MORE TIME TO DISCUSS, TRANSFORM JERUSALEM

Institute for Middle East Understanding
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Feb 28 2008
CA

Hasan Afif El-Hasan, The Palestine Chronicle, Feb 28, 2008 This
article was originally published by The Palestine Chronicle and is
republished with permission.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert stated recently that the status
of Jerusalem will not be negotiated with the Palestinians at this time.

Right wing Israelis are against conceding any part of the Old City
or any suburb of Jerusalem municipality to the Palestinians. The
ultra-orthodox right wing party in Olmert’s government threatens
to leave the governing coalition if the question of Jerusalem comes
up for discussion with the Palestinians and that is why Olmert will
not discuss it now. This has been the same rationale that successive
Israeli governments have always cited whenever they were pressed to
stop settlement expansion. And if Israel says no negotiations on the
future of Jerusalem, the Palestinians cannot do anything about it.

The Palestinians’ concession to keep Jerusalem out of the Oslo
interim agreement in 1993 gave Israel the time to alter its status
quo prior to any possible permanent status talks. Israel since Oslo
has expanded the boundaries of the City, confiscated more Arab lands
and constructed new settlements. Schemes have been devised to take
over private Arab and Church properties inside and outside the Old
City, and large settlements have been built on its outskirts. Some of
these are Har Homa (Jabal Ghaneim), Gilo, Piscat Ze’ev, Atarot, Ramot
settlement. Jewish settlers evicted Palestinian residents from their
quarters in the Old City and took over St. John’s Hospice and other
church and Islamic endowment (wakf) properties. The Israeli government
dug Hasmonean Tunnel under al-Aqsa Mosque compound endangering the
structure of the Islamic shrine.

The area of East Jerusalem has been isolated by Jewish only settlements
from Ramallah in the north by Givat Ze’ev, from Bethlehem in the
south by Gush Etzion and from the east to the Dead Sea by Ma’ale
Adumim. Jewish settlements have been established in the Old City
and in the surrounding Arab neighborhoods of Silwan, Ras el-Amoud,
Wadi el-Joz and Sheikh Jarrah. Palestinian enclaves are divided so
that people traveling from one to the other have to go through areas
controlled by Israel.

When the subject of Jerusalem came up during the 2000 Camp David
summit, Mayor Ehud Olmert led a mass march of some 350,000 protesters
against the plan to divide the city. Today, a group of Kadima
members, headed by Otniel Schneller, is demanding adhering to the
party’s agenda, which calls for Jerusalem’s unity under Israel. US
neoconservatives and the Israeli right are partners in the Greater
Israel project which calls among other things for the absorption of
East Jerusalem and the rest of occupied territories, excluding the
Arab population centers, into a Jewish state.

Zalman Shoval, head of the foreign affairs department of Likud party,
said before the Annapolis conference was convened, that the issue of
Jerusalem should "not be on the table in any way". Sixty-one members
of the Israeli parliament signed a petition against a proposal to
give the Palestinians sovereignty over Shoufat refugee camp out
side the Old City. The Prime Minister floated the idea of giving
back the overcrowded Shoufat refugee camp to be the capital of
the future Palestinian state. Two months after the conclusion of
Annapolis conference, Ehud Olmert backed away from this position
and told his coalition partners that the issue of Jerusalem would
not even be discussed in the foreseeable future. According to the
news media, Olmert told the Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud
Abbas that Israel would continue to expand the settlements throughout
the expanded East Jerusalem municipality. Palestinians’ aspirations
to have Jerusalem as their future capital are being undermined by
Israel’s deliberate attempts to alter the status quo in the occupied
land including the Old City.

The Old City constitutes only a small geographic area of the expanded
municipality of East Jerusalem, but its holiness distinguishes it
from the rest of Jerusalem. The 420-acre of walled real estate that
is the City has been playing a distinctive role in the beliefs of the
world-wide adherents to the three monolithic religions. It is where
three world religions meet and compete over the interpretation of
the divine. The City is home of the Dome of the Rock, al-Aqsa Mosque,
Mosque of the Ascension, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, the Convent
of Deir al-Sultan, Church of St. Anne, Church of St. James, Church
of St. Mark and the Western (or Wailing) Wall. The Palestinians want
Jerusalem to be their capital, and since Israel occupied East Jerusalem
40 years ago, all Israeli governments maintained that Jerusalem
must be "the eternal indivisible" capital of Israel. To this effect,
Israel exercised its power as an occupying force in control of the
city to create facts on the ground by expanding the Jewish quarter
and planting settlers in the other sectors of the Old City.

Since 1967, changes taking place in the Old City spearheaded by
organizations acting as settlers’ front with authority from the Israeli
governments. In the face of the Israeli colonization and absorption
since then, the City has been transformed from a Palestinian city to
Palestinian enclaves within a Jewish city. The Palestinian enclaves
are continuously shrinking and they are increasingly cut off from
other Palestinian areas outside the wall.

