For Palestinian residents, this madness is everyday life. For the hordes of Western journalists stationed in the city to cover “the conflict,” Jerusalem is not where the action is. However, a look at Israeli policy in Jerusalem reveals the heart of Zionist strategy and the failure of Oslo to tackle injustice head on.

Take the recent Palestinian elections in January 2005, when many Palestinian Jerusalemites were denied a vote. On that day, Israel put its hands in the air and cried Palestinian inefficiency, but the prevention of Palestinians voting in their capital city was a process started months before Election Day. In September, the Israeli Interior Security Ministry issued orders to close voter registration centers in East Jerusalem, claiming that employees were acting in the name of the Palestinian Authority in Israeli territory and therefore in breach of the 1994 Israeli law on the implementation of the Interim Agreements. In fact, as the PLO Negotiations Affairs Department pointed out, Israel was in breach of international law on self-determination, the Oslo Accords Interim Agreements, its obligations under the Road Map, and even its own law in respect to the Agreements. Thus, many Jerusalemites did not register, not through inefficiency but through Israeli restrictions on the registration process.

Restrictions on the election process are just a small issue in the wider picture for Palestinians of East Jerusalem. Few who voted in Jerusalem have any hope that their vote was anything more than symbolic. While all candidates held firm on the status of Jerusalem, the fact that Israel has yet to relinquish full control on any part of the West Bank means nobody expects that Mahmoud Abbas will be in a position to negotiate on Jerusalem. The fact that only 26,365 out of 120,000 potential eligible East Jerusalemites actually voted (as opposed to around 70 percent in the rest of the 1967 areas) reflects that many do not see a vote as worth the paper it’s written on.

To understand the apartheid of Jerusalem, it is necessary to go back to 1948, the ignoring of which dooms any peace process to failure. British Mandate Jerusalem (1917–1948) consisted of the walled Old City, the New City neighborhoods, and the sub-district that included 66 Palestinian villages in the surrounding hills. The last British survey of Palestine in 1946 shows that although Jews were a majority in the city itself (99,320 Jews to 65,010 Muslims and Christians) in the district as a whole, Christians and Muslims outnumbered Jews 253,270 to 164,440. The number of Jews had also risen significantly in previous decades since the influx of European Zionists at the end of the nineteenth century, a different social group from local Palestinian Arab Jews.

According to the UN Partition Plan of 1947, the district of Jerusalem, including Bethlehem to the south, should be an internationally administered zone, part of neither an Arab nor a Jewish state. But in 1948, Israel occupied what is known as West Jerusalem and East Jerusalem came under Jordanian administration. Up to 80,000 Palestinians were driven from West Jerusalem and some forty villages were depopulated, many destroyed. In December 1949, Israel declared West Jerusalem the state capital and UN resolution 303 condemned the action, restating its intention to place Jerusalem under a permanent international regime with protection of its holy places. Two decades later in 1967, Israel occupied East Jerusalem along with the rest of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

The direction of Israeli policy has been clear from the beginning: establishment and expansion of control within Jerusalem, a microcosm and symbol of policy towards the whole of Palestine. Within two weeks of the 1967 occupation, Israel expanded Jerusalem’s municipal borders, unilaterally annexing East Jerusalem and other parts of the West Bank in direct contravention of international law. East Jerusalem increased by over tenfold from its pre–1967 size, incorporating 28 surrounding villages and reaching from the edge of Ramallah in the north to Bethlehem in the south.

The UN responded with Resolution 2253 calling on Israel to “rescind all measures taken (and) to desist forthwith from taking any action which would alter the status of Jerusalem.” Yet in the first three years alone, Israel confiscated over 25,870 donums of Palestinian land in Jerusalem (UN Report of the Security Council Commission, November 1980, S.14268). A decade later in 1980, to further UN condemnation, Israel reaffirmed the 1967 annexation in the creation of the Basic Law on Jerusalem, declaring the city “the eternal undivided capital.”

Under Oslo II, Jerusalem was left to final status agreements with Article XXXI of the Interim Agreement stating that “Neither side shall initiate or take any step that will change the status of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip pending the outcome of the permanent status negotiations.” Policy in Jerusalem shows just how far Israel has violated even their minimal promises of Oslo.

“Rezoning,” Expansion, and Confiscation

Israel has created a concrete situation on the ground which has made the vision of two capitals within one city virtually untenable. Aspects of policy must be seen as a strategic whole, and also as a microcosm of strategy applied not only across the 1967 occupied territories, but towards the 20 percent of the Israeli population who are Palestinian, those remaining in 1948 occupied Palestine internationally recognized as Israel.

