CONFLICT IN CITIES AND THE CONTESTED STATE Everyday life and the possibilities for transformation in Belfast, Jerusalem and other divided cities

www.conflictincities.org

JERUSALEM WEB REVIEW

25th Aug – 6th Oct 2009

1 Jerusalem Web Review 25 August -6 Oct 2009

Overview of articles:

1. Vice Premier: Israel should outlaw the Islamic Movement 2. Military procedures and mood in the Old City of Jerusalem reminiscent of 1967 3. 'Justice Delayed is Justice Denied' 4. What are the chances of a third Palestinian Intifada? 5. Time to re-engage with people power 6. In Jerusalem, some Arabs migrate to Jewish areas 7. Prior to a Settlement Freeze: the Race for Construction “Starts” is On! 8. Jerusalem Palestinians defining their own future 9. Tensions flare in East Jerusalem after clash on Old City plateau sacred to Muslims and Jews 10. East Jerusalem marred by Yom Kippur violence 11. Jerusalem tense after Al-Aqsa clashes 12. Settlers marketing East Jerusalem homes for 22 Jewish families 13. Jerusalem and Babylon / Secular public is just not interested 14. Israel freezes construction of Separation Barrier in Ma'ale Adumim area 15. Around 2000 settlers in outposts in Palestinian neighborhoods of East Jerusalem 16. Moroccan fund buys east Jerusalem land 17. Minister tells police: Boost Israeli presence in East Jerusalem 18. Voices from Jerusalem: Back to What School? 19. Jerusalem can only gain through cooperative neighborhood initiatives 20. Religious-Secular Divide, Tugging at Israel’s Heart 21. Inside Shuafat – Interview with Khader Dibs 22. Abusing Jerusalem to Assail Peace: the Case of the Shepherd's Hotel

Additional Reports:

i. Ir Amin ‘Shady Dealings in Silwan’ ii. Ir Amin – Israeli Settlements report in East Jerusalem (August 09) iii. Ir Amin - The Arab-Palestinian School System in East Jerusalem iv. FMEP – Moving beyond a Settlement Freeze

2 1. Vice Premier: Israel should outlaw the Islamic Movement

Barak Ravid and Jack Khoury, Haaretz, 6/10/2009 http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1119166.html

The Islamic Movement should be outlawed and the head of its northern branch arrested for incitement, Vice Premier Silvan Shalom said on Tuesday, in the wake of recent violent clashes between Arab protesters and police at the Temple Mount compound in Jerusalem.

Shalom told Israel Radio that the Islamic Movement was provoking the masses into violence, adding that northern branch leader Sheikh Ra'ad Salah and his deputy Kamel Hatib should both be arrested.

Shalom also blamed the Palestinian Authority for the recent flare ups, claiming it was trying to place East Jerusalem under its own jurisdiction.

"We must be decisive and act with a firm hand, or they will identify our weakness and intensify their actions," said Shalom.

Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch and Police Commissioner David Cohen announced on Monday that they would "take steps" in the coming days against Salah, who has been prohibited from entering the Temple Mount area for several months and has been staying at a nearby residence while following developments

Salah told Haaretz on Monday that the clashes in the Old City of Jerusalem would last as long as Israel's "occupation" of the city and Al-Aqsa Mosque continued.

He said the Israeli government must understand that using force does not grant it rights to Al-Aqsa Mosque or anywhere else in East Jerusalem, and that the key to achieving calm in the area is an Israeli "withdrawal."

"No one has rights to the Al-Aqsa Mosque other than the Muslims. The mosque compound is Muslim, Palestinian and Arab, and Israel has no rights to the mosque or East Jerusalem," he said.

The Islamic Movement leader reiterated his call for Arabs within Israel's Green Line and in Jerusalem to protest beside the mount to "protect Al-Aqsa from the infiltration of extremist Jewish elements."

Echoing Shalom's sentiment, National Infrastructure Minister Uzi Landau said on Monday that "Israel should stop paying the salaries of imams and mosque heads that incite against it."

Landau urged the government to hold a special session dealing with ending PA activities in Jerusalem, as well as act toward banishing its instructions from the capital.

"The incitement that encourages the stabbing of soldiers, the hurling of stones and disorderly conduct in general must be stopped," Landau said.

3 Deputy Prime Minister and Interior Minister Eli Yishai, also relating to alleged PA involvement in recent Jerusalem clashes, said that "the State of Israel is the only authority in Jerusalem and no force can qualify that."

"The anti-Jewish incitement coming from within Israel's borders and abroad cannot loosen the tie between the people of Israel and its capital and the need to secure and strengthen it," Yishai added.

2. Military procedures and mood in the Old City of Jerusalem reminiscent of 1967 PNN, 6/10/2009, http://english.pnn.ps/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7266

Jerusalem / PNN - A number of guards of Al Aqsa Mosque reported today that Israeli soldiers and police stood at the gates of the mosque and prevented them from entering today to conduct their business. After having their identity cards inspected the guards were only allowed to pass if on official work shifts. Speaking to the press today, a number of Al Aqsa guards said that the measures of the occupying Israeli forces are unprecedented. The doors are more controlled than ever, guards said in a statement.

For the third consecutive day study at the schools within the walls of the Al Aqsa compound was disrupted because of the actions of Israeli forces.The occupying administration announced last night that the actions on the city would continue justifying the oppression under the pretext of maintaining security. Palestinians under the age of 50 are being prevented from entering the Old City of Jerusalem or Al Aqsa Mosque. The Israeli military presence is enhanced throughout the Old City, and around the Mosque and the Western Wall. Military and police patrols are on foot and horseback in the Old City and the vicinity, particularly Salah Addin Street where cars are being pulled over, and Bab Al Moud. Military checkpoints into the city are witnessing a slower inspection procedure than usual.In the same vein, fighting broke out this morning in several areas of the Old City and East Jerusalem, including Ras Al Amud, Wadi Joz and Mount of Olives. Students threw empty bottles and stones at Israeli soldiers who fired stun grenades, incendiary bombs and gas canisters. Commercial traffic and shops are also suffering as customers cannot reach them. Most shop owners have opted to shut down for the time being due to poor conditions.The military procedures and mood in the city are reminiscent of 1967, PNN’s correspondent in the Old City reports.

3. 'Justice Delayed is Justice Denied' Joharah Baker for MIFTAH, 05/10/ 2009 http://www.miftah.org/Display.cfm?DocId=20686&CategoryID=3

This time, Palestinians were sure they had an ace in the hole. For the first time in a very long time, a credible, balanced and efficient international investigation has been conducted and its findings released on Israel's actions against the Palestinians. The UN Fact-Finding Mission, lead by Justice Richard Goldstone into Israel's invasion of the Gaza Strip last winter in which nearly 1,500 Palestinians were killed was pretty much what the Palestinians have always been hoping for – a respected and credible international voice for those Palestinians without one, a voice that has witnessed the injustice and refused to remain silent. Finally, Goldstone's mission was representative of a

4 voice with the diplomatic clout to put words into actions and maybe, just maybe force Israel to face the crimes it has committed.

Yes, Palestinians everywhere were looking forward to the October 2 vote in the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, which would, if it won a majority, effectively refer the findings of the report to the UN Security Council for further action and possibly put those responsible for war crimes before an international criminal court.

Hence, when news broke that voting on the report had been delayed to the Council's March session - a long five months from now - jaws dropped to the floor in dismay. Since then there has been a flurry of press conferences, tongue-twisted justifications and blundering, babbling politicians trying to defend, rationalize or deny the indefensible – that the PLO had been party to the decision to postpone the voting.

Four days later, the game is still on. After the initial shock of the news resided, Palestinians were up in arms, pointing icy fingers at the Palestinian leadership in the West Bank and in Geneva, accusing them of the worst of vices – betraying their own people. From that leadership came contradictory statements meant as damage control, some defending the decision as a means of "ensuring a consensus" on the vote, others speaking their mind, saying the deferral was a mistake and still others, namely Geneva's UN Ambassador Ibrahim Khreisheh, charging on October 5 that the postponement was actually in the Palestinians' interest since the report also charged Hamas with war crimes for firing rockets into Israel, something he said the leadership would work to drop.

As for President Mahmoud Abbas, who, according to some media reports, was paid a visit by the US Consul General who put tremendous pressure on him to drop the Palestinians' request for Goldstone's report to go to a vote, is now saying it was the Arabs who asked for the postponement. "We are only observers in the UN, we cannot make such a decision," Abbas said in a press conference. Abbas also formed an "investigation committee" to look into the reasons behind the postponement.

For average Palestinians, something about this is just not right. While it is understandable that the United States would go to great lengths to defend Israel, even in the case of its blatant violation of humanitarian law and war crimes in Gaza, it is unfathomable that the Palestinian leadership would kowtow to such pressure. Needless to say, the victims of Gaza who lost loved ones, homes, jobs and land due to Israel's brutal pounding of the Strip for 22 days on end, feel betrayed and sold out, especially since the excuses given are just not convincing. The Human Rights Council, a body of 47 UN member states, works on a majority-vote basis, not one of consensus. That is to say, any resolution that wins the majority votes is passed and does not need the entire Council to accept.

In the case of the HRC, this particular vote was as good as won. Since its creation in 2006, the Council has passed several resolutions on Israel's human rights violations in the Palestinian territories and is deemed by some western countries as anti-Israel. Even before the scheduled voting day, both Israel's and Palestine's ambassadors knew where it was going. Khreisheh boasted to the press that he already had the votes needed while Israeli ambassador Aharon Leshno-Yaar admitted he could "never get the numbers" needed to block it.

5 This means that by now the findings of the Goldstone Report, which found Israel responsible for "serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law," should have been their way to the UN Security Council, whose resolutions are legally binding. This would have hopefully led to a probe of war crimes in the International Criminal Court, something Israel and the United States have clearly opposed since the release of the report.

It is certainly not surprising that the United States could have put extreme pressure on the Palestinians to neutralize the report by requesting a postponement on its vote. This is the American way when it comes to Israel's treatment of the Palestinians. It is also no wonder that Israel would use every trick in the book to twist the Palestinians' arm, including holding a contract for the launching of Al Wataniya Mobile Company ransom should Palestinians refuse to drop their endorsement of the October 2 vote on the report. These are so-called "enemies" and the Palestinians expect only the worst from them.

No, what is so hard to swallow, what cuts painfully deep, is the possibility that our own leadership, those who vowed to fight side by side with us in our struggle for freedom, could be accomplices to this undermining of justice. What's more, those in favour of the decision continue to insist that the move is in the best interests of our people.

None of the arguments hold any water for the majority of the people, especially those in Gaza who have been waiting for months for some justice to prevail. The Goldstone Report should have gone to vote, plain and simple. The fact that it was deferred until next March is simply abominable, especially if the leadership had a hand in it. To quote a coalition of 16 Palestinian human rights and legal organizations that condemned the postponement decision, "Justice delayed is justice denied."

Joharah Baker is a Writer for the Media and Information Program at the Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy (MIFTAH). She can be contacted at [email protected].

4. What are the chances of a third Palestinian Intifada? Reuters article in Haaretz, 5/10/2009 http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1118700.html

Peace talks with Israel are in deadlock and tear gas and rocks are flying at Jerusalem's holy sites, but for all the mounting frustration in the West Bank talk of a Third Intifada seems premature to most Palestinians. While Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has limited options in pressing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for a peace deal, few see him turning to the kind of suicide bombings and other attacks seen under his late predecessor Yasser Arafat. Spontaneous unrest among angry crowds may be more likely.

Mohammad Dahlan, a senior figure in the "young guard" of Abbas's Fatah party and a former security force commander, said he was wary that a new uprising would only harm Palestinians:

"If Netanyahu believes he wants to maintain the occupation as it is, to expand settlements and then expect peace from us, then this will not be acceptable," Dahlan told Reuters.

6 "We may resort to popular action or civil action. We have an open mind on all legitimate methods permitted by international law. But we won't push the Palestinian people into a disaster."

A week after Israeli forces clashed with hundreds of Arabs who believed settlers were trying to enter the al-Aqsa mosque compound, there were scuffles again on Sunday and tension will remain high this week during holidays that draw Jewish worshippers to the Western Wall, close to the mosque.

After the violence the previous Sunday, Palestinian leaders accused Israel of trying to sink U.S. President Barack Obama's efforts to relaunch peace talks and compared it to a visit to the site in September 2000 by Israeli right-winger Ariel Sharon. That sparked what was dubbed the al-Aqsa Intifada, or uprising.

However, analysts and officials in the West Bank and East Jerusalem cited a number of factors likely to curb renewed violence in the near term, despite anger at Netanyahu, Sharon's right-wing successor, and with the settlers whose expansion drive he has defended.

"There is a state of disengagement between the people and its political leadership so people are not ready to sacrifice as they did before," said Zakaria al-Qaq of al-Quds University.

"At the same time there is a build-up of anger that is waiting for the spark. No one can predict when the spark will come. But it could take years yet."

Factors mentioned include disillusion that 4,000 Palestinians deaths in the years of uprising since 2000 have brought few benefits, while Israel has walled off the West Bank and closed the Israeli job market to Palestinians.

The schism that has seen Islamist Hamas seize the Gaza Strip and being suppressed in the West Bank by new, Western-trained security forces loyal to Abbas is also likely to limit organised violence from the West Bank against Israel.

Israeli police hauled away Palestinian youths, some only in their early teens, after stones and bottles flew in Jerusalem's Old City on Sunday. But the new generation, successors to the young men who spearheaded the rock-throwing of the First Intifada of the late 1980s and to the gunmen of nearly a decade ago, seems divided.

"Israel is fueling tensions that will explode later," said Raed Abed, a 17-year-old student in the southern West Bank city of Hebron. "No one can predict what will happen."

But his schoolmate Husam Sameh forecast no explosions for now: "Enough of fighting. We need to live in peace. We cannot fight Israel. We are so weak," he said.

"Still, the question is whether Israel is ready for peace."

Analyst Hani Masri said sporadic and largely spontaneous demonstrations that turn into clashes like those this past week in Jerusalem may become more common.

