No Dividing Jerusalem, New Mayor Vows : Israel: Ehud Olmert says he will encourage heavy building extending into Arab areas of city.

JERUSALEM — The newly elected right-wing mayor of Jerusalem said Wednesday that he will encourage such heavy building across the line between the Arab and Jewish sides of the city that no peace negotiators will ever be able to divide it.

“A mayor does have an influence on the infrastructure of the city. He can build the city, he can build in different parts of it, he can rezone and so on,” Mayor-elect Ehud Olmert said. “And that may have an enormous influence on the availability of all kinds of political solutions.”

Olmert maintained that he will “protect the sensitivities” of Jerusalem’s Arab population and discourage Jewish housing construction in thickly populated Arab areas, but he indicated that his first priority will be keeping Jerusalem the united capital of Israel.

Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin has said that Jerusalem will remain under Jewish rule, but he has also agreed to put it on the agenda in talks with the Palestine Liberation Organization. The PLO wants Jerusalem to be the capital of a future Palestinian state.

Rabin’s agreement to negotiate Jerusalem’s fate has prompted Olmert and other leaders of the opposition Likud Party to speculate that in a final compromise, the city will be split between Israeli and Palestinian rule. That, Olmert said, he will resist to the end, even though the mayor of Jerusalem technically has no say in the talks.

Polls show that most Israeli Jews, who make up nearly three-quarters of the city’s population of almost 550,000, also oppose partition or joint rule.

“If we firmly and sincerely believe in the integrity of this city as one city,” Olmert said, “then the area which has to be built is around the former borderline between the east and the west--(though) not necessarily in densely populated areas where such building can create confrontation and hostilities between Jews and Palestinians.”

His strident stand worries supporters of Teddy Kollek, the defeated incumbent who had managed to keep relative peace in Jerusalem for the last 28 years.

Now 82, Kollek lost painfully to Olmert on Tuesday, winning only 35% of the vote to Olmert’s nearly 60%, according to near-final figures.

Palestinian leaders were already expressing concern Wednesday over Olmert’s statements that Jews should be able to live anywhere they want in Jerusalem.

They also did not like his apparent willingness to leave intact a controversial Jewish settlement on the Mount of Olives.

Olmert said he believes that any resident of Jerusalem has the right to live anywhere he buys a home--Arabs in the Jewish areas and Jews in the Arab areas. He said he does not believe that the mayor should interfere in any transactions between property buyers and sellers.

Also sparking anxiety among some Jerusalemites was the last-minute deal that Olmert struck with the haredim, the strictly observant Orthodox Jews, who threw their support his way in exchange for positions in the city government.

Olmert acknowledged that the haredim swelled his victory margin considerably but insisted that “there was nothing like a sellout” and that he would maintain the “religious status quo” in the city.

Bars and restaurants that stay open on Friday night and Saturday--the Jewish Sabbath, when the Orthodox prefer that all businesses be closed--will continue to operate, he said.

Outgoing Deputy Mayor Ornan Yakutieli did not try to hide his horror at the prospect that the city’s education system would now be run by a haredi.

“If the education of our kids will be in the hands of the haredim, we will not send them to school,” he said. “If they take our kids and try to give them a haredi brainwash, I will not send my two 7-year-old kids to school.”