Jerusalem Diary

December 2007 – March 2008

In 1967, when Israel occupied previously construction under the road map, the Jordanian-controlled eastern , it basis for the US-sponsored Annapolis took control of a city that was 26 percent talks. The road map plan for peace was Palestinian and 74 percent Jewish. Forty first endorsed in 2003 by the United years later, the Palestinian population States, European Union, Russia and in the city has risen to 34 percent, due United Nations. largely to a higher birth rate. Palestinian officials have protested the Israel has worked hard to maintain new building to no avail. Palestinian demographic and geographic control Authority efforts to counteract settlement over the city it annexed as its capital. It by designating the city an Arab cultural expanded the city’s boundaries and is capital have been broken up by Israeli putting massive investment into Jewish police, and its organizers detained. One settlements in order to beat back inching civil society organization canceled a Palestinian growth. In 2005, Jerusalem conference to be held in the city after it was home to 245,000 Arabs and 475,000 was notified that no Palestinian events in Jews, 184,000 of the latter living in Jerusalem were being allowed to proceed. settlements considered illegal under international law. (More recent numbers Meanwhile, Palestinian neighborhoods in put the settlement population at 210,000.) Jerusalem suffer from systemic neglect. Almost 90 percent of the city’s sewage Since Palestinians and Israelis kicked networks, roads and sidewalks are found off talks in Annapolis, Maryland in the city’s western side for the use of in November, Israel has escalated Jewish residents, says the human rights settlement construction in Jerusalem, group B’Tselem. according to a recent report by the Ir Amim organization. Over 9,500 housing Since 1967, Israeli officials have planned units for Jews have been constructed, no new Arab neighborhoods in eastern 471 of them in the heart of Palestinian Jerusalem. Construction permits are population centers. In addition, Israel has expensive and difficult to obtain and announced tenders for 1,550 units in four unlicensed structures are threatened with separate settlements within the redrawn demolition. In March alone, city officials Jerusalem boundaries. demolished four unlicensed Palestinian structures in Jerusalem and its Arab These moves contradict Israel’s suburbs. commitments to stop settlement

Jerusalem Quarterly 31 [ 83 ] Poverty in Jerusalem is growing at “A cycle of bloodshed has been opened,’’ staggering rates, increasing by 40 percent Jerusalem police chief, Yair Yitzhaki, told over six years and touching 33 percent of the New York Times. the city’s residents in 2005. Palestinians in the city had a 70 percent poverty rate, While many large Jewish settlements found an Israeli study – as did the city’s ring the city, newer settlements near the growing ultra-orthodox community. The historic are set within Palestinian increase in poverty is largely due to low neighborhoods. Settlers in are workforce participation by Palestinian actually digging under Arab homes, women and ultra-orthodox men. expanding an archeological site, despite an Israeli court order to stop. Approximately one quarter of the city’s residents are ultra-orthodox Jews. Secular Authorities are also considering a Jews often cite their numbers as reason massive new Jerusalem settlement for for moving out of Jerusalem. Jerusalem’s ultra-orthodox Jews just meters from the mayor and most of its city council Palestinian town of Ramallah. Former members are ultra-orthodox. (Palestinians deputy mayor Meron Benvenisti called typically boycott the city government.) the proposal “complete insanity” for its The where a Palestinian gunman potential to create friction. from the Jerusalem neighborhood of Jabal al-Mukabber killed eight ultra- In the absence of intensive efforts to orthodox men injuring 35 others on 6 reach a political compromise over the March was a major training ground for city and its related issues of settlements the West Bank settlement movement. and borders, Jerusalem is increasingly tense. Worrying trends indicate a shift Jerusalem police were ‘caught off guard’ to violence between city residents days after the shooting when Israeli along ethnic and religious lines, as demonstrators, among them settler Israeli authorities push hard to gain a representatives, entered a Palestinian demographic advantage also along ethnic neighborhood and attacked homes and and religious lines. businesses. On 14 May, Khayri al-Qam, 51, a father of nine, was stabbed in the back about 5:30 A.M. on his way to work in the Beit Yisrael neighborhood in what was said as a revenge killing for the yeshiva deaths. Police said this was the sixth stabbing of Palestinians since the lethal stabbing of an Orthodox Jew in February.

[ 84 ] JERUSALEM DIARY [December 2007 – March 2008]