7 But he said: "The wariness among the people about popular resistance is greater than before, following the huge losses they suffered in the Second Intifada.

"Israel has used the Second Intifada as an excuse to build the wall and to avoid committing to signed agreements. Palestinians should not give them this excuse again."

Samir Awad, a political science professor at Birzeit University, said: "It would be a mistake to expect a popular wave of protest. I cannot see it happening.

"But if Israeli provocations in Jerusalem continue, we may expect clashes arising from religious and patriotic emotion."

5. Time to re-engage with people power Saree Makdisi, The Electronic Intifada, 5 October 2009 http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10811.shtml

Palestinians and others are still absorbing and thinking through the implications of the Palestinian Authority's decision to withdraw its support for the Goldstone report on Israel's assault on Gaza last winter. The 575-page Report of the UN Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, which was led by South African judge Richard Goldstone, confirmed the already densely documented reports published by human rights organizations that systematically confirmed Palestinian claims that Israel had committed grave breaches of international humanitarian law during the Gaza assault, including crimes against humanity (not least the sealing off an entire civilian population from the outside world, denying it the ability to flee to safety, and then subjecting that same, defenseless, shelterless population -- most of it composed of children -- to an indiscriminate round-the-clock bombardment).

Nevertheless, as Professor Richard Falk (the UN's Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights Situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories) points out, the Goldstone report could have provided a basis for referring Israel's conduct during the war in Gaza to the International Criminal Court or other international courts, or to the establishment of a war crimes tribunal along the lines of those established after the catastrophes of Bosnia and Rwanda. That would have been the best way to finally hold Israel accountable.

The process of referral depended, however, on obtaining a vote within the UN to have the Goldstone report referred to the Security Council for further deliberation, the creation of a war crimes tribunal, and so on. And all of that depended in turn on the support of Palestinian diplomats appointed by and accountable to Mahmoud Abbas, so-called President of the Palestinian Authority ("so-called" because his term of office, such as it was, expired almost a year ago).

But it is now clear that the Palestinian team representing Abbas at the UN (for they certainly do not represent the Palestinian people) has, on his instructions, dropped its support for the resolution that might have set the legal machinery of the international judicial system in motion. Other states can hardly be expected to stand up to US pressure and support a resolution on behalf of Palestinian rights that the Palestinian delegation itself is unwilling to support. Why should Venezuela or Nigeria or Pakistan be more Palestinian than the Palestinians?

8

Reports have been circulating in the Arab, Israeli and European media that Abbas and his associates may have been prompted to take this extraordinary action because Israel had been threatening, had they continued with their support of the UN resolution, to withhold its release of a share of the radio spectrum that would have allowed the creation of a new Palestinian mobile phone company, Wataniyya: the product of a joint venture between Qatari investors and the Palestine Investment Fund, to which Abbas himself and one of his wealthy sons have personal connections. Palestinians have suggested that simple corruption and cronyism may have motivated Abbas's decision. The PA and the circle of officials attached to it have certainly had their share of corruption charges -- most shockingly, perhaps, when Ahmed Qureia, then the so-called Prime Minister of the PA (again, "so-called" because prime ministers usually have countries to govern, and the PA is anything but a country), was accused of selling cement to the Israelis to build their wall in the West Bank. The corruption of the PA and the narrow circle of Fatah party officials running it, clinging to it, and benefiting from it, is one of the main reasons why Fatah was swept from office in the 2006 Palestinian elections in favor of Hamas. Most people then were voting against Fatah and its corruption and general hopelessness, rather than for Hamas (which had, and has, little to offer other than simply not being Fatah: a credit which goes only so far).

It's possible, of course, that corruption and cronyism were not the motivating factors for Abbas's decision to withdraw Palestinian support for the Goldstone report. There are two other possibilities.

One of these is simple incompetence: that Abbas and his associates are so lacking in intelligence, imagination and political skill that they just bungled the whole affair. This is certainly not out of the question: Abbas himself is an extraordinarily unprepossessing and profoundly compromised man, and his circle of associates -- including men like Mohammed Dahlan and Saeb Erekat -- hardly inspire any more confidence than Abbas himself. Quite apart from their sheer disregard for Palestinian suffering in Gaza (seeking redress for which ought to be their main priority), it ought to be clear that a party to a negotiation that wantonly throws a rarely-held card out of the window while attempting (or at least claiming) to negotiate is, to put it mildly, not qualified to negotiate in the first place, let alone to claim to "lead" a defiant and unvanquished people like the Palestinians. If the Ramallah leadership is really as hopelessly incompetent as this scenario would have it, that's reason enough for their removal from office, if not the dissolution of the PA itself. (It's difficult, though, to "dismiss from office" someone like Abbas who is not actually in office in the first place -- he is there because the Israelis and the Americans want him to be there, because the election for his successor after his term expired has been deferred at the behest of Washington and Tel Aviv, and not because he holds any legitimate mandate from the Palestinian people themselves, the overwhelming majority of whom have no faith in him whatsoever, as opinion polls have regularly found).

Another -- and I think more likely -- possibility is that Abbas, the PA and the essentially defunct Palestine Liberation Organization are not (and never were, at least since the time of Yasser Arafat's death) interested in serious negotiations with Israel that could have led to the creation of a genuine Palestinian state in the occupied territories. After all, one of the main criticisms of the Oslo accords of 1993-95 which created the PA, is that, far from ending Israel's occupation of Palestinian territory, they merely served to shift the day-to- day burden and cost of administering the occupation to the newly-established PA, while

9 allowing Israel to go on demolishing Palestinian homes, expropriating Palestinian land and building Jewish colonies in the occupied territories in contravention of international law. Oslo formally separated the three main chunks of Palestinian territory that Israel has occupied since 1967 (Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem) from each other and the outside world, and, additionally, broke the West Bank itself into Areas A, B and C. It was only in Area A (about 18 percent of the total) that the PA had any kind of practical presence on the ground, and in Area C (60 percent of the West Bank), the PA had no role or presence at all -- and that's where Israel was (and still is) busy demolishing, expropriating and building. Oslo and the PA, in other words, far from ending the occupation and laying the basis for the creation of an independent Palestinian state, actually allowed Israel to consolidate the occupation and further cement its grip on Palestinian land. Which is exactly why the population of Jewish colonists in the West Bank and East Jerusalem doubled during the period of Oslo and has been increasing ever since -- and today numbers almost half a million.

As this latest episode so amply demonstrates, the PA serves Israel by facilitating the occupation -- which is why Israel invented it in the first place, just as, historically speaking, colonial powers have always attempted to create or coerce local elites into helping them deal with the population at large. This approach is perhaps most gracefully summarized in Macaulay's Minute on Indian Education of 1835: "We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and color, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect." Why would the PA want to bring to an end an arrangement from which it benefits? As the French scholar Regis Debray points out, the status quo provides the PA elites in Ramallah "with a living, status, dignity and a raison d'etre," and probably (e.g., if the mobile phone contract rumors prove to be true) much more in the way of emoluments besides that.

Even if one were to grant the PA and Abbas and his associates the benefit of the doubt, and say that they really have their people's best interests at heart, it still remains the case that the PA, even under the best-case scenario, can claim to represent only a minority of the Palestinian people, since only a minority of Palestinians live in the occupied territories. The majority live either in the exile imposed on them by force during the creation of Israel in 1948, or (in the case of those Palestinians who survived that year's ethnic cleansing and remained) as second-class, non-Jewish citizens of the would-be Jewish state, which systematically discriminates against them simply because they are not Jewish.

These, then, are the possibilities before us: not only does the PA not represent the Palestinian people, it is also, on top of that, either corrupt to an almost unimaginable level; or it is profoundly incompetent and guilty of squandering the rights and hopes of a people that it is not entitled to claim to lead; or it is interested not in its people's rights and hopes but rather in perpetuating its own status as the day-to-day caretaker of a permanent Israeli occupation -- in which case it is no less collaborationist than the Vichy "government" of Nazi-occupied France in the 1940s. Corruption; incompetence; collaboration: ah, the agony of choice.

It is unlikely that Abbas and his associates will declare the "independence" of a Palestinian state in the occupied territories, as has been suggested by the current so-called Palestinian Prime Minister, Salam Fayyad -- another man whose claim to office has no

10 legitimacy, since his arbitrary appointment, by Abbas, to replace the legitimately elected Hamas leadership (whatever one thinks of it) was never confirmed by the Palestinian Legislative Council, many of the members of which are in Israeli jails. But even if an "independent" state were declared, it ought to be clearer than ever that such a "state" would offer Palestinians only more of the same choices (corruption, compromise, collaboration), while continuing to serve Israel's interests, if not actually to take direct orders from Washington and Tel Aviv.

In any case, the Palestinian cause is a struggle for freedom and justice, not for the creation of a statelet in the occupied territories that would, as I said -- even in the best circumstances -- only address the interests of that minority of the Palestinian people who live there.

What, then, are we to conclude from all this?

Above all, that no Palestinian ought to look to the official leadership as a source of guidance and direction. It has betrayed the people and proved itself totally unworthy of their trust -- indeed, many Palestinians, including Abdelbari Atwan, editor of the Al-Quds Al-Arabi newspaper, are demanding that those behind this recent decision be apprehended and put on trial. And of course with a leadership this corrupt, inept or collaborationist, Palestinians can hardly expect better treatment from Washington and Tel Aviv than they are getting from Ramallah. And the Hamas opposition and its alternative leadership has little more to offer in the long run other than resistance for the sake of resistance, which is not, in itself, a blueprint for freedom and justice, and in any case has nothing to offer to Christian or secular Palestinians (and hardly much more than that to offer Muslim ones either, for that matter).

The second immediate conclusion to be drawn from this experience is that, as more and more Palestinians are demanding, the PA ought to be dissolved once and for all -- the sooner, the better. This latest action really ought to be the last in a long and dismal record proving that the PA has not only failed to serve the interests of the Palestinian people, but that, on the contrary, it fundamentally serves the needs and requirements of Israel.

Bereft of any credible or legitimate leadership, the Palestinian people will have to look to themselves to continue their struggle for freedom, justice and equality. Indeed, their struggle has been at its best, for example, during the first intifada of the 1980s, when the official leadership -- at the time in exile in Tunis -- was actually least involved in it. No wonder, then, that the Israeli response to the grassroots autonomy of the first intifada was to usher the official leadership back into Palestine; the first intifada then stalled, and things have gone downhill ever since.

In looking for a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, then, we should once and for all stop looking to governments and officials (elected or otherwise), in the US, Israel, or among the Palestinians themselves. As the Obama Administration has already demonstrated, the US government, in the present political conjuncture, will never put peace and justice in Palestine ahead of internal domestic pressures and politics; the Israeli government will not for one moment back down from its continually expanding colonization plan in the West Bank and East Jerusalem until it is compelled by outside pressure to do otherwise; and the Palestinian government -- well, there is no such thing. There is a people living partly under military occupation; partly in enforced exile; and

11 partly as a racialized and discriminated-against minority inside Israel. What they need is to refocus their struggle in ways that they can all identify with, collectively and equally, and, moreover, in ways that people of good will around the world -- who have repeatedly demonstrated in their tens of thousands in support of justice for Palestine -- can as well.

Indeed, the Palestinians are not alone: they have the support of people around the entire world. And it is to that reserve of good will and good faith among ordinary people around the world that the Palestinians must look. As the struggle against apartheid in South Africa demonstrated, governments not only can, but do, act, when ordinary people of good will make them act. In fact, even as governments have dithered, a vibrant global campaign to boycott, divest from, and impose sanctions on Israel in order to bring it into compliance with international law and in order to realize the rights of the Palestinian people (all of it) has been recording one success after another, reminding us all that boycotts really do work.

This is the direction in which all Palestinians, bereft of leadership, must now throw themselves. And their demand must be something that addresses and unifies the rights of all segments of the Palestinian people, not just those suffering under occupation, as well as addressing and recognizing the rights of Jewish Israelis -- something that most decent people in the world can readily identify with: justice, equality, one person, one vote: in other words, the creation of one democratic and secular state in which Palestinians and Israelis can live equally in a just and lasting peace. For without justice there will be no peace.

Saree Makdisi is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at UCLA and the author of Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation. His website is http://sareemakdisi.net/.

6. In Jerusalem, some Arabs migrate to Jewish areas

Ben Hubbard, AP, 3/10/2009 (Richmond times dispatch) http://www2.timesdispatch.com/rtd/lifestyles/health_med_fit/article/I- JERU0906_20091001-185003/296805/

JERUSALEM -- Yousef Majlaton moved into the Jerusalem neighborhood of Pisgat Zeev for such comforts as proper running water and regular garbage pickup. But he represents a potentially volatile twist in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute over the holy city.

The hillside sprawl of town houses and apartment blocks was built for Jews, and Majlaton is a Palestinian.

Pisgat Zeev is part of Israel's effort to fortify its presence in Jerusalem's eastern half, which it captured in the 1967 war.

But Majlaton, his wife and three kids are among thousands who have crossed the housing lines to Pisgat Zeev and neighborhoods like it in a migration that is raising tempers among some Jewish residents.

12 It wasn't so much the politics of this contested city that drew Majlaton to Pisgat Zeev; it was the prospect of escaping the potholed roads and scant municipal services he endured for 19 years while renting in an Arab neighborhood.

"You see that air conditioner?" he said, pointing to the large wall unit cooling his living room. "In the Arab areas, the electricity is too weak to run one that big."

Majlaton, 50, says some Jewish neighbors are warming up to him, but the influx bothers others, who say they are thinking of moving out or refuse to sell or rent to Arabs.

This is much more than a simple matter of real estate. Demographics could figure heavily in how Jerusalem is partitioned in a future peace deal. If that happens, it is expected the city would be split along ethnic lines -- Jewish neighborhoods to Israel, Arab neighborhoods to Palestine.

Palestinians see east Jerusalem as their future capital. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vows the whole city will remain united as Israel's capital. Palestinians have long accused those among them who sell land to Jews of betraying their homeland, and recently similar language was heard from a group of rabbis.

