Jerusalem Old City wall's tumultuous story makes revamp a chore

Three years ago a stone from the Old City wall in Jerusalem fell into a church school yard next door. Fears that the wall was crumbling spawned a complex project to restore its stones while preserving traces of history left by inscriptions, shells and animals.

It turned out later that the stone had fallen from a Jordanian support column rather than the Ottoman wall. But by then the NIS 15 million renovation project was already on its way.

On Wednesday at noon a taxi drove out of the Old City through the Zion Gate. The Mercedes was too wide for the gate, built 472 years ago for pedestrians, horsemen and small carts. Maneuvering between the gate walls, the car's front bumper struck the base of the structure. A small van following the cab also bumped into it. This happens daily, reflecting one of several dilemmas facing the renovators of Israel's best-known monument.

Architects Eran Hemo and Avi Mashiah of the Israel Antiquities Authority's conservation administration want to preserve the wall as it was built by its Ottoman creators. But the wall has undergone many changes over the years. Time has left its mark, from Jordanian soldiers' graffiti in 1948 to countless shells stuck in the stones. Until the British Mandate, the Jaffa Gate sported a huge cafe. And today the wall is part of a vibrant urban fabric that includes wide-bodied taxis.

"This is not an ordinary wall, it's a story, and the story is told on the stones," says Hemo.

Before covering the wall with scaffolding, the architects scanned it with laser beams along four kilometers to be able to monitor any future shift or suspected shift in the stones. Next came a study of the flora and fauna among the stones.

The renovators took pains not to harm the animals, especially the birds nesting in the stones. The shrubbery - capers whose roots penetrated the stones - cracked the wall. These were mercilessly uprooted.

Sometimes large parts of the wall had to be taken apart to get at the roots of a tenacious caper. The stones were marked, then carefully returned to their original position.

As elsewhere in the world, Jerusalem's wall consists of two stone walls with earth in between. The greatest threat is from water penetrating the stone layers, causing the stones to shift and topple. The renovators must seal the cracks without changing the wall's facade. In some cases they have no choice but to replace a flawed stone at the cost of changing its original color or appearance.

"We don't clean the stones completely," says Mashiah. "The wall doesn't have to look like a new building. It should remain ancient."

"We clean the stone until it says enough," adds Fuad Ta'a, head of the project's preservation team. "When does it say enough? You can't tell, you have to feel it."

The preservers are leaving the thousands of pockmarks caused by shells from the wars of 1948 and 1967. They seal the part around the holes to prevent them from expanding or take the shell out to repair the stone, then return it.

They have preserved Jordanian soldiers' inscriptions but erased new graffiti and etchings made after 1948. From the moment the wall became a tourist site, the inscriptions were no longer part of the story but part of the damage, they say. Frustratingly, new inscriptions have already appeared in some renovated sections.

The Antiquities Authority is leading the renovation project, which is financed by the Jerusalem Development Authority and the Prime Minister's Office. But the absence of a single authority in charge of the wall is encumbering the project.

The renovators had to work with the Nature and Parks Authority, which is responsible for the wall's exterior, the East Jerusalem Development Company, which is in charge of the wall promenade, and private individuals and organizations that own parts of the wall's interior. They also had to deal with the electricity and phone lines crossing the wall, in addition to the pedestrian and motor traffic.

The wall's renovation is due to be completed in about a year, except for the section surrounding the Temple Mount, where the Muslim Waqf trust refused to allow restoration work. The owners of various sections of the interior wall also refused the renovators access.

The Zion Gate, ravaged by thousands of shells in the War of Independence and by exhaust fumes and countless car collisions, has been painstakingly renovated. The memorial stone for the Harel Brigade combatants, which blocked one of the gate's lattices, has been moved.

"We wanted to rebuild the pillar at the gate's entrance, too, but it would have blocked traffic and we had to give it up," says Hemo, removing a small unsightly advertisement sticker from one of the stones.