Since 1967, Israel has confiscated over a third of the land illegally annexed to Jerusalem, and this activity continues apace. In April, Military Order No.33/04/t strategically confiscated 995 donums in north-east Jerusalem, isolating the village of Anata and blocking the city’s only refugee camp, Shu’fat, from the north and the south, further benefiting the surrounding settlements such as Neve Yaacov and Pisgat Ze’ev. In September, Mayor Uri Lupolianski announced that part of the central Palestinian neighborhood of Wadi Joz would be “rezoned” to create a Jewish “residential” area.

Land expropriation is carried out in the name of a whole variety of military orders, labeling land as “uncultivated” or “combat zones.” Almost half of Palestinian land in East Jerusalem is classified as a “Green Area,” where construction is forbidden, yet in many cases it has later been “rezoned” for settlement use. The ever expanding Har Homa settlement is built on Jabel Abu Ghnaym in the Bethlehem area, which was classified in 1968 as a “Green Area,” preventing Palestinian construction.

From 1967, the “Judaization” of Jerusalem was pioneered at a municipal level by Labor mayor Teddy Kollek, who remained in his position for three decades. It was hoped that unilaterally extending the boundaries of annexed Greater Jerusalem would later be taken as a fait accompli in any negotiations to hand over parts of the West Bank to the Palestinians. The project has continued apace, quickening during the Oslo years with final status negotiations on the horizon. In 1998, under Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu, the borders were expanded to include the settlement blocs of Maale Adumim and Givat Zeev, slicing the West Bank in half and bringing 30,000 Jewish settlers into the municipality of Jerusalem. Under the Labor regime of Ehud Barak, elected on a so-called “peace” ticket, settlement building in East Jerusalem actually increased in speed from the Likud years.

Today, over 200,000 settlers in twelve settlements encircle the city, some strangling the heart of East Jerusalem and others further out cutting the West Bank in half. Incentives such as subsidized housing and reductions in municipal taxes have meant that settlers comprise an estimated 75-80 percent of the total increase in Jerusalem’s Jewish population since 1967.

In his 14 April 2004 meeting with US President George Bush, Sharon got a historic public commitment from the Americans that five key settlement blocs in the West Bank would not be up for negotiation. While in reality, return to 1967 borders has not been on the international agenda for many years, this public affirmation was a significant achievement for the Zionist agenda. International media claims that Ariel Sharon’s unilateral Gaza disengagement plan is an about-face for the lifelong pioneer of the settlement project is exactly the propaganda that the prime minister needs as he carries on securing facts on the ground in the resource-rich West Bank. The latest settlement update from Peace Now (30/12/2004) testifies to the continuing building of hundreds of settlements across the West Bank, in Jerusalem most notably in Ma’ale Adumim and Givat Zeev.

Settlers have also played a direct role in confiscation of Palestinian homes, particularly in the Old City and surrounding neighborhoods. Two years ago, one shop owner lost his teeth in a settler attack when he refused to sell his small tourist shop close to the Muslim Haram Al-Sharif, sacred for Jews as the site of the Western Wall. “They sent once an Arab who said he is going to pay a huge amount of money, but I told him if he was really an Arab he would not have agreed on selling our lands to Israelis.” He says he was offered 7.5 million US dollars and American visas for himself and his family. “I told them even if it was $7.5 billion, I’d not sell it to them.” Residents of the Old City continue to be attacked and possessions destroyed by settlers, with little intervention by Israeli police.

In the 1980s, Sharon led the initiative to settle inside Palestinian neighborhoods with his acquisition of property in the heart of the Muslim Quarter of the Old City. For the past two decades, extremist settler groups such as Elad, Ateret Cohanim, and Hay VeKayam have targeted property in the midst of Palestinian streets. “We break up Arab continuity and their claim to East Jerusalem by putting in isolated islands of Jewish presence in areas of Arab population,” said Uri Bank, a leader of the pro-settlement Moledet party, following the 2003 establishment of the new settlement of Nof Zahav (Golden View) in the Jabel Mukabber neighborhood. “Then we definitely try to put these together to form our own continuity. It’s just like Lego—you put the pieces out there and connect the dots. That is Zionism.”¹

Homes are acquired in various ways, through twists in the law, when Palestinian owners fail to pay extortionate taxes, or sometimes when Palestinians are so financially desperate they are pressured into doing so. Large financial incentives, alternative accommodation and American visas have been offered—tempting for a tourist shop owner who has not had customers for five years, yet still must provide for a family.