In 2007, the latest year with available statistics, about 1,300 of Pisgat Zeev's 42,000 residents were Arabs. In nearby French Hill, population 7,000, nearly one-sixth are Arabs, among them students at the neighboring Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Weeks after the 1967 war, Israel annexed east Jerusalem with its major Jewish, Muslim and Christian holy sites in a move recognized by no other country. It continues to build housing in sensitive areas in defiance of U.S. protests.

Netanyahu has said Arabs have the right to live anywhere in the city, and so should Jews, though the Old City's Jewish Quarter is closed to Arabs.

Jerusalem's mayor and city councilors are all Jewish. Almost all the city's Arabs refuse to vote or run in municipal elections, saying that would be recognition of Israeli rule. But it deprives them of clout in competition for city spending.

Today, while west Jerusalem is overwhelmingly Jewish, the eastern half is an ethnic checkerboard. More than 180,000 Jews live there, most in places like Pisgat Zeev but also in enclaves in Arab areas. Nearly all the city's 220,000 Palestinians live in eastern neighborhoods.

Ironically, much of the Arab migration was set off by the separation barrier that Israel started building through the West Bank in 2002 during a wave of suicide bombings. Its Jerusalem segment meanders to scoop up as many Jewish areas as possible and make several Arab neighborhoods a part of the West Bank.

The wall stranded tens of thousands of Jerusalem Arabs on the "West Bank side," and many moved to Arab neighborhoods on the Jerusalem side for easier access to jobs and schools. But a housing shortage in those districts is pushing the overflow into Jewish areas, residents and real estate agents said. These areas are "less crowded, you can live in a house, and there are streets, parks and places to play," said Moukhless Abu el-Hof, an

13 Israeli Arab lawyer who owns a home in Pisgat Zeev. "In the Arab neighborhoods, there's nothing."

Jewish resident Shlomi Cohen, 37, said the Arab influx made him sell up and move elsewhere in Pisgat Zeev. "If an Arab comes to live in the building and someone wants to buy and he knows there is an Arab there, he will not buy," he said.

Yael Antebi, editor of the Pisgat Zeev community newspaper and a Jerusalem city council member, said Arab and Jewish teens sometimes brawl, Arab youths often harass Jewish girls, and parents fear their daughters will date Arabs.

Majlaton and his wife are both Hebrew-speaking Christians. He said his new neighbors cold-shouldered them when they arrived in 2002 but gradually became friendlier.

He said he has since helped about 30 Arab families to move in and gets calls from prospective renters almost every day.

While his primary motivation was quality of life, he says living in Pisgat Zeev is "a nationalistic act" -- a way to cement an Arab presence in the city of his birth.

He said Palestinian leaders should follow his lead.

"They should bring all the Arabs to Pisgat Zeev," he said. "I'll help them find homes one by one."

7. Prior to a Settlement Freeze: the Race for Construction “Starts” is On! - October 2009

Peace Now Settlement Reports, 1/10/2009 http://www.peacenow.org.il/site/en/peace.asp?pi=61&docid=4418

Laying the Foundations for Around 800 Housing Units Peace Now research shows that in the last three months the race is on in many settlements to make a start in construction. Today in around 34 settlements work is taking place to lay the foundation and make construction starts - 16 of these settlements are found east of the Separation Barrier.Peace Now estimates that the infrastructure works currently taking place in the settlements are for a total of 800 housing units (about 300 east of the fence and 500 west). In addition, some 55 buildings are in the process of being completed and another 50 have their foundations laid.

List of settlements where the infrastructure or construction works are taking place: Tko'a, Shilo, Kiryat Arba, Nokdim, Maskiyot, Kochav Hashchar, Ma'ale Michmash, Avnei Hefetz, Ma'ale Shomron, Ma'on, Oranit, Alon, Alon Shvut, Alonei Shilo, El'azar, Beitar Illit, Barqan, Givat Ze'ev, Dolev, Har Gilo, Talmon, Yitzhar, Kochav Ya'akov, Kfar Adumim, Kfar Etzion, Carmel, Mevo Horon, Matityahu, Na'aleh, Etz Efraim (Elkanah), Pedu'el, Tzofim, Kedar, Kalia

Prior to any freeze – the race begins! According to media reports, the agreement being formulated between Netanyahu and the Americans over freezing settlement construction refers to the construction new buildings.

14 Those that have already begun their construction (2,400 units reportedly), will be considered facts on the ground and not part of the freeze. In light of such an agreement the settlers are working fast to produce many construction “starts” as possible, resulting in that these new housing units will be counted as "existing" settlements, and not be included in any future agreed upon freeze.

Preparing the ground for construction does not require approval of the Minister of Defense. Minister of Defense must approve any stage of the planning and execution of construction in the settlements. After all the planning stages, the explicit authorization of the Minister of Defense is required to open up the piece of land for marketing, with the Civil Administration, responsible for managing public land in the occupied territories, signing a development contract with an entrepreneur or a potential buyer. The next stage of preparing the ground for infrastructure work can be done without the approval of Defense Minister. In many projects, infrastructure and development works are carried out by local authorities and the Ministry of Housing. An approved project can start infrastructure work even before the marketing stage, ie without the approval of the Minister of Defense. Only at the stage when they want to sell the lots for construction, they will need the approval of the Defense Minister. Therefore, in order to freeze construction to be effective, it is not enough to avoid new authorization on the part of the Defense Minister. An active freeze will require a government ban on all construction work, including infrastructure works in the settlements.

8. Jerusalem Palestinians defining their own future Jerrold Kessel and Pierre Klochendler, The Electronic Intifada, 29/09/ 2009 http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10801.shtml

OCCUPIED EAST JERUSALEM (IPS) - Almost a year ago a barely noticed event took place in Sawarha, a Palestinian neighborhood in the Israeli-occupied part of the city.

On that November day, Israeli Jerusalemites were voting in a new mayor and a new city council.

On that same day, in this neighborhood home to 25,000, people were ignoring the Israeli- run elections. Instead, they were focused on electing their own local council.

Even though Israel annexed the eastern sector of the city in 1967, Palestinians have had no right to vote in Israel's national elections. But Israel allows them to vote in the five-year municipal elections as "residents of Jerusalem."

Last November, as in past elections, no more than a few hundred out of the tens of thousands of eligible Palestinian voters chose to exercise that right. It would have been tantamount to acquiescence in the occupation.

Sawarha's "election day" is a landmark, Palestinians taking their daily life into their own hands -- irrespective of what Israel does.

15 All the more of a potential turning point, now that the future of East Jerusalem has begun to figure large in the new drive by the Obama Administration that aims to secure a "comprehensive" Palestinian-Israeli peace. And, with the president insisting that the two sides re-engage in talks "next month," with Jerusalem on the table as well.

Most Jerusalem Palestinians were born or grew up during the occupation.

The alternative Sawarha election reflects a new mindset. Here, Palestinians have begun to act in order to counter an overwhelming feeling that they've been kept too long in limbo -- squeezed between Israelis' claim that "United Jerusalem" will forever be their capital, and the counter national claim of Palestinians that East Jerusalem must be the capital of their future state.

"We are not forsaking our national aspirations for Jerusalem but, frankly, time has run out on high political promises that change will come," says Mohammad Nakhal, a community coordinator in several neighborhoods that are slated to be part of a future Palestinian capital.

"We need to start taking care of ourselves, of our interests," he adds, "because no one else has -- and, no one else will." Mohammad's credo found fulfillment in the Sawarhah poll. He's working to apply this "model" to other neighborhoods.

Voted out summarily in Sawarha was the old guard who had put their trust either in a political two-city solution advocated by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) or in Islamic leaders close to Hamas. Old-style sheikhs and clan heads were also sidelined.

The winning list garnered some 95 percent of the vote. They represent a cross-section of dynamic entrepreneurs and community activists. The vote was officially billed as an election for the "Parents Schools Association" (so as not to draw the ire of the Israeli authorities who might have suspected an ulterior nationalist motive).

The victors were voted in not on the base of vague promises of "better days" heralded by a future political solution, nor on staunch opposition to Israel. What won them the confidence of voters were down-to-earth credentials that have improved the community's lot.

Naim Awisat, 38, heads the list. Even prior to the election, he was among a group of businessmen who had taken the bold initiative to rectify the abysmal public transportation situation in East Jerusalem. Until they moved, there was no proper bus service for Palestinians at all.

They approached the Israeli Ministry of Transport and won approval to operate their own private bus lines. Now, instead of the previous "anarchy on our roads" says Mohammad, who was also among those who planned the new bus network, "our people can travel safely all around East Jerusalem."

The walled Old City with its holy sites is now linked to the southern part of the "Holy Basin" (where Sawarha is located) by 17 buses and mini-buses that run regularly on Naim's No. 5 and 5a lines.

During a bumpy ride on a bumpy road dating back to pre-1967 days (which Israel has never

16 repaired), he tells us: "We're not talking politics at all. Our purpose is simply to improve our lives -- in education, infrastructure, sanitation -- in everything that's basic."

Both Naim and Mohammad recognize that their initiatives could be exploited by the Israeli authorities looking for ways to consolidate their grip on East Jerusalem. And, that it could also help Israel -- as the occupying authority -- thwart the international charge that it purposefully evades its responsibilities to the city's Palestinians.

But given the neglect of over 40 years, it's a risk worth taking, they believe.

Entrenched Palestinian attitudes in East Jerusalem have long fallen between the stools of waiting for the occupiers to provide, and wasting in neglect as they don't. "One thing's for sure -- we can't simply go on forever hanging our hopes on a political agreement, or for the occupation just to fade away," says Naim.

He points out an elderly man sitting a rear seat of the bus: "You may want to talk to him; for decades, he's been representing Fatah [the primary Palestinian national party] here. We ousted them in the election," he adds wryly.

What does the veteran politico think of the mini transport revolution -- does it compromise Palestinian interests?

The line is evasive, but categorical: "As occupiers, they have the duty to provide services."

"But Israel doesn't ..." we persist.

He sticks to the line about the "duty" of the occupiers. And yet again, as we prod him further whether Naim's buses might not offer succor to the continuation of the occupation.

Naim isn't impressed: "We've heard that so many times. It's old hat. Some even charge that we're collaborating. But sticking to hide-bound principles has given us nothing -- it's just left us in limbo.

"Most people are fed up with the nonsense of the past," he continues. "Today, we, young guys, have a different attitude. We see things differently. It's got nothing to do with living under occupation."

"Rulers come and go, after all," interjects Mohammad, "but we're staying. To anyone who brands us with doing something untoward when all we're doing is, at last, looking after ourselves, we say: Remember we're here in the motherland -- and we're not going anywhere."

A quarter of a million Palestinians live in the city compared to the Jewish population of around half a million. Around 200,000 of the Jewish residents live in East Jerusalem, in new Israeli settlements built since 1967 in the wake of the annexation across the internationally-recognized dividing line between the western (Israeli) and eastern (Arab) part of the city.

17 9. Tensions flare in East Jerusalem after clash on Old City plateau sacred to Muslims and Jews Marian Houk, The Amercian Chronicle29/09/ 2009 http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/view/121136

Tensions continue -- among Palestinians, at least -- after disturbances the mosque esplanade in the Old City of East Jerusalem on Sunday, despite the imposed calm for the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur observed this year from Sunday night through Monday night.

There were minor disturbances reported in several East Jerusalem neighborhoods and in Bethlehem.

Palestinian negotiator Sa'eb Erekat -- who has recently been elected as a member of the Fatah Central Committee and subsequently of the Palestine Liberation Organization's Executive Committee -- issued a statement condemning what he said was the determination of Israeli settlers "to destroy Jerusalem as it once was, an open and multicultural city, and home to the world´s three great monotheistic faiths... Israel´s actions are both illegal and are designed to make Jerusalem a 'united city' for Israeli settlers only, while Israel continues to target the city's Christian and Muslim population".

Erekat was particularly critical of "Providing a police escort for settlers who are against peace at all costs, and whose presence is deliberately designed to provoke a reaction".

In Ramallah on Monday, a press conference was convened at the Palestinian Authority Ministry of Information, where East Jerusalem Fatah activist Hatem Abdel Qader (Eid) told journalists that he had protested to the BBC Arabic service correspondent over the BBC's portrayal of Sunday's events as a clash between religious Jews and Muslims. Abdel Qader -- who had arrived at the mosque esplanade at the time but was presented with a police order banning him from the site -- said that about 20 "settlers" entered, under the protection of Israeli forces, from the Bab al-Maghariba (Moroccan Gate) which is accessed from a ramp rising from the plaza in front of the Western Wall. After just a couple of minutes, according to Abdel Qader, the "settlers" left, and the Israeli forces then attacked Palestinians who had gathered for prayers.

Also speaking at Monday's press conference in Ramallah were the chief Islamic Judge appointed by the Palestinian Authority, Sheikh Taysiir Tamimi, and the Palestinian Authority Deputy Minister of Information, Mutawakkel Taha.

The Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, Archbishop Atallah Hanna, was also scheduled to attend the press conference in Ramallah, but was unable to make it due to the Israeli closure of roads between East and West Jerusalem for Yom Kippur. Instead, as Ma'an News Agency reported, he issued a statement saying that "as Christian Palestinians and Jerusalemites, cannot keep watching with our hands folded in the face of what happened today ... Today it is Al-Aqsa; tomorrow it will be the Church of the Holy Sepulcher'."

Sheikh Tamimi called for a demonstration in defense of Al-Aqsa mosque to take place following next Friday's prayers.

18 (Palestinians from the West Bank are subject to restrictions and have great difficulty in passing through Israeli checkpoints in order to travel to Jerusalem to pray at Al-Aqsa mosques, and it is currently almost impossible for Palestinians from Gaza to reach Jerusalem.)

Mutawakkel Taha told journalists that a commission of inquiry established after disturbances during the British Mandate had determined that the Western Wall belonged to the Islamic Waqf. He said it did not belong to the Jews.

Israel officials have complained about Palestinian statements that appear to deny the Jewish attachment to the Western Wall.

