Longtime Mayor of Jerusalem Dies at 95

published 02/01/2007 at 03:58 PM by Scott Wilson

Jerusalem, Jan. 2 -- Teddy Kollek, 95, the irrepressible champion of this volatile city during a nearly three-decade tenure as mayor that spanned war, uprising and shifting demographics, died here Tuesday. No cause of death was reported.

Mr. Kollek, long associated with the center-left Labor Party, was elected six times to lead Jerusalem starting in 1965. A kibbutz leader who took up arms against Arabs as a young man, he was perceived during his mayoralty as an avuncular and populist figure who promoted Jewish-Arab coexistence in a city physically divided until Israel annexed the eastern neighborhoods following the 1967 Middle East War.

"Some people seem to think that if we make it hard for [the Arabs], they'll leave," he once said. "Believe me, they won't."

Although his vision of a united city remains elusive in many ways, Mr. Kollek was hailed Tuesday as the driving force behind Jerusalem's evolution from a parochial hilltop town coveted by the world's leading religions and contested by the Palestinian people to a modern metropolis of arts, tourism and the numerous cultural landmarks he engineered during his decades in office.

Named for Theodor Herzl, the chief theorist of modern Zionism, Theodor Kollek was born May 27, 1911, in Nagyvaszony, near Budapest. He was raised in Vienna, where his father became a director of the Rothschild bank.

Teddy Kollek once said didn't experience much anti-Semitism as a young man, which he attributed to his blond hair. However, he was once roughed up by Austrian nationalists offended that he was associating with Jews. He became increasingly involved in a Zionist youth group.

"In those days in Europe there were youth movements much more than today, and much more than you ever had here," he told the Times of London. "Growing up you could either join the socialist youth movement, or the Austrian nationalist one which, as Jews, we couldn't very well do or a Zionist movement."

Teddy Kollek immigrated to the British mandate of Palestine in 1934 and helped found kibbutz Ein Gev on the shores of the Sea of Galilee and near the Syrian border. He defended the kibbutz against several Arab attacks during a period of Arab revolt.

In 1938, he went to London to gain support among prominent Jews and newspaper editors to arrange the release of 3,000 young Jews from concentration camps and organize their relocation in England. He met in Vienna with a bland Nazi functionary overseeing Jewish emigration from Austria, Adolf Eichmann, who later became one of the foremost planners of Jewish extermination.

"He gave the impression of being a minor clerk," Mr. Kollek later wrote of the successful encounter with Eichmann, "aggressive, not loud and not impolite. But he kept me standing throughout the interview."

Mr. Kollek spent much of World War II based in Istanbul and performing intelligence missions at the behest of David Ben-Gurion, the Zionist leader who became the first prime minister of the new state of Israel. After the war, he organized weapons shipments to the nascent Jewish state's fledgling armed forces before the United Nations partition of Palestine in 1947.

He was appointed Israel's envoy to Washington following the state's founding in May 1948 and ran then-Prime Minister Ben-Gurion's office for a decade. During the 1950s, Mr. Kollek was credited with being a master organizer of practical projects, such as water desalinization at home and sending aid relief abroad. He also founded the state's tourism office, arguing correctly that opening the country to foreign currency was the best way to boost the economy.

 Mr. Kollek stayed on briefly in the successor administration of Prime Minister Levi Eshkol but left when a political dispute erupted between Ben-Gurion and Eshkol. The municipal-minded Mr. Kollek focused on building a national museum until Ben-Gurion urged him to run for Jerusalem mayor.

Mr. Kollek gained international acclaim in the years following his 1965 election as mayor, a tenure marked by a mix of cheerful globe-trotting to promote Jerusalem and raise money on its behalf and tireless work developing the city itself.

After Israeli forces occupied East Jerusalem in June 1967, Mr. Kollek reached out to Arab residents in an effort to bridge religious and cultural divides that persist in this city of 700,000 residents. Israel's annexation of East Jerusalem, including the Old City, is not recognized internationally.

He established an Arab liaison office to address inequalities in education funding, public transit and other municipal services between the city's Arab and Jewish neighborhoods. He walked the streets daily, and despite his fame, continued to list his home number in telephone directories throughout his tenure.

Mr. Kollek once said, "We proved that Jerusalem is a better city united than divided." But after the start of the most recent Palestinian uprising in the fall of 2000, he suggested that some of the city's Arab neighborhoods be turned over to Palestinian control, saying, "I think we need to give something to them and have part for ourselves. It will never be easy."

Mr. Kollek permanently altered the city's landscape, adding world-class cultural institutions that have expanded Jerusalem's draw as a tourist destination. The Israel Museum, which cascades down a prominent ridgeline in the city's center, and the Jerusalem Theater are among his most important cultural legacies. The modern soccer venue, known as Teddy Stadium, was dedicated to him.

At 82, Mr. Kollek ran reluctantly for a seventh term in 1993, reportedly at the urging of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, also of the Labor Party. Rabin hoped a Kollek win would show popular support for the 1993 Oslo Accords that Rabin made with the Palestinians and that would lead to self-rule to the occupied territories.

Mr. Kollek's defeat to Ehud Olmert, the Likud Party candidate and now prime minister, represented the end of the Labor party's domination of Jerusalem politics and reflected the city's demographic shift to a more religious and conservative population.

That trend persists today, and Jerusalem's arts advocates say funding has fallen for cultural programs since his departure.

Since leaving office, Mr. Kollek continued his work for the Jerusalem Foundation, an organization he helped found 40 years ago.

Survivors include his wife, Tamar Schwartz Kollek, whom he married in 1937; a son, Amos; and a daughter, Osnat.