Michael Dumper, a specialist on the Palestinian issue identified three
major categories of settler groups operating in Jerusalem, that have
been supported by the government financially and logistically.

The first category is "active in attempts to settle Jews in Muslim
quarters". The second category includes groups that locate, acquire
and renovate Palestinians’ real estate. The third category known as
"the Temple Mount group, is active in supporting the messianic vision
of reconstructing the Jewish temple on al-Aqsa site". The groups
receive money from the ministry of housing, expressly given to buy
properties in the Palestinian Muslim and Christian quarters and the
surrounding parts of East Jerusalem. They also receive large funds
from American millionaires such as Irving Moscowitz.

The settler groups are the proxies of the State of Israel in a policy
to acquire property and extend the Jewish character in the Old City.

The Jewish quarter has been enlarged by administration fiat to include
Harat el-Magharbi and Armenian properties. Existing structures were
erased gradually and the area has been overtaken by settlers. Settler
movements such as Gush Emunim and Tehiya, that have been given free
hand to encircle Hebron, Nablus and Jerusalem with settlements,
have been active in asserting Israel’s control over the Old City by
building a strong Jewish presence in the Palestinian quarters. In 1968,
the Ministry of Finance ordered the expropriation of the whole area
that extends between the walls in the southeast to the Tareeq Bab
al-Silsileh in the west, and from the Western Wall in the north to
the Armenian Quarter in the south. The confiscated property included
more than 600 Palestinian buildings, according to Dumper.

Settler supporters have been appointed in key state ministries and
agencies, and settler groups sat on inter-ministerial committees
that set policies and plan strategies for implementing them. They
carried out overt and covert operations that made serious inroads
which impacted the lives of the Palestinians living in the Muslim
and Christian quarters including some dramatic events such as the
massacre in Haram ash-Sharif in 1990 and the opening of the Hasmonean
Tunnel in 1996. The Israeli-Lands Administration and the Custodian’s
Office helped many settler organizations, home grown and foreign,
to locate and acquire non-Jewish properties, evict the Palestinian
tenants, renovate the properties and settle only Jewish families in
the reconstructed units.

Acquiring and leasing Islamic endowment and church-owned land in
the Old City and in its suburbs has been a major part of the Israeli
agenda to Judaize the holy City and its surroundings. As the mayor
of Jerusalem from 1993 to 2003, Ehud Olmert was very aggressive in
implementing plans to strengthen Jewish domination over the whole
city. He appointed the leader from the Ateret militant settler group,
Shmuel Evyatar, as his advisor on issues related to the Christian
communities in Jerusalem. The appointment was perceived as part of
a campaign to acquire Church properties because Evayatar had been
active in taking over such Church owned properties. Two years before
this appointment and on the eve of 1990 Good Friday, Evyatar and 150
members of his militant group occupied a Jerusalem property known as
St. John’s Hospice that belonged to the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate
which is located in the Christian Quarter, very close to the Holy
Sepulcher Church. The take over was condemned by the Christian Churches
but it was defended and encouraged by the Israeli government.

The present fundamentalist Jewish mayor of Jerusalem Uri Lupliansky
declared recently that he was going to Judaize East Jerusalem even
more by confiscating land and expanding the Jewish only settlements.

Lupliansky was referring to the expanded Jerusalem municipality that
includes 5% of the West Bank as well as the Old City. According
to Haaretz, Lupliansky vowed that he would turn Jerusalem into an
"illegal outpost". Israel has succeeded in creating the concept of
legal and illegal settlements just to circumvent the international
law that considers all settlements illegal. Israel uses what it calls
the illegal outposts for bargaining purposes. Even President Bush
bought into this scheme and called for dismantling the so called
"illegal settlements". According to the Israeli news media, Housing
Minister Zeev Boim declared in February that, "bids will go out soon
to build 1,100 apartments for Jews in East Jerusalem.", 350 settler
units would be built in the Har Homa settlement and 750 in Pisgat Zeev,
north of Jerusalem.

For the Palestinians, Jerusalem especially the Old City is the center
of the Arab-Israeli conflict. The fate of the peace negotiations for
them and the destiny of Jerusalem is the same. While Israel calls for
postponing the subject of East Jerusalem, actions to Judaize it never
stopped. The Israeli operatives have been working hard to colonize
the City as well as the rest of the occupied lands. If Israel is not
ready to discuss Jerusalem after forty years of occupation, it will
never be ready in the future. More time before discussing Jerusalem
is more time to transform the City’s character and with that, the
hope for withdrawal to the 1967 borders becomes increasingly unlikely.

-Born in Nablus, Palestine, Hasan Afif El-Hasan,Ph.D, is a political
analyst. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.