Both Taha and Abdel Qader spoke about Israeli excavations under the Haram As-Sharif, and Taha complained about the recent construction of a Jewish synagogue in one of the tunnels that run alongside and under the Western Wall.

This underground synagogue was also mentioned in a leaked report, dated December 2008, and written by the European heads of delegation in East Jerusalem and in Ramallah, which stated: "Links between settlement expansion and the excavation of 'archaeological tunnels' in sensitive areas are of particular concern. These private or quasi-private entities have obtained sovereign responsibilities for excavation activities in several religiously sensitive areas of the Holy Basin, including at the Mughrabi Gate, under the Damascus Gate, around the Western Wall and in Silwan. These privatised, and often opaque, practices risk undermining the archaeological status quo in and around the Old City, as well as contributing to increasing distrust and tensions between the religious communities in the city. Those ongoing projects are oblivious to Christian and Muslim holy sites. Although they do not directly harm those holy sites, they threaten their viability, integrity and the public domain in their immediate vicinity. UNESCO has continuously encouraged Israel to abide by international declarations on the protection of World Heritage under occupation.[xvii] In this manner, archaeology is becoming an ideologically motivated tool of national and religious struggle carried out in a manner that modifies the identity and character of the city and threatens to undermine its stability. In January 2008 excavations commenced towards the construction of a synagogue in the Western Wall tunnel, seven meters under the Muslim quarter, at the level of the Roman era road. It is immediately adjacent to the Haram Al Sharif/Temple Mount. The Israeli Antiquities Authorities are deeply involved in its planning and construction. In 2008 the building of The Ohel Yitzhak synagogue started on the Western Wall Plaza, in the immediate vicinity of the Haram Al Sharif/Temple Mount. A tunnel already being dug will connect this synagogue to the Western Wall tunnel".

The EU report also stated that "Incursions into the Haram Al Sharif on the Temple Mount by radical settler groups have increased in 2008. Particularly during the Jewish high holiday season, settlers paraded on the Haram compound on a frequent basis, sometimes with protection from Israeli security forces, in what appeared to be a show of strength, sometimes leading to clashes with Palestinians".

And, the EU report said, "Israel effectively exercises a veto on who enters the compound. Cameras have been placed at the entrance of the other gates to the Haram Al-Sharif, pointing inwards towards the compound, and Israeli Security personnel are stationed at the entrance to all of the gates determining who is granted access. In addition, by their

19 control of the Mughrabi gate, Israel imposes an unregulated influx of tourists on the Haram without prior negotiation with the Waqf, the Jordanian Islamic authority with jurisdiction over the compound".

Indeed, as Hatem Abdel Qader noted in today's press conference, the clash on Sunday was sparked by the visit of religious Jews accompanied by Israeli armed forces who arrived via the controversially-reconstructed ramp rising from the Western Wall plaza up to the Moroccan (Mughrabi) gate -- the only entrance to the mosque esplanade that is designated for non-Muslim visitors (including Jews). The EU Heads of Mission report noted that "In 2005 Israel announced the construction of a new ramp at the Mughrabi gate, ostensibly to improve access for tourists but strong and wide enough to support security vehicles. Work began, despite the protests of the Waqf. The Israeli regional planning board decided in July 2008 to amend the initial project in order to retain all historical strata or archaeological remains lying under the planned new ramp – including remains of the modern Mughrabi quarter - and not to build a synagogue in that place, as initially planned. However, the planning procedure is still ongoing, and one might fear that -– even if the current policy is being retained – the Western Wall prayer area might be extended in the vicinity of the new ramp, instead of highlighting the Muslim remains. The Islamic authority also fear that a hidden agenda of the Western Wall Heritage Fund might change the pattern of movement through the Mughrabi gate and increase the access of Israelis on the Haram Al Sharif/Temple Mount without prior coordination with the Waqf".

In the wake of the June 1967 war, Israel's then Minister of Defense Moshe Dayan agreed that the Waqf (Islamic Trust) would retain authority on the mosque esplanade, while Israeli authorities would control the Western Wall.

On Sunday, within hours of the latest clash, the Palestinian Authority Minister for Waqf Affairs Mahmoud Habaash told jouralists in Ramallah that the UN Security Council should meet on the matter.

The Mughrabi quarter was a densely-populated neighborhood that was cleared and almost totally razed by Israel after its conquest of the Old City in the June 1967 war. Its nearly 1,000 inhabitants were suddenly evicted, and many were rehoused in the Shuafat Refugee Camp constructed by UNRWA. Shuafat Refugee Camp used to be known as the only official Palestinian refugee camp in Jerusalem. Now, it has been cut off from Jerusalem by the Israeli extension of The Wall in the East Jerusalem area, and residents with Jerusalem permits have to enter and exit daily through two prison-like checkpoints.

The issue of Jewish worship on the mosque esplanade is also a matter of Jewish theologically controversy: the Rabbis of the Western Wall have continuously opposed Jewish visits to the Haram as-Sharif, on the grounds that uncertainty about where the Jewish Temple once stood might lead to violation of particularly sacred spots such as the Inner Sanctum, Holy of Holies, or altar of sacrifice. According to this theological view, there is a particular prohibition on Jewish prayer on this site. However, in recent years, rabbis connected to the national religious movement closely allied with the settler movement have taken a contrary position, and urged Jewish visits. There is also a Jewish group advocating the rebuilding of the Temple on the mosque esplanade itself.

20 In today's press conference, the three Palestinian speakers expressed fears that Sunday's "break-in" was a direct attempt to change the status quo -- and to partition Al-Aqsa mosque (and perhaps the Dome of the Rock as well) between Muslim and Jewish worshippers, as has happened to the very important Ibrahimi mosque in Hebron, where Abraham and his wife Sarah are among those believed to have been buried.

In February 1994, at dawn prayers during Ramadan, American-Israeli settler Baruch Goldstein entered the Ibrahimi mosque and gunned down Palestinians at prayer, killing over twenty. He was himself beaten to death in reprisal, and his grave at the Kiryat Arba settlement overlooking Hebron is now a site of some religious-nationalist pilgrimage.

Israeli armed forces maintains tight control over entry to the Ibrahimi mosque, which is now effectively partitioned. Because the final days of Ramadan and the beginning of the Eid holiday this year coincided with the Jewish New Year (Rosh Hashona), the Ibrahimi mosque was reportedly closed to Muslim worshippers in order to allow secured Jewish access.

The EU Heads of Mission report noted that "Israel´s actions in and around Jerusalem constitute one of the most acute challenges to Israeli-Palestinian peace making". And the report said that "The EU opposes measures that would prejudice the outcome of Permanent Status Negotiations, consigned to the third phase of the Road Map, such as actions aimed at changing the status of East Jerusalem".

There had been prior publicity about the intended visit, on the eve of Yom Kippur. A small number of Palestinians had come to defend Al-Aqsa and the Dome of the Rock, two mosques on the Haram as-Sharif mosque compound, which Jews call the Temple Mount (it is believed to have been the site of the second and parhaps also the first Jewish Temples). The Western Wall (also called the Wailing Wall) is believed to be all that remains -- on the surface, at least -- of the Jewish temple(s).

Hatem Abdel Qader told journalists on Monday that Palestinians had found messages (publicity, flyers, posters) all over Israel (and in West Bank settlements?) calling on Jews to come to join the "break-in" on the Temple Mount in the days preceeding Sunday's disturbances.

Abdel Qader was for over a year the adviser on Jerusalem Affairs for the Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, and who then served for a brief time as Minister for Jerusalem Affairs before resigning in early July in a move that has not yet been fully explained. The reported explanation: the resignation was an act of protest because of the lack of Palestinian Authority support for Palestinians in East Jerusalem. But Abdel Qader's resignation may also have been a move of convenience, as Israel has been cracking down on any activities that it says are connected with the Palestinian Authority in Jerusalem, and Abdel Qader himself has been repeatedly detained and called in for questioning.

Tensions in East Jerusalem have risen markedly in the past year, as Israeli expulsions of Palestinians from their homes in East Jerusalem, demolition orders affecting Palestinian housing, and permits for the construction of housing for Jewish families have increased. This trend has, if anything, accelerated since Israel's military offensive against Gaza last winter -- despite protests by European and American diplomats and governments.

21

The disturbances at the mosque esplanade last Sunday, 27 September, came nine years almost to the day of the provocative visit of Ariel Sharon to the site, accompanied by a big contingent of Israeli military forces, on 28 September 2000 – which is marked as the date of the beginning of the second Palestinian intifada. Despite the marked calm of recent months, there is expert debate about whether or not that second intifada has ever ended.

On Sunday, Israeli media reported that Israeli police used stun grenades and tear gas to repel the stone-throwers, and that 18 were wounded in the "riots", although Jewish worshippers were able to pray later at the Western Wall without interruption. Palestinian media reported that rubber-coated steel bullets and high-velocity tear gas cannisters were fired at the Palestinians on the site, with three seriously wounded and more than a dozen others injured.

10. East Jerusalem marred by Yom Kippur violence Abe Selig , THE JERUSALEM POST, 28/09/2009 http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1254163536744&pagename=JPost%2FJPArti cle%2FPrinter

While most of the capital enjoyed a quiet Yom Kippur, disturbances flared up across east Jerusalem beginning on Sunday morning, when 18 policemen and 15 rioters were hurt during riots on the Temple Mount, and later in the Old City.

Police said some 150 Muslim worshipers participated in the disturbance on the Temple Mount, which began when a group of Jewish visitors entered the compound with a police escort.

Rioters hurled rocks at the visitors and policemen, lightly wounding two officers, and police responded with stun grenades while the Jews were escorted away.

The riots died down, but the Temple Mount was subsequently closed off to visitors. Yom Kippur prayers at the Western Wall later in the day were not affected.

Rabah Bkirat, an official with the Wakf, the Islamic religious body that manages the Temple Mount, said some of the protesters had come because of rumors of an "invasion" by Jewish "settlers."

When a group of some 15 Jews entered the grounds accompanied by police, the protesters began chanting slogans and only threw stones after police used force, he said.

Palestinian officials also commented on the incident, warning Israel not to "escalate tensions" in Jerusalem while the US administration is trying to bring the two sides back to the negotiating table.

"At a time when [US] President [Barack] Obama is trying to bridge the divide between Palestinians and Israelis, and to get negotiations back on track, Israel is deliberately

22 escalating tensions in Jerusalem," chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said on Sunday, in response to the Temple Mount violence.

"We've seen this before, and we know what the consequences are," Erekat added in a statement that conjured up memories of then-opposition leader Ariel Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount in 2000, which some claim sparked the second intifada.

After the unrest on the Temple Mount subsided, however, riots began on the streets of the Old City, as dozens of Arab youth pelted police officers with stones. Additional policemen and rioters were wounded in those scuffles and several rioters were arrested by police.

In the wake of the unrest, Police Insp.-Gen. David Cohen arrived at the Temple Mount and evaluated the situation with senior commanders. Police raised the alert status across the country for fear of further violence.

Police also set up roadblocks to prevent vehicles from passing from east Jerusalem to the western part of the city in order to minimize friction between Jewish and Arabs residents.

Hamas called on Palestinians and all Arabs to take to the streets to protest the events. On Sunday night, police reported that some 20 firebombs, along with rocks and other debris, were hurled at police and Border Police officers in the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Isawiya .

Dozens of Arab youths took part in the riot, in which five Border Police officers were wounded, one of whom was taken for medical treatment at an area hospital. Two Border Police jeeps were also damaged, a Border Police spokesman said.

Several Arab vehicles driving along Jerusalem's Derech Hebron during Yom Kippur were stoned by Jews. One man, who was lightly wounded in the attack, was taken to the hospital, and several cars were damaged. Police arrested five suspects.

On Monday evening, Arab residents of the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan hurled two firebombs at the homes of Jewish residents there. No injuries or damage were reported.

11. Jerusalem tense after Al-Aqsa clashes

Joseph Krauss (AFP) – 27/09/ 2009 http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5j3cfhzhB_1tAFzofVTvFI3fj0yA A

JERUSALEM — Tensions ran high after clashes erupted in Jerusalem's Old City on Sunday at Al-Aqsa mosque compound, a site revered by Muslims and Jews that has been a major faultline in the Middle East conflict.

Palestinian youths hurled rocks at Israeli police, who were deployed throughout the winding narrow streets of the Old City, and police retaliated with stun grenades, witnesses said.

23 Police said 17 security force members were wounded in the clashes and 11 people arrested. Witnesses reported seeing around a dozen wounded Palestinians.

Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat said Israel was deliberately raising tensions "at a time when President (Barack) Obama is trying to bridge the divide between Palestinians and Israelis, and to get negotiations back on track."

"Providing a police escort for settlers who are against peace at all costs, and whose presence is deliberately designed to provoke a reaction, are not the actions of someone who is committed to peace," he said.

In Cairo, the Arab League expressed "extreme anger" over what it called a "premeditated aggression" by Israeli security forces who had allowed "Zionist extremists" into the mosque compound.

Jordan summoned Israel's ambassador in Amman in protest at the Israeli "escalation."

By early afternoon a tense calm reigned in the historic city, with dozens of police officers patrolling the narrow streets and barricades erected at some of the main gates along the city's 400-year-old walls.

"There is a large police presence in the Old City ... In general, things are quiet," police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told AFP.

Police and witnesses said the unrest erupted after a group of tourists entered the mosque compound, known to Muslims as Al-Haram Al-Sharif (the Noble Sanctuary) and to Jews as the Temple Mount.

Initially the police said the group was made up of Jewish worshippers, but later said they were French tourists.

"The group attacked by stones at the mosque compound was in fact a group of non- Jewish French tourists who visited it as part of their trip," said Jerusalem police spokesman Shmuel Ben Ruby.

The visitors were probably mistaken for Jewish worshippers because a group of 200 mostly religious and right-wing Jews had gathered in the early morning at the gate through which police allow tourists access to the holy site.

"There was a large group of Jewish settlers who gathered outside Al-Aqsa and tried to break in," said a Palestinian witness who would give his name only as Abu Raed.

