Beit Yala

Let's go." I said, "All right." So we head to this neighborhood called Gilo, which is a f- uh, southern s- suburb of Jerusalem facing Bethlehem.

Bethlehem and a place called Beit Jala are on one hill.

The Jerusalem neighborhood Gilo is on another hill, and there's this teeny little canyon, a wadi, separating the two neighborhoods.

And every night on the news for the past month, you would see snipers shooting from the Bethlehem, uh, area, Beit Jala, at the Jerusalem suburb of Gilo, and I remember seeing this every night on the news.

So I said to my bus driver, I'm like, "Are we in Gilo? What in the world are we doing here?" Uh, and he says, "Oh, don't worry about it.

All the, all the action was happening at night.

Uh, you know, my tzitzit hanging out, and I go in there.

And, um, a few times when I go in, eventually throughout the year, there was a guy there called Nabil from Beit Jala, and he was interested in me.

He was interested in, in, uh, in why is this guy, you know, coming here and, and, and, and doing this.

And I-- we started talking.

Jewish families lived north of Jerusalem in Atrot and Neve Yaakov, and south of the city in the four communities of Gush Etzion.

Jewish-owned parcels were scattered through East Jerusalem, Hebron, Bethlehem, Silwan, Beit Jala, Beit Iksa, Beit Safafa, and other places that ended up under Jordanian control.

Some of the property belonged to individual families.

Other parcels belonged to banks, religious trusts, the Jewish National Fund, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and Jewish organizations.

The owners included private individuals, the Jewish National Fund, the Palestine Jewish Colonization Association, the Anglo-Palestine Bank, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and Jewish religious trusts.

The Jewish cemeteries in Hebron and Nablus appeared among the properties as well.

Individual Jews held land in East Jerusalem, Silwan, Beit Jala, Beit Iksa, Beit Safafa, Hebron, and elsewhere.

Some of those properties had been purchased under the Ottoman Empire, and others during the British Mandate.

Okay.

Also in Beit Jala.

Uh-huh.

And he purchased lands in many, many places.

Six to 70.

What happened on the 27th of June 1967 was that Israel extended West Jerusalem's municipal boundaries eastward, absorbing that six square kilometer Jordanian sector, plus roughly 64 square kilometers of West Bank land belonging to 28 villages in the Bethlehem and Beit Jala area.

The municipality tripled in size overnight.

Jerusalem became the largest city in Israel by both territory and population.

And stone is a really big feature of the Palestinian landscape, especially the central hills, highlands of Palestine, if we want to call them that.

Especially the area of Beit Jala and Beit Lahem, just south of Jerusalem.

But also a place where generations upon generations, Palestinian craftsmen worked with stone.

And that knowledge was always key, even in the modern history, even in colonial history.