Jerusalem


Jerusalem is the economic, social, religious and political hub of Palestinian life. It comprises the most essential element in the Palestinian conception of a future state, as every major facet of Palestinian life is linked to the city in economic, political and social terms. But Jerusalem has been closed to the 2.5 million Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza since the general blockade began in 1993. Since 1967, however, the Israeli Jerusalem Municipality, particularly under the administration of Likud mayor Ehud Olmert, has followed a policy to consolidate Israeli control over the city by restricting Arab neighborhoods, expanding existing settlements, denying or revoking residency to Arab Jerusalemites, road construction, and house demolition.

Housing Balance
The Israeli government and the Israeli Jerusalem Municipality has consistently used a "housing balance" policy, designed to limit the Arab presence in Jerusalem and to significantly increase the Jewish population in Arab East Jerusalem. Amir Heishan, the advisor to former Mayor Teddy Kollak, declared that balanced housing meant preference for Jewish housing with the eventual aim of making the Arab population a minority in East Jerusalem. The target percentage for the Arab population was set at 24 % of the total population of Jerusalem, a figure which still serves as the guidelines for the current Israeli mayor, Ehud Olmert.

Residency
During this time, in another effort to limit the Arab population in Jerusalem, the Israeli Jerusalem Municipality enacted far-reaching policies that restricted residency rights to family members (spouses, children etc.) who were married or in the immediate family of a Jerusalem resident. As a result families were forced apart or made to relocate to the West Bank. For example, a man from Jerusalem who marries a woman from Jordan either could not live with his wife or could not live, as is traditional, with his family in Jerusalem as his wife often cannot obtain the residency permit to live in Jerusalem. He would be forced to relocate to Jordan, whereupon he risks losing his Jerusalem identity card and its attendant benefits (see below). At least 4000 families have been affected by these policies.

Jerusalem Identity Cards
Recently the Israeli government passed further legislation to facilitate this population transfer. This new legislation links, for Palestinian residents of Jerusalem only, the place of work with the place of residence. Now, if someone lives in Ramallah (where housing, while expensive, is at least affordable), but works in Jerusalem (with their Jerusalem identity card), or if they live for an extended period of time outside the country, they will lose their right to a Jerusalem ID and their right to live in their birthplace. Since 1967, a total of about 3874 Jerusalem identity cards have been confiscated. Over 689 Jerusalem identity cards were confiscated in 1996 alone, a 600% increase than in past years, reflecting an intensified effort to remove Palestinians from Jerusalem (figures from Alternative Information Center).

Building Permits and Confiscation
The refusal to grant building permits continues to be a leading method of restricting Arab expansion. Overcrowding has become a critical issue for Jerusalem residents, as they are prevented from building by restrictive zoning plans and because the municipality very rarely issues building permits to Palestinian residents of Jerusalem. The municipality also unequally invests in the construction of housing. According to figures provided by Israeli Mayor Olmert, some 6500 units are planned for Jewish Israelis at Har Homa, in addition to another 2100 in other Jewish settlements. In contrast, only 400 units are being planned for Palestinians in Jerusalem. Municipal funding for housing for Palestinians has almost never been implemented. Only one public housing project has ever been completed in Jerusalem, several hundred units built nearly 20 years ago. Palestinians are skeptical that these 400 units will ever be built.

Olmert claims that there are 2600 illegally constructed homes in East Jerusalem, illegal since building permits are very rarely issued by the Municipality. He is using this number to embark on a demolition campaign against Palestinian homes in the city - since 3 August 1997, 13 homes have been demolished. In addition, confiscations through the use of the Absentee Properties law continue in and around the old city, resulting in a loss of about 50 Arab owned houses in the Old City alone. The plans currently under study to rebuild the "City of David", really the Arab village of Silwan, will mean increased attempts to take over Arab owned land and property.

Road Construction
Construction of roads has been used to effectively cut the West Bank and Gaza Strip into more easily controlled "bantustans". They serve as another excuse to confiscate lands, to enclose and to prevent the expansion of Arab villages, to cut off villages and local populations from their fields, and to link Jewish settlements around Jerusalem to Jerusalem itself.

Map reproduced from Foundation for Middle East Peace

Closure
The continuing closure of Jerusalem to Palestinian residents of the West Bank, imposed in March 1993, remains one of the cruelest and most difficult of the repressive measures imposed first by Rabin and continued to the present day. Access to Jerusalem's political, cultural, educational and medical facilities is greatly curtailed and, in the case of a "super blockade" (imposed after attacks on Israelis or for religious holidays), rendered totally inaccessible. This imposes an irretrievable economic and cultural loss on the Palestinian residing within Jerusalem and Palestinians living on the other side of the Green Line.

Taxes
The Israeli Jerusalem Municipality has orchestrated a campaign to force collection of the weighty arnona property tax from Palestinian shopkeepers in Occupied East Jerusalem in a further attempt to intimidate, harass and remove the Palestinian inhabitants of the city.

The Israeli municipality seeks to solidify Jewish demographic superiority over this part of the city and effectively end the possibility for a viable dynamic Jerusalem for Palestinians, both Moslem and Christian. The completion of these plans will cut off this vital lifeline from the West Bank, cut the city from the residents on which it depends, and have serious repercussions particularly for Palestinian health, education, and economy.



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