"Some of them entered and went all the way to the heart of the compound, where there were people praying ... They were Jewish settlers dressed as tourists," he said.

After entering the sprawling compound, the group was confronted by about 150 Muslim faithful who chanted and eventually threw rocks, at which point the police pulled the tourists out and closed the gate, police and witnesses said.

Immediately after the clash, police blocked off the compound.

24 The Islamist Hamas movement ruling Gaza slammed the "dangerous escalation" and called for protests. "The occupation bears full responsibility for all the consequences and developments that will follow from this crime," it said.

An estimated 3,000 people turned out in Gaza City later on Sunday for a demonstration "in defence of the mosque," witnesses said.

Al-Aqsa mosque compound is on the holiest site in Judaism and the third-holiest in Islam, and has often been the flashpoint of Israeli-Palestinian violence.

The second Palestinian uprising, or intifada, erupted there after former Israeli premier Ariel Sharon made a controversial visit in September 2000.

Israel captured the Old City of Jerusalem from Jordan during the 1967 Six-Day War and later annexed it along with the rest of mostly Arab east Jerusalem in a move not recognised by the international community.

12. Settlers marketing East Jerusalem homes for 22 Jewish families

Nir Hasson, Haaretz, 27/09/2009 http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1117288.html

An organization committed to populating East Jerusalem with Jewish residents has said that it has six properties in the Old City to sell to 22 Jewish families, which would bring the number of Jews living in the Arab quarters of the walled city to 1,000.

"The heart of Jerusalem is calling us," reads a new brochure that the association Ateret Cohanim is circulating in an apparent effort to market the buildings. "Six registered assets are now up for sale, opening to us the possibility of adding 22 families to the Jewish community's flourishing."

The brochure also says that these 22 families would bring the number of Jews residing in the Old City (not including those in the Jewish Quarter) to 1,000. It continues: "At a time when the United Nations and countries around the world plot to forcibly take away Jerusalem and the holy places from Jewish hands, a steady and strong Jewish presence inside the Old City has become crucial to our ability as a nation to maintain and control this spiritual center."

The brochure, a copy of which has been seen by Haaretz, concludes by telling readers: "You and Ateret Cohanim will make it happen."

The document also specifies which Old City assets are earmarked to be populated by Jews, and provides details on plans for expansion of Jewish settlements elsewhere in East Jerusalem.

All the assets are listed with Hebrew names, such as Beit Sha'ar Haprachim (House of the Gate of the Flowers, referring to Herod's Gate), Beit Hanes (House of the Miracle) and Beit Hakorban (House of the Offering). Prices are specified next to each asset, the

25 number of families it can hold and other details.

The Ateret Cohanim association is one of the most active right-wing nonprofits in East Jerusalem, allotting considerable funds and effort to populating the heart of the Muslim Quarter with Jews, as well as placing Jews in houses in other Arab neighborhoods and villages in the East Jerusalem area.

Ateret Cohanim's stated goal is to enter areas inhabited only by Arabs so as to prevent the city's partition. The association's most controversial project is Beit Yehonatan, a seven- story building constructed without permit in the village of Silwan. It was listed as condemned several years ago, but it is currently home to several Jewish families.

The brochure was found by Dr. Meir Margalit, a member of Jerusalem's City Council from Meretz, in the course of his research into settlement efforts in the eastern part of the capital. The building, for example, bearing the Hebrew name of Herod's Gate is described in the sales material as what will one day become a Jewish neighborhood in the Muslim Quarter, with 21 families, a synagogue, a kindergarten and a mikva (ritual bath). The house currently for sale is 400 square meters in floor space, and can house four families. Its cost, as stated in the brochure, is $1.7 million. Another asset, listed as Beit Boteach (The House of the Trusting Believer) is priced at $2.75 million, and can accommodate four families, whose members would live near the Lions Gate, also in the Muslim Quarter.

Margalit has scheduled a meeting with representatives of the European Union and from the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem to discuss the issue. Daniel Luria, director general of Ateret Cohanim, declined to comment on the plans specified in the brochure when contacted by Haaretz.

13. Jerusalem and Babylon / Secular public is just not interested By Anshel Pfeffer, Haaretz, 27/09/2009 http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1116925.html

You may have been scandalized this week upon reading in Haaretz about the sex segregation of citizenship ceremonies for new immigrants at the Western Wall, at the insistence of the rabbi who rules the Wall and all it surveys. If so, you are wasting your breath. It is a well-known fact that despite having captured and formally annexed East Jerusalem in 1967, Israel has de facto ceded sovereignty over the Temple Mount.

On the eastern side of the Wall, it is the Muslim Waqf (religious trust) that runs the mosques and their environs. Construction work that destroys ancient archaeological remains goes on unimpeded. Once every few years, when rioting breaks out, police break into the compound, but the rest of the time, the state's control ends at the gate. It is a less well-known fact that a similar process has taken place on the western side of the Wall. Formally, the Wall is under the management of the Center for the Development of Holy Places in the Ministry of Religious Services. But in practice, one man holds sway there: Rabbi Shmuel Rabinovich, who holds the grand title of Rabbi of the Kotel (Western Wall) and the Holy Places.

Rabbi Rabinovich may technically be a civil servant, but his real bosses are a small

26 number of senior ultra-Orthodox rabbis who lay down the line. And over the last decade or so, that line has steadily moved away from the Wall and now encompasses the entire area, all the way up to the houses of the Jewish Quarter.

Technically, only the small sunken courtyard adjacent to the Wall is a place of prayer, and therefore divided between men and women. But Rabinovich, with his small army of publicly-funded guards, has tried to enforce his rule much further away. Separate entry gates for men and women have been erected, and at every opportunity, ugly wooden fences and signs have also been erected, crisscrossing the entire enclosure in an attempt to enforce the Orthodox idea of modesty - which basically means keeping men and women, boys and girls, apart from each other at the earliest possible age.

Non-Orthodox groups realized this long ago, and after butting their heads against the Wall for years, via demonstrations and Supreme Court petitions, are making do with the Robinson Arch prayer area just around the corner.

Rabinovich is a wily politician with good contacts in all camps. He is especially close to President Shimon Peres, and officiated at most of the second marriages of Labor ministers. He is also a capable fund-raiser and builder: Thanks to him, facilities at the Wall and its tunnels have greatly improved in recent years.

As a gradualist, he knows he cannot have his way all the time. If he had tried to separate the sexes at the annual memorial ceremony for fallen Israel Defense Forces soldiers, there would have been an overwhelming outcry. Nor does he interfere with events of the Paratroopers Brigade, which is credited (with partial accuracy) with liberating the site in the Six-Day War.

But over the last few years, he has managed to intervene in most other ceremonies organized by the army and other groups, including, most recently, the Jewish Agency's bright idea of giving new Israelis their first identity card at a special event by the Wall. The entire area is a place of prayer, he says, and therefore, his rules hold: Families must be separated, and as a whole, nonreligious activity is frowned upon. Few are willing to argue with him, with the result that in most cases, ceremonies have been moved elsewhere.

From a purely religious point of view, there is nothing inherently holy about the Western Wall: It is the outer perimeter of the Temple compound rebuilt by Herod around 20 BCE. The standard answer many rabbis give is that the site was consecrated over the generations by millions of Jews who poured out their prayers, hopes and tears before God in front of that wall. But in the centuries following the destruction of the Temple, Jews prayed at the Southern Wall, opposite the sealed Gate of Mercy. The veneration of the western side is much more recent.

Some archaeologists even believe that under the flagstones of today's prayer area lies an ancient burial ground, also used by Jews. If this were a planned hospital wing or an extension of Route 6, ultra-Orthodox groups would be up in arms against the desecration of graves. But here, they already have control.

Throughout the centuries, the Ottoman and then the Mandatory British authorities never allowed an official synagogue at the Wall. Jews could stand and pray, but not even a chair

27 was allowed there. Only in 1967, when the site first came under Israeli control, was responsibility officially transferred to the officials and rabbis of what was then the Religious Affairs Ministry.

In the 1990s, a legal argument raged over the right of non-Orthodox groups to pray at the Wall according to their customs. But who ever said it was a synagogue to begin with?

The wider debate about the Western Wall's identity - whether it is a religious site or a monument of national importance, fought for mainly by secular soldiers and its upkeep paid for mainly by the taxpayer - has never taken place. But for all intents and purposes, the question has been decided. It is the Orthodox who regularly visit the place, who pray there at all hours of the day, every day, who make sure that all their children visit. The rest of the Israeli public is just not interested enough in the most fundamental extant symbol of the Jewish people's historical connection to this land.

14. Israel freezes construction of Separation Barrier in Ma'ale Adumim area B’Tselem 24/09/2009 http://www.btselem.org/english/Separation_Barrier/20090924_Maaleh_Adumim_Barrier _Suspended.asp

In June 2009, the state informed the Israeli High Court of Justice that it had decided to suspend construction work on the Separation Barrier around the Ma’ale Adumim settlement, which lies east of Jerusalem. According to the State Attorney's Office, the decision stemmed from “budgetary constraints and other needs that the defense establishment faces.”

Should it be realized in the future, the planned route in this area will create an Israeli enclave deep within the West Bank, with the Separation Barrier surrounding the settlements of Ma’ale Adumim, Kfar Adumim, and Kedar, along with the Mishor Adumim industrial area. This would effectively cut the West Bank in two, as the enclave would prevent Palestinians from moving directly between the northern and southern West Bank and into East Jerusalem. This splitting of the West Bank would also deny Palestinians their right to self-determination in the form of a viable Palestinian state, as any solution that would enable smooth passage between the northern and southern West Bank would oblige Israel to pave a bypass around the Adumim Bloc. This road would have to run through difficult topography in the Jordan Valley – an area that is currently also under Israeli control – considerably lengthening travel time.

Construction of the barrier along the planned route, if carried out, will especially harm the residents of Abu Dis and a-Sawahrah a-Sharqiya by blocking the possibility of developing these communities’ land reserves and preventing access to the residents’ farmland. In effect, the barrier would annex their land to areas controlled by Israel.

28

Map of the planned route in the Ma'ale Adumim area

In 2006, the Abu Dis municipal council and the a-Sawahrah a-Sharqiya village council petitioned the Israeli High Court of Justice against building the barrier along the planned route. Following the petitions, the state amended the route, diverting it to a northwesterly direction, but the change did not significantly diminish the harm to the residents.

The notice of the construction freeze came after sections of the Separation Barrier had been built in this area, between al-‘Eizariyah and the Ma’ale Adumim settlement. Following the State Attorney's Office’s announcement, the High Court decided to suspend the hearing on the petitions. It should be noted that Israel did not cancel the land-requisition orders for the Separation Barrier along this route.

The prolonged freezing of construction work on the Separation Barrier along this route, as on other planned enclaves created deep inside the West Bank – Ariel, Kedumim, and Karne Shomeron – reinforce the contention that the route of the Separation Barrier in these areas was not based on real, urgent security needs, but on an intention to unilaterally establish facts on the ground that are liable to impede any future arrangement between Israel and the Palestinians.

15. Around 2000 settlers in outposts in Palestinian neighborhoods of East Jerusalem Peace Now Report, Hagit Ofran , Sept. 2009 http://www.peacenow.org.il/site/en/peace.asp?pi=61&fld=620&docid=3658&pos=0

The price of the tight security is approximately 50 million NIS of state budget. According to Peace Now calculations, almost 2000 settlers live in outposts in the heart of the Palestinian neighborhoods of East Jerusalem. The settlements in the Palestinian neighborhoods are meant to create an irreversible situation which will prevent a two states solution based on a compromise in Jerusalem.

"Our goal is to hold on to outposts in East Jerusalem and create an irreversible situation in the sacred basin around the Old City" (words of a member of the management of Elad organization, Ha'aretz, 3.4.06) These outposts integrates in the government plan to deepen the hold over East Jerusalem, which was recently exposed.

29

• The State of Israel funds security for the settlers of East Jerusalem which include permanent guards to every house, tight escort and in some places also transportation. These security measures are implemented by 350 private company guards (one guard for every five settlers), and is funded by the Ministry of construction and housing. In 2008, the cost of securing the settlers of East Jerusalem was 47,876 million NIS.

The Settlements of East Jerusalem:

Number of Comments settlers Neighborhood Name of the settlement (estimated) About 70 families 350 Wadi Hilwa Silwan Ir David (City of David) About 80 families Muslim and Christian and 500 Yeshiva 900 The Old City quarters students About 50 families 250 Ras El Amud Ma'aleh Zeitim Two houses in the The Mount of Olives 15 Mount of Olives cemetery Cemetery Two houses 15 Abu Dis Kidmat Tzion In the Yemenite "The Jonathan House" 30 Silwan neighborhood and "The Dvash House" About 7 families 35 Sheikh Jarrah Shimon Hatzadik 15 Hamefaked St. 20 Abu Tur Abu Tur East Two large structures 30 A tur "The Hoshen House" Yeshiva 125 A tur Beit Orot About 15 families in a luxurious 50 Jabel Mukaber Nof Tzion compound 1820 Total:

Future plans: It is hard to predict in advance the plans of the settlers to purchase and attain new assets in the Palestinian neighborhoods. In some cases even the security forces and the authorities know about their plans only after they made facts on the ground and moved into a building. There are many plans in East Jerusalem, in different stages of planning. Outlook of a few of future plans waiting to be implemented:

30 Shepherd Hotel in Sheikh Jarrah - A big structure in Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood purchased by Irvin Moskowitz, a millionaire from the United States, who funds Jewish settlement in East Jerusalem. Moskowitz has submitted to the Jerusalem Municipality a request for construction permit to build 20 new housing units on the basis of an existed valid plan. The discussion of the request was recently postponed to an unknown date.

Amana House in Sheikh Jarrah – A few weeks ago, the local planning committee has rejected all of the objections submitted against the granting of a construction permit for the "Amana House" (a conference center and offices for the settlers' movement of "Amana"). The construction should probably start soon.