Unilateral settler action receives support from the highest levels. In June 2003 Minister for Tourism Rabbi Benni Elon attended the nighttime forcible eviction of Palestinian residents in a house in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood. According to the testimony of Jewish human rights activists trying to intervene, over 50 armed settlers attacked the home, resulting in the hospitalization of five residents including a two-year-old child allegedly thrown out of a window. Police were called but no names were recorded and all left without arrest. “No arrests, no handcuffs…the police just let them trickle out of the houses with their skullcaps neatly in place and their sleeping bags stowed neatly in their backpacks. Each one’s handgun neatly out of sight. Since one of them was a cabinet minister, one must suppose that they felt protected by the law and even above it,” wrote one Israeli activist.

On the 29 November 2004, with two days warning, 28 homes and countless animal shelters were destroyed in Anata village. Anata is considered by Israel to be half in Jerusalem and half in the West Bank and when the apartheid wall reaches Anata, these residents would have been annexed into an Israeli settlement. It was more convenient for the authorities to push them out. Twenty-five of the homes were shelters belonging to Bedouin who have now been displaced three times in the last six years, originally for the building of a military base.

Housing demolition has been used on grand scale from Rafah to Jenin, including within the boundaries of Jerusalem. Several hundred houses have been demolished in the Oslo years inside Jerusalem and over two thousand since 1967, beginning with 135 homes in front of the Western Wall, weeks after occupation.

A variety of policies make it extremely difficult for Palestinians to get building permits, resulting in one third of Palestinians homes in East Jerusalem built “illegally.” A permit can be denied if land is designated as a “Green Area” or a military area or too close to a settlement, or if a Palestinian fails to satisfy Israeli authorities with documents proving land ownership. No permit will be issued if the land is not within a “Town Planning Scheme” that complies with all municipality planning goals. Without a permit, housing demolition is a real threat. It must be noted that building without correct permission occurs in West Jerusalem, but demolition of Jewish housing is unheard of.

Last September (2004), residents of north-east Jerusalem around the neighborhood of Al-Ram woke up to find that the long-expected wall had gone up. Residents on the “Jerusalem” side of the wall were unable to get to work in the Ramallah area, despite the fact that international regulations state that Jerusalem residents are fully part of the Palestinian West Bank. Other Jerusalem residents found themselves on the “wrong” side of the wall, making it impossible for them to get to work further into the centre of the city and also jeopardizing their status as Jerusalem ID card holders.

The wall in Jerusalem twists and turns in circles to make life as crazy for Palestinians as possible. As a Jerusalem ID card holder, a Palestinian should be able to work both in the West Bank and in the 1948 occupied Israeli areas, unlike holders of West Bank only ID. However, as rent soars in desirable Jerusalem neighborhoods, many Jerusalemites actually live across the “border” of what Israel classifies as Greater Jerusalem, risking the confiscation of their ID cards.

Fatima has to live outside the Jerusalem borders because her children and husband only have West Bank ID, yet her office is currently right on the borderline. If she continues to live with her family, the authorities will classify her “centre of life” as outside Jerusalem, confiscate her ID, and revoke her Jerusalem residency rights. As the borders of the wall are not yet certain, she lives in constant fear that she will no longer be able to get to work.

Over 30 km of the wall have been built so far in Jerusalem, confiscating land and separating children from schools, students from universities, employees from work, and patients from hospitals. Jerusalem students have now to cross the wall to reach Al-Quds University in Abu Dis. People on the “other” side of the wall are now cut off from the facilities of Palestine’s best hospitals, Al-Maqassad and Augusta Victoria.

By placing strict regulations on Jerusalem ID holders, the Israeli aim is to separate Jerusalem Arabs from the Palestinians of the West Bank and also to encourage or force as many to leave as possible. The refusal to grant family reunification, to give medical and educational services to children of Jerusalem mothers who have West Bank husbands, and high taxes for low services are all factors that leave many Palestinians with no alternative but to live outside the borders of Jerusalem.

With the closure of Orient House (Palestinian headquarters in Jerusalem) and the death of the well respected Faisal Husseini in 2001, Palestinian leadership in Jerusalem has been strangled like the rest of the city. The future looks bleak. Perhaps the only thing that troubles Israeli strategizers is the constant worry of demography. Population figures vary and many statistics do not take into account the large number of Palestinians living unregistered in the suburbs, but it seems that currently Palestinians represent at least 33 percent of the population within the municipal boundaries. As the 2002 Statistical Yearbook of Jerusalem shows, in the last decade more Jewish residents have left than have moved in. The Palestinian population is far younger than the Jewish and is growing three times as fast. Despite all the technical, political, and military powers in their favor, can Israel really eliminate a Palestinian presence in Jerusalem as their tactics indicate they wish to?

Useful Sources

• Applied Research Institute, Jerusalem (ARIJ)

• Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs (PASSIA)

• PLO Negotiations Affairs Department