And this time – The Mamilla neighborhood, 1961.
The Mamilla neighborhood is situated in the valley that connects the Jaffa Gate of the Old City to the New City.
The neighborhood was established in the late 19th century and was a mixed neighborhood of Jewish and Arab merchants seeking to leave the crowded and limited areas of the Old City.
Mamilla included a mix of small craftsmen, small businesses, and shops for commerce, all this as remembered during the Ottoman rule of the city.
After the British entered the country in 1917, there was an attempt by the government to organize the neighborhood in a typical British order, but they did not achieve great success.
In 1928 the Shama Center was founded in Mamilla, which was a commercial center established by Eliyahu Yosef Shama and his friends from the Jewish Sephardic Halab community and included 250 stores of Jewish and Arab merchants from all fields. It was considered modern and the first of its kind in the city, which changed the center of commerce in the city, from within the walls of the Old City towards the new city and the border between them.
On December 2, 1947, close to twenty years after its establishment,
Arab demonstrators stormed the Shama Center, looted the stores, and murdered and wounded the Jewish merchants, while the British police stood by and watched what was happening with indifference.
Later the commercial center was set on fire and several additional residential buildings in the neighborhood were burnt and another failed attempt at the famous coexistence was made…
After the outbreak of the War of Independence, the neighborhood was abandoned and eventually became a no man’s land between the Old City which was under Jordanian control, and the young state and developing Jerusalem.
Gradually, new immigrants and large Jewish families of limited means, most of Kurdish descent, began moving into the neighborhood, which later became a buffer between the Old City and the new city, and became almost like cannon fodder against the Jordanian snipers and sporadic shelling.
In the Six-Day War Israel liberated the Old City and the West Bank,
and the Mamilla neighborhood became a pile of ruins.
After the city was unified, the concrete walls that formed the seam line between Jerusalem and the Old City were breached. A rapid process began of demolishing all the buildings along the wall, including Beit Stern, which hosted Herzl, the founder of the state, during his visit to Jerusalem in 1898, which after opposition from residents and the Preservation Council was dismantled and reconstructed after the demolition. Today it is part of the new Mamilla Mall compound.
The Passat Hotel, where poor Jewish families lived, was also demolished, and after negotiations that lasted for years, they were evacuated from the building with very little compensation. In its place, the Pninat Jerusalem Hotel was built, which has stood deserted for many long years, and only recently received approval for renewed construction. Karma, as always, works.
Rehabilitating the Mamilla neighborhood, planning it, appointing the government Karta Company to plan the neighborhood, and the saga of building the complex, the tenders and replacing the entrepreneurs, the objections and evicting the tenants, are a subject for another long separate post.
I still remember the huge cranes with the steel balls demolishing all the old buildings in the neighborhood, in front of the sad eyes of the old neighborhood residents.
And only one boy from Mamilla, modest and quiet, from a small home of 12 people, who slept on the floor, without a refrigerator, and without a heater in the harsh Jerusalem winter, who was warned by his parents not to go near the walls facing the Old City, and who played soccer with a ball made of rags with the neighborhood kids, lit a torch on Israel’s 69th Independence Day, becoming a Jerusalem symbol so different from Mamilla of today:
our Uri Malmilian..
Today – the Mamilla neighborhood has become the complete opposite of the historic Mamilla neighborhood.
The vacant luxurious neighborhood called Kfar David, where properties were purchased by the wealthy Jewish elite of the world, and serve mostly as homes active only during Sukkot and the Jewish holidays.
The David Citadel Hotel, formerly Hilton Mamilla, Mamilla Hotel, and Mamilla Mall, built by developer Alfred Akirov, hosts a variety of tourists from around the world.
The open Mamilla Mall, which starts from Agron and King David Streets, and ends at Jaffa Gate, has become a must-visit site for anyone coming to the city, and there is no longer any trace of the old neighborhood.
This is our Jerusalem –
a city of contrasts, intrigues, and history.
Attempts at economic coexistence versus riots and looting.
An indifferent British rule versus the state in the making.
A seam line with struggling families living in one room next to glittering penthouses and fancy stores.
A luxurious mall alongside poor families who were evacuated with meager compensation.
And one Uri Malmilian.
Shabbat Shalom to those far and near from Jerusalem ❤️
Photo – Warner Brown.