The Police Station in Ras El Amud – about a year ago the Israeli Police evacuated the police station in Ras El Amud and moved to the E1 area. The police building was handed to the settler associated group, "The Bukharian Committee" that wishes to build there 110 housing units. Lately, renovations started in the existing building. It is possible that the settlers are planning to settle the existing building without needing to wait for the completion of the planning procedure for the establishment of the new neighborhood.

31

A house in the Mount of Olives Cemetery – in the Mount of Olives Cemetery there is an old structure which is currently being renovated. In another two adjacent houses, there live a few settler families. The renovation is probably meant to prepare the structure for new settlers.

The Glassman Campus – a few months ago a fence was built around an open territory in the Palestinian neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah and a sign was hanged announcing the "Max and Giana Glassman Campus". According to the existing plan, the territory is designated for a public structure. In this stage we are not certain what will be built in this area and if the planning procedure for starting construction is complete.

16. Moroccan fund buys east Jerusalem land Ynetnews, 19/09/2009 http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3778988,00.html

A Moroccan-based organization calling itself the 'Al-Quds Fund'has purchased $5 million worth of land in east Jerusalem, with the aim of "preserving the Arab-Islamic character of the eastern part of the holy city", a French news agency reported.

32 The director of the fund, Abed al-Kabir Alawi, told a press conference in Rabat that a community center called 'the Moroccan house' will be built on the territory, which sprawls over 1,800 square meters. (Roee Nahmias)

17. Minister tells police: Boost Israeli presence in East Jerusalem By Jonathan Lis, Haaretz, 17/09/2009 http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1114588.html

Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch has instructed police to strengthen Israeli sovereignty over East Jerusalem, Haaretz has learned. In a document titled "Ministerial Policy 2009-2010," Aharonovitch calls for increased police presence and activity in the east of the city in order to "increase law enforcement and improve police services there, part of a wider move to strengthen Israeli sovereignty over East Jerusalem." This is part of a general police policy in recent years to strictly enforce a law prohibiting Palestinian Authority activity in East Jerusalem, in keeping with the Oslo Accords. Aharonovitch also called for increased police activity in non-Jewish towns and villages within Israel, "to increase the feeling of identification with the state and its symbols of authority, and to increase state sovereignty in those areas." Aharonovitch stated that this means increasing police visibility and presence, increasing police availability and shortening response time. He also called for improved relationships with residents of non-Jewish areas within Israel, and to encourage them to join the civil guard. The minister also wrote that the police must invest to change the public's perception of it and its importance, in order to improve its work. Aharonovitch also instructed the Israel Prison Service to improve coordination with the police to better combat crime in jails.

18. Voices from Jerusalem: Back to What School? By Ziva Galili, Ir Amin blog, Huffingtonpost, 9/09/2009 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ir-amim/voices-from-jerusalem-bac_b_277169.html

September 1 was 'Back to School" day for a million and a half children and teenagers all over Israel. Schools opened in Jerusalem, too, but in East Jerusalem tens of thousands of students do not have the choice of attending a State school. A report by the State Comptroller reveals a shortage of 1,000 classrooms in the current school year. Unless action is taken by the Ministry of Education and the Jerusalem Municipality, East Jerusalem will be short 1,500 classrooms by 2011, denying some 40,000 Palestinian students (60,000 by 2011) access to State-funded schools, where free education K-12 is mandated by Israel's Law of Compulsory Education.

How did we get here? First there were years of neglect that left East Jerusalem far behind Jewish neighborhoods all over the city. By 2001, things were bad enough for the High Court of Justice to intervene. Under court order, the Ministry and the Municipality committed then, and again in 2007, to budget, plan and build 645 classrooms--far less than is needed, but a significant improvement if implemented. Then began the foot dragging: the Ministry budgeted a fraction of what was committed and the Municipality was slow to plan, ratify and implement construction. Between 2001 and 2009, only 257 classrooms were completed. Assuming work will continue at the current pace, only 261 additional classrooms will be ready by 2013.

33 These are the hard numbers, but what do they mean for children and parents in the Palestinian neighborhoods of East Jerusalem? To find out, I listened to parents, members of Parents Councils, and employees of two organizations that are trying to keep the authorities to their obligations under the law.

Fares Kales is a member of the Silwan Parents' Council. The seven existing State schools in Silwan, he tells me, serve only half of the students in this village-turned- neighborhood that abuts the walls of the Old City. Last year, about 6,500 of Silwan's children attended kindergartens and schools away from their neighborhood, some in State-funded schools, others in schools run by the United Nations, the Moslem Waqf, and a variety of private institutions. With the cost of transportation left up to parents, Fares says, "many parents are so desperate--they can't afford the transportation, and they don't want their kindergarten children to be travelling long distances--that they beg for their child to be the 51st student in a terribly overcrowded classroom."

The Parents' Council in Silwan is relatively strong and resourceful--they have called in the media and appealed to the courts--but it has seen the situation getting worse every year. Today, only one of the three new schools ordered built is actually ready: a middle school for boys. A high school for girls will probably be ready for next school year, while one for boys still awaits adequate funding.

For lower grades, the Municipality has come up with a troubling solution: placing schools in private homes, where as many as 35 kids may be squeezed into a kitchen still holding the sink and drying board! School yards are often dangerous places, as in the school that sits at the bottom of a steep hill covered with large boulders and with no wall to protect kids from rolling rocks. All the Municipality would do is place a flimsy net around the school.

Bad as conditions are, Karim (abu Samer) Sh'hadeh, a Coca Cola driver from Shuafat Refugee Camp, would be glad to place his 3 school-age children in a State school. As of today, only the youngest, Seerin, is registered. The Municipality was ordered by the High Court to admit all first graders and Seerin is one of the lucky ones for whom space was found in the 2nd grade as well. Abu Samer and his wife have tried for the past four years to enroll Soujoud (now entering 6th grade) and Samer (entering 8th grade) in State schools. Every year they go through the frustrating process again: they try to register the children in State schools in Shuafat and, when told there is no space for them, travel to the Municipal Building in downtown Jerusalem, fill out the "Registration and Transfer Form," wait for an answer that never comes (although the law specifies a response within 3 weeks), again come to the Municipality only to hear that there is no space for their children anywhere in the system. Unless something changes, they expect the same to happen with their two other kids: 2 year old Sama and 3-year old Samir.

Abu Samer is frustrated: "The eldest, Samer, will have no school to go to after the 9th grade, because it's the last grade in the UN school he is forced to attend. What will he do? There is no work, and he needs to study to advance in life. It's his right as a Jerusalem resident. It's so bad. The people in the Municipality, they don't help parents, they don't do their job."

34 Omqulthum Hawas, also of Shuafat Refugee Camp, has similar worries. She is a psychologist and staff nurse in an Israeli HMO and her husband is a teacher. Their five children, she says, are all good students, but for 3 years running she has been told that there is no space for them in the State schools in Jerusalem. Instead, two of her kids each changes two buses to reach a far away school--the 16-year old in Sur Baher, the 12-year old in Abu Dis. Her 3rd grader attends a private school in Jerusalem at the prohibitive cost of 2000 NIS. But cost is not the only problem; the private school ends with 6th grade. In all the schools her five children attend, Omqulthum says, the overcrowded classes are poorly ventilated. "It smells bad!" And then she adds, "It's not only us. Thousands of children and mothers suffer from the same problems."

To force a change and to help Palestinian parents cope with the frustrating effort of enrolling their children in State schools two Israeli organizations launched this year a joint campaign of public education, advocacy, and legal support. Ahmad Sub Laban of Ir Amim spreads the message through a Hot Line and appearances in schools: If your child is turned down by a given school (the first point of recourse for registration, usually during April and May), you must place the case before the Municipality (which begins taking applications in June), and you should insist on filling out the "Registration and Transfer Form"--your only proof that you tried to enroll your child. Attorney Nisreen Alian of the Association for Civic Rights in Israel handles the legal and procedural aspects of the process. This year she was successful in forcing the Municipality to provide all parents with registration forms, and she hopes the Municipality will respond to the lists of students who were refused admission she has sent them. She is also preparing to appeal to the Court on behalf of those not admitted within two weeks of the start of the school year. The two organizations hope not only to help the parents who take advantage of the Hot Line, but to force the Ministry and the Municipality to end the long standing neglect and allocate the resources that would allow the children of East Jerusalem what is rightfully theirs--the chance to free education in State funded schools.

19. Jerusalem can only gain through cooperative neighborhood initiatives By Fuad Abu-Hamed and Hagai Agmon-Snir , The Daily Star, 9/09/2009 http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=5&article_id=10627 2

All over the Western world, community empowerment programs encourage resident participation by involving community leaders and organizers in decisions about the city in which they live. What could be better than the authorities and residents taking joint responsibility for municipal challenges? In East Jerusalem, this is not so straightforward.

For those who aren’t familiar with East Jerusalem, the Palestinian residents living in this part of the city constitute a third of its population. Their neighborhoods and villages have been neglected for years by the Israeli establishment. In fact, significant discrepancies between East and West Jerusalem exist in every area of life. In theory, the Palestinians could take action and change their situation. Most of them hold permanent residency rights and are eligible to vote in municipal elections and run for municipal office. They can also join a variety of frameworks to influence municipal institutions such as parent committees, activist groups working to improve

35 infrastructure together with municipal officials, committees within community administrations which encourage resident involvement and more. Yet their level of involvement is minimal. Instead, frustration and despair, and to a large extent passivity and acceptance of the situation have taken over. However, if we speak to residents across the city, we discover they are very aware of their rights and obligations. In order not to lose their residency rights, they pay municipal taxes consistently (without which they could lose proof of residency within the city boundaries) and are very keen to realize their rights to healthcare, education, housing, and so on.

There are many reasons for their lack of involvement. First, any cooperation on the part of the residents with the Israeli authorities may be construed as a stamp of approval for continuing occupation. Secondly, the various arms of the Israeli establishment discourage leadership in Jerusalem that “could get out of hand.” And third, regional and local chaos generates a sense that circumstances are determined by events beyond their control. As a result, residents tend to refrain from involvement, waiting for an outside source to come and save them. So when seeds of a new approach emerge it is important to take note. For example, in the neighborhood of Tsur Baher, a village in the southeast of Jerusalem, a group of residents came together a few years ago and set up a “committee supporting education.” The committee works to improve educational systems in the village operated by various bodies – the Jerusalem municipality, the Islamic Waqf, UNRWA, and so on.

Instead of waiting for change, the group held a week of educational activities in the village, the high point of which was a day of discussions in an open space meeting moderated by the Jerusalem Intercultural Center. The event was widely attended by local residents, principals, teachers, students and key figures in the area of education in the village and beyond, including senior education officials from the municipality. In other cities this would not constitute anything new, but in Jerusalem an initiative led by residents of the eastern neighborhoods is rare and many people within the establishment were surprised by its success.

What was novel about the event was the statement informing the whole event: “We are partners to the change that has to happen in the village.” Instead of just accusing the authorities and demanding that they take action and allocate resources, there was a request to look for joint solutions – to be shared by both the authorities and the residents.

In Jerusalem, this kind of development tends to give rise to a great deal of suspicion. The education administration within the municipality that is responsible for East Jerusalem panicked because collaboration with residents is no small nuisance for a dysfunctional system. In the village itself there were voices calling to boycott any dialogue with the municipality, which is part of the apparatus serving the occupation. There were quite a few from the village and municipality who did not attend events organized by the residents – the necessary conceptual shift that they would have needed to make was too far-reaching, at least for now. To overcome these suspicions, activists turned to two organizations to mediate between them and the establishment: the Al-Quds Dialogue Center, a Palestinian Jerusalem-based organization, and the Jerusalem Intercultural Center, a pan-cultural Jerusalem-based organization. On the one hand these organizations work to persuade

36 the establishment that collaborative efforts with the residents will assist in the provision of services. On the other hand, for the residents they help clarify the distinction between collaborative efforts on the one hand, and accepting the occupation and cooperating with its messages, on the other. The process makes for a very delicate balancing act in an extremely sensitive political climate. The tense atmosphere gives rise to mutual suspicions. Are the groups of activists what Israel calls “a hostile terror-supporting organization” or are they “collaborators, agents of the Israeli occupation?” These suspicions have concrete implications. Any mistake could put the activists in harm’s way. Therefore, mediating organizations are extremely important in making a collaborative effort possible. Education in Tsur Baher is but one example. Similar initiatives are emerging in other neighborhoods and areas of life, including rubbish disposal, a mother-and-baby center in Silwan, Arabic translations of municipal forms, pedestrian crossings and road safety programs for school children. We hope we are witnessing the development of a new model for the advancement of Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem, one that can improve their quality of life until a permanent and just solution is found for the city and the region as a whole. This type of model can perhaps be implemented in other places in the world sharing a reality similar to the one in Jerusalem.

Fuad Abu-Hamed, a resident of Tsur Baher, is the chairperson of the Al-Quds Dialogue Center and a businessman and social activist. Hagai Agmon-Snir is director of the Jerusalem Intercultural Center. THE DAILY STAR publishes this commentary in collaboration with the Common Ground News Service (www.commongroundnews.org).

20. Religious-Secular Divide, Tugging at Israel’s Heart ISABEL KERSHNER, NYT, 2/09/2009 http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/03/world/middleeast/03jerusalem.html

JERUSALEM — On Saturday, as on every Saturday in recent weeks, hundreds of ultra-Orthodox Jews gathered before dusk on the terraces above the Carta parking lot just outside the Old City walls. In black silk Sabbath robes and fur hats, they lined up in rows, perched and waiting.

In July, ultra-Orthodox protesters converged on a municipal parking lot that the mayor allowed to be open on the Jewish Sabbath.

The protesters have come to the lot each Saturday in recent weeks, where they clashed with Special Force police officers.

Suddenly their foot soldiers arrived on the street below, protesters who surged past the newly opened luxury Mamilla Hotel. Police officers mounted on horses rushed to meet them as hotel guests looked on, bewildered, from windows on the upper floors.

This summer, radical elements of the ultra-Orthodox community have been demonstrating and rioting against city authorities, welfare officials and the police. For Jerusalem’s mayor, Nir Barkat, a secular high-tech millionaire trying to attract more business, tourism and professional types to the city, the timing has been inopportune, to say the least.

