Haredi families moving to French Hill are part of a broad and expanding spread of haredi residential areas in northern Jerusalem.
By MARIK SHTERN MARIK SHTERN / JERUSALEM INSTITUTE FOR POLICY RESEARCH / EN.JERUSALEMINSTITUTE.ORG.ILFrench Hill children enrolled in preschools and nurseries, by education system, 2009-2016(photo credit: JERUSALEM INSTITUTE FOR POLICY RESEARCH)
French Hill was built in 1970 as part of a neighborhood construction enterprise – the “northern dead bolt” – that included the neighborhoods of Ramot Eshkol, Ma’alot Dafna and Givat Hamivtar.These neighborhoods emerged immediately after 1967, with the aim of creating contiguous Jewish neighborhoods between northern Jerusalem and the Mount Scopus complex that houses the Hebrew University and Hadassah University Medical Center.French Hill’s official name is Givat Shapira, after the late interior minister Haim Shapira. But city residents know it as French Hill (Hagiv’a Hatzarfatit) – its popular and traditional name, which probably originated with the French monastery that stood on the hill in the early 20th century.The neighborhood was built on a strip of land confiscated by the government in January 1968, most of which had been privately owned by Arabs. Construction included seven or eight-story buildings and, along the eastern side, Jerusalem’s first cottage neighborhood – Tzameret Habira. Well-to-do immigrants from Western countries and the university and hospital employees established their residences on French Hill. Until the mid-2000s, it was one of Jerusalem’s wealthiest neighborhoods, with an educated and relatively secular population.Beginning in the mid-2000s, the aging population of the original French Hill residents and the negative migration balance of Jerusalem’s secular population generated a dramatic demographic shift in the neighborhood. The secular (including traditional) population declined, while two new population groups began growing in size: haredim (ultra-Orthodox) and Arabs.Haredi families moving to French Hill are part of a broad and expanding spread of haredi residential areas in northern Jerusalem. A similar process took place during the 1990s in nearby Ramot Eshkol, where the haredi population grew rapidly, while secular residents left. This population group consumes most of its services, and its presence has become a point of dispute with the secular population and local community council.Simultaneously, many Arab families and students relocated from central and northern Israel to French Hill for work or study reasons. Its location along the seam between Jewish and Arab Jerusalem made the neighborhood a convenient option. This population group also encountered opposition from local residents, primarily from the organized national-religious community who viewed them as a threat.There are no precise figures about the composition of the neighborhood’s current population. An indication of trends may be derived from data of the Jerusalem Education Administration. Evidently, during the past decade (between 2009 and 2017), the proportion of children enrolled in haredi preschools and nurseries in the area rose from 19% to 34%, while the analogous number of children in the Arab education system rose from 7% to 22%.This is one of the rare neighborhoods in the city where a single residential building might house Jews, Arabs, secular, religious, and haredi tenants, as well as students, young families and the elderly. In fact, no single group demographically dominates the French Hill.Translated by Merav Datan.