan, just south of the Old City walls. This extremely important park is operated, inhabited and used by a settler group known as ELAD to promote a radical right-wing agenda. Ongoing archaeological excavations in the park are likewise exploited for political aims, compromising scientific integrity, and threatening the residents of Silwan with displacement through home demolitions and other tactics.
The tour concludes at the Dung Gate.
