The historic Police School building in Jerusalem\u2019s Ma\u2019alot Dafna neighborhood is now set to receive a new status on the city\u2019s preservation list, nearly nine decades after it was built under the British Mandate. Behind the restrained white structure, which may look at first like another old administrative building, lies one of the most charged sites in the story of the battles for Jerusalem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The building was constructed in 1935 by the British Mandate authorities and designed in an industrial, functional style by the Public Works Department. Built from plaster-covered concrete, with elongated windows and horizontal lines, it was considered one of the largest and most prominent buildings in Jerusalem at the time. Its form also recalled, to a certain extent, the Tegart forts, the chain of police fortresses built in Mandatory Palestine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the importance of the site is not only architectural. Its proximity to Ammunition Hill turned it, at decisive moments in Jerusalem\u2019s history, into a strategic military point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In May 1948, during Operation Kilshon, the building was taken by Irgun forces after the British left the area. Soon afterward, a difficult battle was fought there against the Jordanian Legion. Six fighters were killed, among them the commander Yehoshua \u201cGal\u201d Goldschmid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Later, the building became a Jordanian position and a sniper post. For years, it was part of the fortified zone north of the Old City, an area where borders, memory and fear stood very close to the new residential neighborhoods of Israeli Jerusalem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the Six-Day War, the Police School was an inseparable part of the Jordanian defense system connected to Ammunition Hill by the \u201clong trench.\u201d On the night of June 5-6, 1967, Israeli paratroopers broke into the compound, and the fierce fighting at Ammunition Hill and around it became one of the central images of the battle for Jerusalem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The site\u2019s importance resurfaced in recent years as well, including after light rail excavations nearby uncovered the body of a Jordanian soldier who had fallen in the battles and was later returned to Jordan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Alon Wald, a representative of the second generation in the Ammunition Hill board and the son of Captain Rami Wald, who fell in the battle there, said after the adjacent UNRWA compound was evacuated that the renewed entry into the Police School, inaccessible for decades, had exposed another part of Jerusalem\u2019s battle heritage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jerusalem Mayor Moshe Lion said: \u201cAdding the Police School to the municipal preservation list is another layer in protecting the identity and rich heritage of Israel\u2019s capital, and it is part of the city\u2019s vision of connecting future development with respect for the past. This unique building is not only stone and concrete, but living testimony to courage, reflecting a fascinating period in the city\u2019s history and the broad heritage of the battles for its revival.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now, with the preservation process moving forward, one of Jerusalem\u2019s closed and lesser-known sites may eventually become a more accessible point of memory, in a place where the city\u2019s history was written not only in books, but also in concrete, trenches and walls that remain standing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The historic Police School building in Jerusalem\u2019s Ma\u2019alot Dafna neighborhood is now set to receive a new status on the city\u2019s preservation list, nearly nine decades after it was built under the British Mandate. Behind the restrained white structure, which may look at first like another old administrative building, lies one of the most charged […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":181541,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"10335","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10399,10327,10335,9314],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-181543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-attractions-in-jerusalem","category-breaking","category-leisure-in-jerusalem","category-main-item"],"acf":{"subtitle":"Jerusalem\u2019s historic Police School has entered the preservation list, after decades in which the site remained almost inaccessible to the public"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jerusalem-online.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jerusalem-online.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jerusalem-online.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jerusalem-online.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jerusalem-online.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181543"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jerusalem-online.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181543\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":181545,"href":"https:\/\/jerusalem-online.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181543\/revisions\/181545"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jerusalem-online.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/181541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jerusalem-online.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jerusalem-online.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jerusalem-online.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}