JERUSALEM SILENT EVICTION: PALESTINIAN LIVES MATTER !

In Memoriam of my friend Dr. Khalid Abdelrahim

The status of Jerusalem is at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and it is one of the most contentious areas of the dispute between Israel and the Palestinians.

During the first Arab-Israeli war (1948), ca. 770,000 Palestinians fled to Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, the West Bank, Gaza or Egypt. Some 80,000 others became internally displaced within what became Israel. Many Palestinians living in Israel have been forcibly displaced since then, and notably, today, the inhabitants of the “unrecognized villages” are the target of Israel’s aggressive dispossession and demographic engineering policies. Israel expelled 300,000 Palestinians from their homes during the 1967 war, making some refugees twice. From 1967 to 1977, Israel expelled at least 1,180 Palestinians from the occupied West Bank, Jerusalem and Gaza Strip. Since then, house destructions leading to forced eviction have dramatically intensified.

Israel claims the whole of Jerusalem as its capital while the Palestinian vision is for East Jerusalem, on the basis of 1967 boundaries, to be the recognized capital of their future Palestinian state, fully integrated and part of the Palestinian territory if the West Bank and Gaza Strip (territorially, economically, politically and socially) and independent of Israeli control. Palestinians also demand freedom of movement between West and East Jerusalem without any blockade.

This vision is diametrically opposed to the matrix of policies implemented by Israel in East Jerusalem since 1967, which has aimed at separating Jerusalem from the West Bank and obstructed the growth and development of the Palestinian population in East Jerusalem. These policies range from land confiscation, construction of settlements, utilization of zoning and planning laws to limit Palestinian expansion. It is a demographic policy aimed at limiting the numbers of Palestinians able to reside in Jerusalem, prohibiting entry of Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza to Jerusalem without Israeli-issued permits, which are given only in extremely limited circumstances.

About 370,000 Palestinians and 200,000 Jewish settlers live in East Jerusalem while 2,500 of the more hardline settlers live in buildings bought inside Palestinian neighborhoods, according to the Israeli anti-settlement watchdog Peace Now.

In the 1948 war, some 35,000 Palestinians fled or were forced to flee their homes in West Jerusalem, and about 2,000 Jews fled or were forced to flee East Jerusalem, mainly from the Jewish Quarter of the Old City. Shortly after capturing East Jerusalem during the six-day Arab-Israeli war in 1967, Israel expanded the municipal boundaries of Jerusalem to take in large areas of land on which it later constructed Jewish settlements while at the same time, it fiercely limited the expansion of Palestinian neighborhoods, forcing many in the increasingly crowded areas to build illegally.

Today, 86% of East Jerusalem is under the direct control of the Israeli authorities and Jewish settlers. Around 200,000 settlers live in settlements that have been mostly built either entirely or partially on private Palestinian property while 2,000 of them live in the midst of Palestinian neighborhoods under army protection.

After seizing the West Bank in 1967, Israel unilaterally annexed 72 square kilometers, including the eastern part of Jerusalem and 28 surrounding West Bank villages, to the Jerusalem municipality. This area, commonly called East Jerusalem, had 66,000 Palestinian residents, 24% of the new municipality’s population.

Israel has since transferred thousands of its own Jewish citizens to East Jerusalem, while refusing to approve most zoning plans in Palestinian neighborhoods that would allow expansion. Left with no choice but to build and expand their homes without permits, Palestinians live under the threat of home demolitions.

More than 5,000 homes belonging to Palestinians in East Jerusalem have been destroyed by Israeli forces since 1967, according to Palestinian sources.

The Palestinian inhabitants of occupied East Jerusalem are trapped and strangled, as Israel tries all means to remove them from the holy city where they were born.

Since Israel seized the eastern part of Jerusalem in 1967 and illegally annexed it in 1981, it has intentionally left the status of its Palestinian population living there unresolved by giving “permanent residency,” thus revoking the residency status of around 14,595 Jerusalemites and often compelling their families to join them outside the city borders.

Israel’s policies toward the Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem – including house demolitions, lack of services and municipal funding, shortage of classrooms, massive land grabs, rapid construction of Jewish settlements, home evictions by Jewish settlers, denial of family unification and police and settler violence – have intensified over the years and spiked after former U.S. President Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

All these measures were designed to push the Palestinians out of the city, usually to areas outside the wall or to nearby Palestinian cities. Moreover, Palestinians in Jerusalem are required to pay large sums of taxes, such as the national insurance tax, for services they barely receive. Israel nevertheless  continues its policies of annexation settlement of East Jerusalem and the silent eviction of its Palestinian residents.