With arab violence raging on the Temple Mount and increased attacks on Jewish worshipers walking through the Old City of Jerusalem to the Kotel, repeating failed solutions year after year feels like a dead end. The answer to today’s security challenges in Jerusalem does not lie in the security forces, which are trained to only deal with problems as they arise. Rather the real solution is something very different and long term.

Jerusalem’s Ramadan violence requires a long term strategic shift in order to permanently stamp it out.

Ateret Cohanim in partnership with the city has been able to use the neutrality of real estate purchases and Jewish renewal projects throughout the Old City and surrounding neighborhoods to spur urban development and organic changes in day to day security by implementing the sovereignty Jerusalem already legally has.

Ideological real estate investments have both a neighborhood impact as well as a long term structural change in Jerusalem’s demographic conundrum. Beyond that, where Jews return to learn and to raise families draws in security forces to not only protect the Jewish residents, but those arabs seeking peace and good neighborly relations.

Year after year, Ramadan comes and violence ensues, yet only by purchasing, developing, and ultimately enforcing the city’s sovereignty throughout the entirety of Jerusalem will radical Islamic violence subside and peace be restored.