Obituary: Teddy Kollek - legendary mayor of a legendary city

By Ofira Koopmans Jan 2, 2007, 15:09 GMT

Jerusalem - He was perhaps the most legendary modern mayor of one of the world's most contentious cities.

Leading Jerusalem for a generation, Teddy Kollek oversaw its transformation from a divided, embattled city into a modern, though no-less-disputed, metropolis from the late 1960s until the early 1990s.

Widely-loved and popular with Israelis, and generally respected by Palestinians, he was known as a moderate who worked for co-existance between the city's different sectors.

'Only Teddy could have led this mix called Jerusalem, a city sacred to three religions and a barrel of explosives,' wrote the best-selling Israeli Yediot Ahronot daily Tuesday.

But he was also known for his fits of anger.

And some Palestinians view him as the one who began expanding Jerusalem, building new Jewish neighbourhoods on occupied Palestinian land.

The Hungary-born Kollek first became mayor of Jerusalem in 1965 - two years before Israel captured East Jerusalem from Jordan in the 1967 Middle East war.

He would serve six consecutive terms in office for a total of 28 years, being re-elected in 1969, 1973, 1978, 1983, and 1989.

Only in 1993, aged 82, was the former dovish Labour Party affiliate defeated by current Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, then a member of the hawkish Likud party who became Jerusalem's next mayor for a decade and would exercise a more nationalist policy toward the disputed Jewish-Moslem-Christian city.

The son of a banker, Kolled was born on May 27, 1911 in a village near Budapest. In a sign of his future political involvement, his father named him after Theodore Herzl, the father of modern Zionism.

He grew up in Vienna, but in 1935 - three years before the Nazis seized power in Austria - emigrated with his family to British mandatory Palestine.

Following his Zionist-socialist roots, Kollek started out as one of the co-founders of kibbutz Ein Gev near the sea of Galilee.

During World War II, he took personal risks to rescue Jews from Nazi death camps by temporarily returning to Europe and negotiating their transfer to England on behalf of the Jewish Agency.

He was also was also active for the Haganah, the precursor of the Israel Defence Forces.

After Israel's establishment in 1948, Kollek was politically active for the leftist Labour Party and its precursors, becoming an ally of Israel's first premier David Ben-Gurion.

He headed the prime minister's office for more than a decade, until running for mayor in 1965.

One of his first deeds after the 1967 war was to tear down the stone wall dividing Israeli- and Jordanian-controlled Jerusalem, and to clear the Western Wall Plaza, turning a narrow alley under the only-standing retaining wall of the Jewish Biblical Temple into a large square.

During his three-decade rule, he built scores of new neighbourhoods, mostly in white 'Jerusalem Stone' - and some of them on occupied West Bank land, including French Hill and Pisgat Ze'ev.

Kollek was vehemently opposed to redividing Jerusalem between Arabs and Jews. 'We proved that Jerusalem is a better city united than divided,' he was once quoted as saying.

Underscoring his popularity among Israelis, a 71-year-old West Jerusalemite described him Tuesday as 'the right man in the right place, even more so than King David or King Solomon.

'Because he had an open mind, he got along with all the religions, whether with Moslems, Christians - with everyone,' said the woman, who would only give her first name, Sarica.

Not only Jerusalemites, but also other Israelis revered him. 'He was the best mayor Israel ever had, because he managed to connect Jews, Arabs, the ultra-Orthodox and seculars in a complex city torn by conflict,' said 59-year-old Moshe Tene, a local theatre manager in Tel Aviv.

But, exposing his more controversial side among Palestinians, Khalil Tofakji, of the Arab Study Society, a political group monitoring Israeli land confiscation in Jerusalem, said:

'Kollek ... led the programme for Judaization of East Jerusalem. He used to make promises to Arabs but always did the exact opposite.'

Jerusalem's current mayor, ultra-Orthodox Uri Lupolianski, summed the father of two and grandfather of four, who died Tuesday at the age of 95, as follows:

'Teddy was Jerusalem and Jerusalem was Teddy.'