AP Features, May 22nd, 2007
When Jacky Ben Sheetrit opened a gourmet Belgian chocolate shop in downtown Jerusalem, he gave little thought to the suicide bombings down the block a few years earlier that had threatened to turn the area into a ghost town.
Instead, he took his cue from the five new cafes across the street, the crowds of pedestrians and a multimillion dollar city plan to turn the rundown neighborhood into a vibrant center of commerce and culture.
"What was in the past, was in the past," Ben Sheetrit said. "I know that this area has a lot of potential."
Other business owners have also bet on a Jerusalem renaissance. In recent months a flood of new stores _ clothing chains, shops selling art and pottery, designer glasses and handbags _ have opened along Jaffa Street and the adjacent Ben Yehuda pedestrian mall.
While moneychangers, T-shirt stores and dollar shops still line the streets, city officials say new businesses such as Ben Sheetrit's are restoring the area's prestige and speeding the transformation of the center of Israel's largest city into a leafy, peaceful, European-style downtown.
"A city without a functioning heart is like a body without a functioning heart," said Ezriel Levi, head of the Jerusalem Development Authority, which is spearheading the plan.
But Jerusalem has more than one heart. Forty years ago next month, Israel captured the Arab sector in the June 1967 war. Today, in contrast to Jaffa Street and surroundings in Jewish west Jerusalem, the Arabs of east Jerusalem complain that things are getting worse.
They say many of their neighborhoods still lack paved roads or sewage, and that the separation barrier Israel built to shield the city from suicide bombers has cut off east Jerusalem from the West Bank and forced many Palestinian cultural, commercial and social institutions to move 10 miles north to the West Bank city of Ramallah.
"Jerusalem is dying. Ramallah became the center of the West Bank," said Rami Nasrallah, head of the International Peace and Cooperation Center in Jerusalem.
On the Jewish side of the city, however, business owners and city officials are brimming with optimism.
In the initial stages of the downtown revival, the city modernized the sewer, water, electricity and phone lines. Several small streets became pedestrian-only, with benches, decorative sidewalk lamps, trees and paving of Chinese granite.
Now the city has far more ambitious plans: to turn congested Jaffa Street into a promenade, move a trendy art college to the downtown, and build a massive courthouse that will bring thousands of workers into the area every day.
With violence sharply down _ no bombings in 2 1/2 years _ about 100,000 people pass through each day, up from 20,000 to 30,000 five years ago, according to a study by the development authority.
On a recent day during the weeklong Jewish holiday of Passover, tourists packed the city center, window-shopping and wheeling children in strollers.
"This is a great place to come and hang out with your friends," Alan Greenberg, 18, of Cleveland, said, voicing a sentiment not heard in years.
Downtown Jerusalem, with its stone streets, outdoor cafes and historic buildings, was once the center of life in Israel's capital.
Writers, journalists and intellectuals gathered to drink coffee and students from the nearby Bezalel Academy of Art and Design came in search of inspiration. The streets were lined with fashionable shops and cinemas.
Even though Jerusalem was divided from 1948 until Israel captured and annexed the Arab side, and even though Jaffa Street was a brisk walk from a dangerous no man's land, "the cultural life at that time was quite flourishing in the area," said Israel Kimhi, a former city planner.
The area began to deteriorate in the 1960s as buildings aged and owners died. Heirs battled for control of the properties, making renovations difficult, Kimhi said. Businesses were hit hard in the early 1990s as Jerusalem spread and a suburban shopping and nightlife developed.
The downtown, which was supposed to be the center of the city's cultural and social life, "actually stopped functioning in this respect," Kimhi said.
The final blow came in September 2000 with the start of the second Palestinian uprising. The area was bombed a half-dozen times, claiming 135 lives, and grew deserted and filthy. Shops and restaurants were shuttered.
Nave Ziv, whose Green Vurcel Design shop sells high-end silver Judaica and jewelry, ran one of 50 to 60 businesses on Yoel Solomon Street. "At night you could see maybe four of us open. It was dead. It was dark," he said.
Now, Yoel Solomon is again thriving.
The development authority subsidizes restoration of historic shop facades, and plans to turn a parking lot into a new campus for the Bezalel academy. The planned courthouse would consolidate the courts scattered around the city in one grand building, Levi said.
But the centerpiece of the $120 million renovation is the plan to ban all vehicles from Jaffa Street, turning the main artery connecting downtown to Jerusalem's Old City into a lazy promenade with majestic public squares and a light rail line.
New businesses have poured in and tax revenue has exploded, Levi said.
Critics complain that the city is turning downtown into a traffic nightmare, has not planned enough parking, is neglecting older, rattier shopping zones and is naively overdeveloping an area that will never attract enough business to fulfill its ambitions.
But Ben Sheetrit, 29, said the city already has turned a corner.
He said his chocolate store, which opened late last year, gets over 200 customers a day, more than double what he predicted. They listen to light jazz as they ponder whether to buy the palet d'or made with 72 percent cocoa from Sao Tome or the Alexander the Great, dark chocolate filled with creamy caramel.
"The situation is improving," Ben Sheetrit said. "And you have to have faith."
