Symbol of a Divided Land Towers Over East Jerusalem, Peace Process

Mounted with floodlights, patrolled by guards toting automatic weapons, it’s the most controversial new piece of real estate in traditionally Arab eastern Jerusalem.

The just-completed triple towers of the Maaleh Ha’Zeitim apartment complex -- a Jewish enclave in the heart of the city’s eastern sector, which the Palestinians claim as the capital of their future state -- stands as a symbol of the uphill battle faced by the United States and other mediators as they prepare to revive the moribund Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

The first Jewish families moved into the apartments last week, prompting peace activists to protest what they see as an obstacle to a two-state peace accord.

Palestinian neighbors, meanwhile, see one more boundary forming in a land crisscrossed with disputed borders.

Across a sandy gorge from the new apartment structure, sports club manager Khaled El-Ghoul pointed angrily at a red line spray-painted across the basketball court, where earthmovers cut into the land three months ago and left a jagged edge of asphalt.

“It’s not human behavior,” said El-Ghoul, referring to the unannounced destruction, which was meant to clear the way for further developments on the Jewish building site. “They didn’t ask if it could be dangerous for people here. They just do what they want.”

El-Ghoul responded by putting up a fence of his own, in chain links, along the skirt of rubble.

The standoff hints at escalating tensions that will confront U.S. mediators as they strive to break a 30-month cycle of Palestinian suicide bombings and deadly Israeli incursions into the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

On Tuesday, President Bush told reporters he would release a long-awaited Middle East peace proposal once newly appointed Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, whose nom de guerre is Abu Mazen, is confirmed. But in a further sign of the difficult task that lies ahead, Abbas on Wednesday asked for an extra two weeks to overcome internal disputes before he names a new Cabinet. Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat said he hoped Abbas could complete the appointments by Saturday.

The peace plan, known as the “road map,” envisages a Palestinian state by 2005 and a freeze on Jewish settlement expansion in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Because Israel annexed eastern Jerusalem shortly after the Middle East War in 1967, building Jewish neighborhoods in the area does not qualify as settlement activity.

Palestinians see the land in east Jerusalem as their own, however, and view new housing as a provocation.

“I think they want war with everybody,” said Arab resident Akmed Hamdullah of his new Jewish neighbors in the Maaleh Ha’Zeitim complex. “They want to buy all the land possible from Arabs.” As he spoke, Hamdullah leaned against the door frame of a single-story whitewashed home that was starkly at odds with the Lego-like modernity of the apartments next door. Ornate rugs hung from the wall of a ramshackle garden, while the golden crown of the Dome of the Rock, Islam’s third-holiest shrine, glimmered on the opposite side of the valley from his porch.

According to Israeli news reports, U.S. officials have expressed concern to municipal authorities in Jerusalem that the Jewish enclave could spark tensions at a delicate time.

“After the war in Iraq I think the U.S. wants to show they know how to make peace and not just war,” said Yariv Oppenheimer, a spokesman for the Israeli organization Peace Now, which opposes settlement activity and the Maaleh Ha’Zeitim construction. “I think the U.S. should be more involved.”

Others say the building, bankrolled by Miami-based millionaire Irving Moskowitz, could scuttle plans for a land corridor that would give Palestinians direct access to the Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem’s Old City.

Peace Now estimates four Jewish families have moved into the new buildings so far, and expects several more to take up residence in coming weeks. The structure contains 52 apartments, ranging in price from $200,000 to $350,000.

Building contractor Yitzhak Adiv said the families did not want to speak to reporters, but he defended their right to establish a presence on what he said were their ancestral lands.

“I believe this is the solution, to live together with our neighbors,” Adiv said from a courtyard rimming the apartment buildings, as two boys with prayer fringes dangling from their waists strolled by.

Several tiny Israeli flags poked between security bars of a top-floor window, but the building was mostly empty.

Adiv displayed blueprints for three new housing structures -- containing 70 apartments in all -- planned for the same plot.

As larger issues of peace and sovereignty play out, El Ghoul worried about the patch of disputed land between the red line on his basketball court and the chain-link fence beyond.

“It’s not only a line,” he said of the makeshift boundary. “It means you yourself will not be whole.”

Adiv said workers carved through the land because it belongs to the construction site, and that the sports club would be compensated with a plot nearby.