37 The tensions in this contested city usually run along an east-west, Jewish-Palestinian divide. But within the western, predominantly Jewish, section of the city, the cultural fault lines between religious and secular Jews run deep. Any change in the delicate status quo seems capable of setting off a riot, as Jerusalem’s most zealous Jews and liberals vie for the city’s character and soul.

“It is all part of the special human mosaic that makes up Jerusalem,” said Israel Kimhi, a director of the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies, an independent research organization here. But the recent turmoil “does not do much for the image of the city,” he added, arguing that a small but strident section of the ultra-Orthodox population has grown increasingly extreme.

Ultra-Orthodox Jews, known as haredim, or those who fear God, went to battle in years past to ensure observation of the Jewish Sabbath, and tried to force the closing of movie theaters and roads. From sundown Friday to sundown Saturday, strictly observant Jews do not work, use electric devices, spend money or drive. There are no municipal services during the Sabbath in Jerusalem, and on the Jewish side most businesses are closed.

But after a 13-year lull in what local residents call the “Sabbath wars,” another round started one Saturday in June, when City Hall decided to open a parking lot. With the security situation in Jerusalem relatively calm, tourists and day trippers have been flocking back to the Old City on weekends, prompting a need for somewhere to park their cars.

At first, the mayor opened a municipal parking lot under City Hall. When that led to protests, he opened the private Carta lot under Arab management, and made it free of charge. The protests only intensified.

Yoelish Kraus, the operations chief for the Eda Haredit, the militantly Orthodox organization behind the protests, said the mayor’s mistake was announcing the opening of the parking lot at a news conference. As soon as there is a public sanction for violating the Sabbath, he said, “we have to fight.”

The ultra-Orthodox make up about a third of Jerusalem’s Jewish population, and the adherents of the Eda Haredit are only a fraction of that. But with an average of 10 children per family, Mr. Kraus said, the community is growing fast.

The rabbinic sects of the Eda Haredit are the scions of Orthodox Jews who were in Palestine before the foundation of Israel in 1948. In the absence of the Messiah, they fervently reject Zionism and the legitimacy of the Jewish state.

The protesters called the police “Nazis” and spat at them. Special Force police officers dumped troublemakers into the fragrant rosemary and lavender bushes along the sidewalk. Protesters who tried to block the road were sprayed with pepper gas and carried off in a prison service van.

A small knot of secular counterprotesters sang songs at a bus stop while ultra- Orthodox demonstrators threw plastic bottles of water and pebbles at them. “The parking lot will stay open because we will not let it close,” said Nir Pereg, 29, a

38 secular resident of the city, as his companions belted out a round of “Jerusalem will not fall.”

The Eda Haredit has also rallied around one of its members this summer, a mother who was arrested on suspicion of starving her 3-year-old son. Her supporters rioted in ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods and set fire to a local welfare office where she had met with social workers before being detained.

Fierce riots broke out on Sunday night after the police entered a central ultra- Orthodox neighborhood to remove the body of a murder victim from a hostel. The riot seemed to have more to do with a general hatred of the police than the killing itself, which did not even involve a member of the ultra-Orthodox community. For the first time, the police used tear gas and stun grenades and fired in the air to disperse the crowds.

The Eda Haredit called the police “murderers,” saying later in a poster that a young yeshiva student had been run over and badly wounded by a vehicle of the “Zionist Gestapo” force.

Violence then broke out again on Tuesday night, when a mob attacked a taxi driven by an Arab driver in an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood. The driver escaped, though the car was battered.

In a modest counterstrike on a recent weekday morning, eight non-Orthodox Jewish activists — six women and two men — got on a No. 40 bus heading from the northern Jerusalem neighborhood of Ramot D into town. The women sat down in the front rows. The men went to the back.

Ramot D is an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood where rigid religious rules are applied. The No. 40 is one of several public bus lines designated as “mehadrin,” or strictly kosher, where the men sit in the front and the women behind. The activists view this draconian interpretation of the modesty code practiced by Orthodox Jews as discriminatory, and the policy is being appealed in Israel’s Supreme Court.

Stern black-coated male passengers muttered their disapproval, but the Rosa Parks- inspired act of civil disobedience took place peacefully, largely because the bus driver, an Arab, decided not to try to enforce the rules.

Some ultra-Orthodox women said they liked the separate seating arrangement. Others took advantage of the activists’ presence and moved to the front.

21. Inside Shuafat – Interview with Khader Dibs By Ilana Sichel, Ir Amin blog, Huffingtonpost , 31/08/ 2009 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ir-amim/voices-from-jerusalem-an_b_272114.html

Like many short trips in this region, the 15-minute car ride from the busy center of downtown West Jerusalem to the Shuafat Refugee Camp is a quick jaunt from the

39 first world to the third. Coming from the "new Israeli neighborhood" of Pisgat Ze'ev just across the valley and on the Palestinian side of the Green Line, the passage to Shuafat RC is evident not only by the checkpoint and the unmistakable concrete wall dividing the two neighborhoods, but by the total aesthetic shift. The white stone apartment buildings of Israeli Jerusalem give way to a vista of modular cement units in shades of gray, stacked one atop the other like a 3-dimensional game of Tetris. Just three kilometers north of the Old City, Shuafat RC is where the sidewalk ends. The trash-riddled main street of the camp can hardly fit two cars through, and even walking down the street demands a level of concentration hard to achieve while trucks pass just centimeters from your arm.

Shuafat RC wasn't always an urban landscape. The refugee camp was built by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in 1965-1966 to temporarily house 1,500 Palestinian refugees from throughout Israel who were being expelled from their places of refuge in the Old City by Jordanian forces. At the time, the camp was out in the boonies. Today, it bumps up against Jerusalem's 1967 municipal boundaries. Most of its 22,000 residents hold Jerusalem ID cards, which entitles them to reside in the city and receive government benefits, including health care. But only 11,000 residents are registered refugees.

Construction of the separation barrier around Shuafat RC is not yet complete, but the entrance to Jerusalem has been controlled by a border police checkpoint since 2001. The effect, like that in other areas of Jerusalem, is to separate Palestinian Jerusalem residents from Jerusalem and sever the neighborhood from the urban fabric around it. Throughout Jerusalem, this ostensibly intended consequence of the barrier affects over 55,000 Palestinian residents--amounting to nearly one-quarter of the Palestinian population of the city. This exclusion drastically reduces residents' quality of life, separates them from their own city, and reorients them, by default, to the West Bank. From Israel's perspective, it improves the demographic balance.

One afternoon in early June, I sat down with Khader Dibs, a public figure in Shuafat RC. Dibs is a middle-aged father who heads the camp's UNWRA-run sanitation services and leads the camp's Popular Committee Against the Wall, a group that filed- -and lost--a legal case against the course of the wall. Dibs' office is a concrete cube that sits atop a sun-baked roof. From its front door, one could easily traverse the vista of densely packed rooftops across the 400 dunams of the camp without once touching ground.

The first thing Dibs showed me when we sat down was an impressive portfolio of architectural engineering plans that aim for a total overhaul of the camp, complete with skyscrapers and a downtown skyline. The project is a joint initiative of Al-Quds University and a group of European engineers, and aims to turn Shuafat RC into a residential and commercial center easily accessible to Ramallah, Bethlehem, and Jerusalem. It would require UNRWA approval and, it seems, immense foreign investment.

Ilana Sichel: This seems like an unprecedented plan for a refugee camp. What's your vision for Shuafat?

40 Khader Dibs: We want to make a change here. The camp is overcrowded, dirty, polluted. Sewage runs by my front door. People are building like crazy here, and it's very stressful.

IS: What does your work in sanitation look like?

KD: It's hard. Almost half of the people in this camp aren't even refugees, and UNRWA isn't supposed to provide for them all.

IS: Why are non-refugees here?

KD: They come for a couple reasons. First, we don't pay city taxes here, so people can live more cheaply. In addition to that, the rent is lower here than in other East Jerusalem neighborhoods. Thirdly, since the late 1990s, people who fear losing their Jerusalem ID cards have been coming to live here because if they have an address in the camp, they can hold onto their IDs and keep getting services. A fourth reason is that people who live in the West Bank but work in Jerusalem are losing access to the city because of the wall. Sometimes living here is the only way for them to survive and provide for their families.

IS: Was the Jordanians who built Shuafat Refugee Camp?

KD: They gave permission to UNRWA to build it in 1964, then came and kicked out the refugees from the Old City. I was two years old. My parents didn't want to leave. Nobody did. But the Jordanians broke into the house and handed us a key. 'Here's a key,' they said. 'Now give us your key.' Give a key, take a key. And that's how we went from a not-good situation to a very bad situation. And in 1967, there was a war. A joke war. Israel gained control of this area and Jordan wanted to get it off its hands; neither cared who was in the middle.

IS: What was it like growing up here?

KD: It was a hard life. We didn't have bathrooms! Until 1974, all we had were public facilities in these little stations. [Shows me on a copy of UNRWA's original map of the camp.] Men and women, one next to the other. Drinking water was also public. There were just these five water points. They'd open them for two hours a day, and most days we got just a dribble. The kids would run straight from school to the water fountain, and we'd fill up the jerry cans every morning and every afternoon and bring them back to our families. The amazing thing is that people waited in line. We actually maintained lines.

IS: And what did you feel was Israel's relationship to the camp?

KD: After the war, [former Defense Minister] Moshe Dayan came to the camp. You know what he said? He was shocked. But what did he expect? Tidy houses and clean streets? But he didn't do anything about it. So in 1974, the people of Shuafat RC established a neighborhood committee for themselves. With money from the PLO and from individuals, they put down pipes and brought water into the houses. They built bathrooms. In 1975, they hooked up electricity to the houses.

41 After the outbreak of the first intifada, the civic administration that provided water to refugee camps in the West Bank realized that Shuafat RC is within the boundaries of Jerusalem, so they cut off our water supply. We lived a month or two without water. We had to buy it in small tanks. UNRWA didn't really get involved. It's against their policy to file charges against states. They wanted us to organize and talk to the [Jerusalem] municipality]. We tried, but the residents were thirsty and tired of waiting. So we went to the pipe they closed, and we opened it. And then there was water.

IS: And you were part of it?

KD: Well. [Glances behind his back and out the window as if looking for spies.] Yes. But two months later, the municipality came, dug, cut the tanks, and filled them with concrete. For a month we were stuck again without water. Without water! It's hard to live that way. UNRWA again wanted us to talk to the municipality, so they mediated. So we sat at the UN, us in one room, the municipality in the other. We told them we refuse to pay. We lost our homes four decades before and have been stuck in a refugee camp for twenty years. Whoever wants to pay, fine. But not us.

The municipality didn't budge. So we did it again. Four or fives of us went out at night with equipment and lay down pipes. We hooked them up to the pipeline that passes through Anata--a huge one--8" in diameter. And that's how we have the water we have today. Basically, the municipality gave up, and the water flowed. But actually, seven years ago, when Olmert was mayor, the municipality lay new pipes and changed them from six inches to two and four. So now the water pressure is less than 50% and sometimes it gets shut off. But the bottom line is that there is water.

IS: What are the challenges facing children in Shuafat RC?

KD: I have seven children with no place to run around. There are no playgrounds and no parks. There aren't enough schools. We have a new girls' school here and there are already 2000 kids in it. We solicited 4 million NIS from the Saudi government and we built the infrastructure. Every day 7,000 kids leave the camp to go to schools run by the municipality, the Waqf, and the Palestinian Authority.

IS: Has it changed much here since your childhood?

KD: When I was a kid, there was no Pisgat Ze'ev [the large Jewish neighborhood across the valley]. The schoolyard wasn't our only place to play. We'd go out to the hills. We'd go out with robes and cables and climb all the hills around here. We'd walk by foot to Hizme, along the wadis, down the hills. Now there are thousands of children here with nowhere to play. Some go to the mall in Pisgat Ze'ev, like it's a playground. They started building Pisgat Ze'ev in the 1980s. Now 50,000 people live there. Some residents went to the police with a petition. You want to know their complaint? "There's a refugee camp next door."

IS: What do you tell your kids? How do you transmit a sense of hope?

KD: It's hard. I'm not sure I do. I see black. What, I should tell the kids the world is green?

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22. Plans for largest East Jerusalem settlement filed for approval Nir Hasson, Haaretz, 25/08/2009 http://haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1109426.html

A plan for the building of a new settlement, Ma'aleh David, in the middle of an Arab neighborhood in East Jerusalem was filed for approval by the relevant municipal committee at the Jerusalem Municipality. The plan calls for the construction of 104 housing units on the land where the former headquarters of the Judea and Samaria police was housed in the neighborhood of Ras al-Amud.

The new settlement is planned to be connected to an existing Jewish neighborhood, Ma'aleh Zeitim, and together will be occupied by some 200 families, forming the largest Jewish settlement in East Jerusalem.

The plan is being promoted by the right-wing group Elad.

The land on which the new housing is planned was, until 18 months ago, the compound of the Judea and Samaria police headquarters, which has since moved to a new building in Area E-1. Once the police evacuated the area it returned to the control of the Committee of the Bokharan Community, which has held ownership over the property and the structures there since before 1948.

Last week the Committee filed the plans with the local municipal committee for approval.

According to the plan, the former police structure will be razed and replaced by seven structures ranging between four and five stories in height, and incorporating 104 housing units.

The plan involves high-end housing and the complex will include a swimming pool, mini "country club," community library and parking spaces. A synagogue, kindergartens and a mikveh (Jewish ritual purification bath) are also planned for construction there.

A foot bridge will connect the new settlement with existing ones on the other side of the road. The settlement of Ma'aleh Zeitim across the street currently houses 51 families and in its second phase of development, which is currently being completed, another 66 housing units are being built.

When the two neighborhoods are completed and linked, a Jewish settlement of more than 1,000 people will be situated in the heart of Ras al-Amud, a neighborhood comprised of 14,000 Palestinians.

