Jewish Agency Chairman Ze'ev Bielski recalled growing up in Jerusalem's Ramot Eshkol neighborhood, where he said his life was affected by the Gush Emunim settlement movement office in an apartment next door. "My younger sister ended up being one of the first settlers of Beit El," he recalled. "She lived in one of the first caravans [trailers] there, and my mother never forgave or forgot that Arutz-7 was taken off the air. I always promised her that the people responsible would pay the price some day."
Regarding the holy city, Bielski said no matter where he has gone in life, being sent across the globe as a Jewish Agency emissary, serving as mayor of Ra'anana, he shivers every time he enters the city – even now, when he commutes daily from Ra'anana.
National Religious Party Chairman and now number-two on the National Union/NRP list Zevulun Orlev spoke at the conference about the dangerous nature of the Partition Wall's route in the Jerusalem region. Orlev spoke about the decision to build the fence between the Arab village of Beit Iksa and Highway 1. "I can't help thinking back to the Six Day War," he said, "when I was serving in Motta Gur's 55th Paratroopers Brigade. We needed to get to Jerusalem from Beit Shemesh when Jordan's King Hussein decided to attack. The regiment traveled to Jerusalem with a small bulldozer clearing the road near the railroad lines, near Bar Giora and Ein Karem – a back road. I asked why we could not take the main road from Beit Shemesh to Jerusalem and was told it was impossible for our large, armed, paratroopers brigade to get to Jerusalem on that road because Beit Iksa, armed with rifles alone, was able to render the road impassable. Today, once again, there is the attempt to return Jerusalem to this corridor again... Jerusalem of the Jewish people must stand in the center. Sadly, it is only the capital on paper. Jews are leaving the city. More are leaving than are coming, and there is even a hidden competition of what Israel's real capital is in every regard, Jerusalem or Tel Aviv – over which is the center of industry and culture and education."
Orlev's suggested a solution similar to his party's overall platform. "I think the answer lies first and foremost in education. We need not only a mandatory curriculum, but a mandatory visit – more than one day. We need visits to the Western Wall, government buildings, Yad VaShem [Holocaust memorial] and Ammunition Hill. More than half of Israeli students have never visited Jerusalem as part of their studies."
Orlev said that in the 15th Knesset, he proposed a law to provide recognition of Jewish pilgrimage to Jerusalem. "It was a declarative law that would call on all the Jews of the world and Israel to visit Jerusalem once in seven years. They would receive a certificate suitable for hanging on the wall saying they have visited Jerusalem."
Dr. Benny Ish-Shalom, a philosophy professor at Hebrew University and Bar-Ilan, lamented the fact that many of Jerusalem's Jewish residents are leaving it. "Those who are unable to tolerate the complex and oppressive nature of this old city, so laden with emotion, heritage, tradition and conflict of this wondrous city simply are leaving." Several other speakers throughout the day echoed Ish-Shalom's sentiments and presented various anecdotes about how their formerly mixed religious-secular neighborhoods have now become completely homogenous.
Dr. Avi Ben Bassat, a professor at Hebrew University and former Director-General of the Finance Ministry, spoke about Jerusalem's economic woes – a phenomenon he said is relatively recent. "The Central Bureau of Statistics publishes an economic social index of local authorities in Israel, based on standard of living, education, etc.," he said. "Jerusalem scores below the development towns of Dimona, Giryat Gat, Kiryat Shemona, Lod and Ramle. It is not just another poor city – it is the poor city."
Eastern Jerusalem land-rights activist Aryeh King asked permission to speak following the dismal prognoses of the morning's speakers. "First of all," said King, "most people leaving Jerusalem are moving to Greater Jerusalem - to Maaleh Adumim, Gush Etzion, Beit El, Adam, Mevaseret, etc. 800,000 Jews live in the Jerusalem envelope – and many of these people still work in Jerusalem."
"Second of all - Jerusalem is Jewish before it is Israeli," King added, bringing up the topic of widespread illegal Arab building on state-lands in the capital. "We have published a comprehensive report that demonstrates that the state, the municipality, the government – all don't care about the land that is administrated by them. There are thousands of cases of illegal building. The Arabs build where there are no building permits because it is the goal of their strategic political plans. When we talk about poverty in Jerusalem – we aren't taking into consideration how much the Arab residents work without reporting or paying taxes. At the Herzliya Conference they talked about 11 meters per person in Jerusalem's Arab sector – they simply don't count the 20,000 illegal housing units."
King also blasted the so-called Jerusalem envelope fence, saying it had nothing to do with security or demographics, as Arabs are simply moving en masse to the Jerusalem side of the fence.
Rabbi Mordechai Elon, who heads Yeshivat HaKotel, also spoke about fences and walls – though in a much more metaphorical sense, calling upon the national religious to tear down the walls around our spiritual ideals. "Ben-Gurion called for tearing down the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem," he said, explaining that the first prime minister wanted Jerusalem to be a united sprawling city.
"Jerusalem is tired of being walls and tourists," Rabbi Elon said. "For me, Tel Aviv is also Jerusalem; only there can we sing a new song. Over 500 synagogues were built in Tel Aviv over the past 100 years. More than 400 of them are closed today. One of them has become a rehabilitation center for Thai workers and the Great Synagogue, on Allenby Street, is open in the morning and, for a token sum, you can visit. It is like visiting a synagogue in Europe. The tragedy is that in Poland, we didn't leave the synagogues because we wanted to, but in Tel Aviv we left the synagogues because we wanted to – because we preferred the shtetls and because we didn't want to live without walls any more." Elon was referring to the homogenous religious communities and neighborhoods that have become the norm across Israel.
"I have one dream," Elon concluded, "to break down the walls of Jerusalem. We must make a decision that we will break down the walls of Jerusalem within ourselves."