“Ramallah, Nablus and Jenin are part of Israel”: Israeli settlers occupied 1,300 hectares in the West Bank in six months
The Waldorf Astoria stands imposingly at the entrance to the West Jerusalem neighborhood, on the outskirts of the Old City, just a twenty-minute walk from the Basilica of the Holy Sepulcher, built on the site where, according to tradition, Jesus Christ was crucified and buried. The eastern part of the city is the one that, in 1948, after the war between the Israelis and Arabs that followed the end of the British protectorate over the territory, was assigned to Israel, which immediately built the Knesset, the Parliament, and the Great Synagogue, in addition to designating it as capital in 1950, a decision that goes against the political status of the city, whose shared sovereignty between Israelis and Palestinians has always been considered internationally as decisive for future and eventual consultations linked to a solution that aimed at founding the Palestinian State.
In an immense hall at the Waldorf, full of Jewish families dressed to the nines, Shavuot, the harvest festival, is celebrated, exactly forty-nine days after Easter, a deeply felt occasion in which the giving of of the Torah to the Jewish people and dairy foods are eaten. Also here, celebrating, is Aryeh King, vice-president of the Jerusalem City Council, figurehead and activist of the Israeli settler community in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