Officially, the building plans and the request for approval were filed by the Committee of the Bokharan Community, but sources at the Jerusalem Municipality believe settler organizations are behind the project.

The same sources said the plans, as they currently stand, will likely be changed and

43 less units will be built. However, in the long run it will be difficult to prevent the project with the existing statutory measures, since there is no dispute over the ownership of the land, or whether the area is designated for residential construction projects.

Yudith Oppenheimer, the executive director of Ir Amim, a non-governmental group that monitors Jewish settlement activity in East Jerusalem, told Haaretz: "A two-state solution requires provisions for Palestinian building in East Jerusalem. The goal of this plan is to establish facts on the ground on a scale that would thwart such a solution. Advancement of this plan will stoke the flames in Jerusalem and is liable to lead to a Hebronization of the city."

22. Abusing Jerusalem to Assail Peace: the Case of the Shepherd's Hotel - July 2009 Peace Now Report, Produced by Lara Friedman, Director of Policy and Government Relations, Americans for Peace Now, and attorney Daniel Seidemann, Ir Amim. http://www.peacenow.org.il/site/en/peace.asp?pi=62&docid=4324&pos=1

Q: What does this current controversy in Jerusalem mean for peace? The current project is a direct challenge to President Barack Obama and his effort to launch negotiations that can lead to Israeli-Palestinian and Israeli-Arab peace. If Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu sees sense and finds a way to back down and cancel/freeze this project, the chances for a serious peace process, with a credible result, may very well improve. Alternatively, Netanyahu and others may well have decided to do everything possible to use this project to deal a fatal blow not only to Obama’s efforts but to the two-state solution. If they succeed, it will be Israelis as much as the Palestinians who suffer.

Q: Where would this new settlement be? The site in question is the former Shepherd’s Hotel, located in the heart of the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah. The site is not connected to any other Israeli settlement construction – if implemented, this would mean the establishment of a new settler foothold in this area.

While the site itself is isolated from any other settlement, the plan does not exist in a vacuum. Rather, it is part and parcel of a surge in settlement activity in Sheikh Jarrah in recent months and years. This surge includes:

• the displacement of Palestinians families in the Shimon Ha-Tzadik area of Sheikh Jarrah • the promotion of a town plan for the construction of a new Jewish neighborhood/settlement in the Shimon Ha-Tzadik area • the leasing of the Mufti's Grove site to the Ateret Cohanim settler organization (currently pending before the Israeli Supreme Court), and • efforts to approve the construction of a headquarters building for Amana - the major organ of the West Bank settler movement - to be located across the street from the Israeli National Police Headquarters in Sheikh Jarrah.

44 If put into effect, these plans would create a contiguous swathe of right-wing Jewish housing cutting through Sheikh Jarrah and severing areas beyond it from the Old City and historic basin.

Q: Why is news of this project causing so much controversy? The messages Prime Minister Netanyahu and Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat are sending to President Obama with the project’s approval, and with their very public defiant defense of the project, are clear: “We will do whatever we want, regardless of any other considerations” and “we view settlement activities in Jerusalem as a trump card that we can play at any time." It is a clear statement that while mouthing support for the two-state solution, Netanyahu and his government are determined to do everything possible on the ground to undermine any chances for a viable peace process or peace agreement.

The controversy is being framed in the Israeli press as a political showdown between Netanyahu and Obama. Some columnists are spinning it as a trap cleverly set by Netanyahu for Obama to walk into. Others are framing it as a bold diplomatic offensive by Netanyahu, designed to re-assert Israeli strength in the bilateral relationship. Still others are calling it what it is: a transparent ploy Netanyahu is using to try to end US pressure regarding settlements and outposts, and to mobilize support for his government – from Israelis and American Jews alike. For more on this see Nahum Barnea’s analysis in the July 20th issue of Yedioth Ahronoth.

Q: What is the impact of this controversy on the Palestinians and in the Arab world? In terms of what this controversy means for other stakeholders in the peace process, the impacts are also clear. For Abbas and the Palestinians, the approval is a slap in the face. It further discredits President Abbas and the PA – something that is nearly certain to benefit Palestinian extremists, who will be able to position themselves as the only true defenders of Palestinian and Muslim interests in Jerusalem.

At the same time, actions like this approval will only reinforce and increase Arab distrust of Israel and the peace process President Obama is trying to catalyze, making it even harder to convince the Arab states to deliver the sort of early normalization steps that the US views as critical to the process. Israel and the US have for some time been complaining about Arab unwillingness to promise any normalization in advance of an actual settlement freeze. The Shepherd’s Hotel debacle offers a very good example of why, perhaps, Arab leaders are reluctant to "pony up" until it is clear that there won't be continual embarrassments and setbacks.

Q: What is the history of this site? The site was once the headquarters of Haj Amin al Husseini, the mufti of Jerusalem during World War II, who was notoriously a Nazi sympathizer. In the 1980's, when the property was under the control of the Absentee Property Custodian, the land was sold to a corporation controlled by American millionaire Irving Moskowitz (either directly or by means of the Amana settler organization). Moskowitz has long been the premier financier for ideological, far right-wing settler activity in East Jerusalem, focusing primarily on the Old City and historic basin. Given Moskowitz’s involvement, any claim that this was an innocent private sector real estate transaction is disingenuous, to say the least.

45 The Moskowitz connection to this project is important, as this is the same Moskowitz who played an important role in Netanyahu’s last major Jerusalem debacle: the opening of the Hasmonean Tunnel in 1996. That project, too, was funded partly by Moskowitz (who personally attended the opening), and that project led to the outbreak of violence in Jerusalem and the West Bank that left 85 Palestinians and 16 Israelis dead.

Moskowitz has been trying to develop the Shepherd's Hotel site for years, but the project has been stalled -- until now -- in all likelihood because it was viewed as politically reckless and irresponsible. Moreover, when it has been raised in the past -- including several times under the Bush Administration -- the US and the UK expressed strong opposition and the plan was put aside. Indeed, the Jerusalem Municipality has over the last two years periodically promised the international community that it would refrain from expediting the plan in order to allow international stakeholders to weigh in and to ensure that the interested parties were not taken by surprise.

Q: Why has the project been approved now? Israel’s political calculus has changed. Jerusalem’s new mayor, Nir Barkat, has made clear that he is unconcerned with political implications and broader political context of what he does in Jerusalem. And Prime Minister Netanyahu appears to have decided that the project is a handy tool that he can use to torpedo the Obama Administration’s efforts to launch new Israeli-Palestinian and Israeli-Arab peace efforts.

This new calculus first became evident back in March 2009, when Barkat was first on the scene but Netanyahu had yet to take the reins of government. At that time, the Shepherd’s Hotel project suddenly appeared on the agenda of the licensing committee of the Jerusalem Municipality, which was scheduled to convene and deliberate on issuing building permits (Permit Application No. 08-787) to allow for the construction of a new settlement with 20 residential units in the heart of East Jerusalem on the site of the historic Shepherd's Hotel in Sheikh Jarrah. Following (we believe) interventions from the US and UK, the matter was taken off the agenda.

Then, on July 2, with little notice or fanfare, the licensing committee went ahead and adopted a decision to issue the permits – something that only became known on July 5, when it was reported in the Hebrew-language Israeli press. At that time, some municipality officials denied that anything new had actually happened, while others argued that this decision did not constitute full approval of the permits, because further technical approvals were still needed (something the municipality is still saying today). This argument is not credible: the permits are now approved and any remaining approvals are pro forma and virtually automatic.

Finally, on July 18th the Netanyahu government apparently leaked the story to the press. Netanyahu drew further attention to the story by delivering a prepared statement on this “breaking news” at the July 19th Cabinet meeting. Based on the way the story is being spun, the obvious conclusion is that the goal of the leak was to change the subject on the Israel-US agenda from West Bank settlements and outposts (which are not especially popular among rank-and-file Israelis) to Jerusalem – a tried-

46 and-true populist political move by Netanyahu – whose preferred slogan in political campaigns has long been “[insert name of opponent here] will divide Jerusalem.”

Q: Can the plan still be stopped? The plan can indeed still be stopped. However, while a week ago it could have been stopped quietly, at little cost in terms of Israeli or US political capital, Netanyahu’s decision to publicly draw a line in the sand over the plan has massively upped the ante. At stake are the credibility of the Obama Administration’s leadership in the international arena and the viability of its effort to achieve Israeli-Palestinian and Israeli-Arab peace.

Stopping this plan today can be achieved only through firm, resolute, uncompromising intervention from the highest political echelons. The fact is, the government of Israel has great experience and expertise when it comes to holding up or stopping building permits for Arab construction in East Jerusalem. Any arguments that that Israel cannot find a basis on which to freeze, delay, or cancel construction in this case are neither credible nor accurate.

Q: Netanyahu has defended the plan by saying that Palestinians have the same rights as Israelis to live anywhere in Jerusalem. Is this true? No. Defending the Moskowitz plan on July 19, Netanyahu argued passionately in a meeting of his cabinet that Israelis have the right to live anywhere in Jerusalem. In his enthusiasm to defend the project he declared:

“This has been the policy of all Israeli governments and I would like to say that it is indeed being implemented because in recent years hundreds of apartments in Jewish neighborhoods and in the western part of the city have been purchased by - or rented to - Arab residents and we did not interfere. This says that there is no ban on Arabs buying apartments in the western part of the city and there is no ban on Jews buying or building apartments in the eastern part of the city.”

Let’s look at the facts.

Most of West Jerusalem is off-limits to Palestinian residents of Jerusalem in terms of their ability to purchase property. This is because most of West Jerusalem, like most of Israel, is “State Land” (in all, 93% of land in Israel is “State Land,” though the percentage is lower in Jerusalem). Under Israeli law, to qualify to purchase property on “State Land” the purchaser must either be a citizen of Israel (Palestinian Jerusalemites are legal residents if the city, not citizens of Israel) or legally entitled to citizenship under the law of return (i.e. Jewish). This means an Israeli or a Jew from anywhere in the world can purchase such property in West Jerusalem, but not a Palestinian resident of the city. (Technically, by the way, these are generally not purchases but long-term leases.)

With respect to private land in West Jerusalem, legally there are no limitations on Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem purchasing in such areas. Similarly, there are no legal limitations on Palestinian residents of Jerusalem renting in West Jerusalem. However, we are unfamiliar with a single case of a Palestinian who holds Jerusalem residency who is living in West Jerusalem, either through purchase or rental of property (and we are very familiar with this issue). The reasons for this are social,

47 cultural, and economic. This is distinct, by the way, from Arab citizens of Israel, a small number of who do live in West Jerusalem.

In addition, it should be emphasized that the ban on purchase of property on “State Lands” by Palestinian residents of Jerusalem extends to East Jerusalem. Not only are Palestinian Jerusalemites barred from purchasing property in most of West Jerusalem, but they are also barred from purchasing property in the 35% of East Jerusalem that Israel has expropriated as “State Land” since 1967, and on which Israel’s East Jerusalem settlements have been built. This means that in more than 1/3 of East Jerusalem, Israelis and Jews from anywhere in the world have a right to buy property in Israeli settlements, but not Palestinian residents of Jerusalem, including the very residents whose land was expropriated to build these settlements.

Finally, it is true that a small number of Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem have rented apartments in some East Jerusalem settlements (principally French Hill, Pisgat Zeev, and Neve Yaacov - all settlements that are so deep inside Palestinian east Jerusalem that they are increasingly less attractive to Israelis). This does not appear to reflect any political agenda to move to these areas, but rather is a byproduct of the severe housing shortage that exists in Palestinian neighborhoods of East Jerusalem. And it should be noted that these are short-term rentals from their Israeli owners (as opposed to formal leases by the titular land owner, the government of Israel, to Palestinians).

Q: Others have defended the plan by saying that it includes housing for both Israelis and Palestinians. Is this true? No. The plan, which we have reviewed, does not include any construction for Palestinians. The fact is, Moskowitz’s entire “raison d’etre” as a force in Jerusalem over the past 30+ years has been to implant far right-wing, ideologically-motivated Jewish extremists in the heart of Palestinian areas of the Old City and historic basin, with a clear goal of displacing Palestinians and establishing the dominance of a Jewish narrative throughout the area. Indeed, Moskowitz has stated clearly in the past that his goal is, “to do everything I possibly can to help reclaim Jerusalem for the Jewish people.” This project is no different. Indeed, the idea that Moskowitz would build housing for Palestinians in East Jerusalem is simply not credible.

Q: It appears that the government of Israel and some right-wing forces in the US are trying to build a case that Haj Amin al Hussein’s Nazi ties are sufficient justification for the project. Is this reasonable? No. Husseini’s Nazi sympathies are odious. And they have nothing to do with this project today. If Israel were concerned that preservation of this building would somehow promote the legacy of Husseini, it has had 41 years to destroy the building or re-purpose it for some other use. It did not do so, even at times in the past 41 years when the world was paying far less attention to its actions in East Jerusalem. It did not do so, presumably because it (a) did not consider “punitive” action against the long-dead and long-discredited Husseini a priority, and/or (b) it recognized that the site was too sensitive to play games with.

Today’s focus on the Shepherd’s Hotel is about current Israeli politics, not Husseini and Nazis. It is shameful that the Netanyahu government is abusing the Holocaust as part of the effort to defend this reckless project. It is disheartening that the

48 government of Israel is reportedly now circulating a photo taken of Husseini with Hitler as part of an effort to deflect criticism of the plan. Not only does this strategy contribute nothing to justifying the plan, it cheapens discourse on the horrors of Nazism, turning Nazi imagery into a political public relations gimmick.

Netanyahu has a long history of using Jerusalem to try to destroy peace efforts, including his decision, taken immediately after returning from peace negotiations at the Wye Plantation in 1998, to build Har Homa, and, more famously, the 1996 decision to open the Hasmonean Tunnel under the Muslim Quarter of the Old City. The Shepherd’s Hotel is just the latest Jerusalem project that Netanyahu has seized on to undermine the prospects for peace and a two state solution. The fact that Moskowitz is a central player in this affair – just as he was in the Hasmonean Tunnel debacle, lends credence to this analysis.

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