Background Paper: Israeli policies in East Jerusalem

Basic terms

• ‘East Jerusalem’ is not only the Old City. The eastern section of Jerusalem is larger than the western section (77 square kilometers vs. 45 square kilometers); it contains more than half the city`s residents, Jews and Arabs. It also includes one refugee camp (Shu’afat).
• In 1967, after occupying the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights, the government of Israel annexed East Jerusalem and an additional tract of Palestinian land, in contravention of International Humanitarian Law (IHL).
• Israel applied Israeli law to the eastern parts of the city, and granted residency rights to 66,000 Palestinians registered by census as its inhabitants. This status is different from citizenship: it does not enable its holders to participate in national elections and can be revoked at the discretion of the Ministry of Interior.
• Two legal systems apply to East Jerusalem residents: IHL (the laws of occupation), and Israeli law.

Israeli objectives in East Jerusalem

Israeli governments seek:

• To preserve a single, ‘united’ Jerusalem that will be recognized as the capital of the State of Israel;
• To isolate Jerusalem and its institutions from Palestinian communities in the rest of the OPT, in order to limit the ability of the Palestinian leadership to claim the city for its own;
• To preserve a ratio of 70% Jews to 30% Palestinians in Jerusalem (East and West).

In order to achieve these objectives, Israeli government policies have included:

• Separating East Jerusalem from the West Bank;
• Restricting Palestinian life in East Jerusalem;
• Expanding the boundaries of the city and encouraging Jewish settlement in East Jerusalem.

Israeli policies in East Jerusalem

I. Separating East Jerusalem from the West Bank

Israeli governments have restricted access of Palestinian communities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to key institutions that used to serve them in Jerusalem: medical (e.g., Maqassed hospital), religious (e.g., the Al-Aqsa compound) and political (e.g., the Orient House).

The Palestinian Authority is forbidden to provide services in the city, leaving Palestinian residents dependent on services provided by Israel – not equal to those of the Jewish population, and not designed to answer their needs.

From 2003, a 168-km long concrete and barbed-wire barrier was constructed to separate East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank. In some places, the wall encroaches on Palestinian neighbourhoods in the city, so that residents who still pay municipal taxes and carry Israeli identity cards find themselves on the “West Bank” side of the barrier.

The wall separates Palestinian communities from each other or cuts through the heart of Palestinian neighbourhoods. It restricts the entry of West Bank Palestinians into the city, who may only enter via designated crossings at specific points.

II. Restricting Palestinian life in East Jerusalem

Since 1973, the Israeli government has employed a series of restrictive policies to make the lives of Palestinian residents in the city untenable and ‘encourage’ them to leave the city:

• Restrictive planning policies prevent Palestinian development and construction and deny Palestinians the right to build legally; the result is massive home demolitions of houses built without permits. Although they are a third of Jerusalem’s population, Palestinians only control 9% of its land;
• Discriminatory budget allocation restricts Palestinian access to basic infrastructure and services such as roads, sewage, sanitation, healthcare and education;
• Revocation of personal status and the ‘silent transfer’: Many Palestinians responded to the housing shortage by moving to towns on the West Bank or to suburbs of Jerusalem on the municipal boundaries of the city, while continuing to work inside the city and pay taxes.

  The Israeli government used this gradual exodus by employing the Ministry of Interior and other bodies to monitor Jerusalem residents and to revoke their residency status, claiming they had ‘left the country’. In 1996 the Occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip were defined as ‘overseas’ for the purpose of residence and thousands of people had their residency – and the right to live in Jerusalem – revoked. This policy, called ‘the silent transfer,’ continues to this day.

III. Expanding the city; encouraging Jewish settlement

a. Governmental settlements

After 1967, Israeli governments extended the municipal boundaries of the city several times at the expense of the West Bank, and built Jewish neighbourhoods on expropriated Palestinian lands.

Palestinian East Jerusalem is made up of urban neighbourhoods inside and adjacent to the Old City, and of discrete villages and hamlets within the modern city boundaries.

The Israeli settlement project follows a pattern that extends the urban sprawl of Jewish West Jerusalem eastward; surrounds and interrupts existing Palestinian neighbourhoods; and severs the Palestinian neighbourhoods and villages of Jerusalem from their rural hinterland in the West Bank.

Like in the West Bank, Jerusalem’s settlements are usually built on hilltops and constructed in fortress-like formations.

Settlements founded shortly after the annexation of East Jerusalem include e.g., Ramat Eshkol (1968), French Hill (1971) and Gilo (1971). These neighbourhoods are now considered by most Israelis to be an integral part of the Jewish city.

More recent projects include Har Homa (1997) and Ramat Shlomo (1994). Further new projects are planned at Giv’at HaMatos and Giv’at Yael.

Since the changing of the borders of the city in 1967, 30% of the lands of East Jerusalem have been expropriated to build Jewish neighbourhoods, which are now home to about 200,000 Israeli Jews.

b. ‘Unofficial’ settlements

Usually initiated by private settler groups, ‘unofficial’ settlements were not openly supported by governments until recently.

Such settlements involve Jewish expropriation or construction activities in the heart of the Moslem Quarter of the Old City and in the midst of Palestinian neighbourhoods adjacent to the Old City, such as Silwan and Sheikh Jarrah.

The aim of these settlements is to create facts on the ground and gradually gain control over the holy sites in the Old City, disconnecting them from a Palestinian continuum. They are characterised by direct confrontation with local Palestinian residents, and have been compared to settlements in Hebron, where a tiny and aggressive Jewish presence is heavily guarded in the midst of large Palestinian communities.

Although ostensibly unofficial, since 1967 governments have provided indirect support and funding to settlements of this type in sensitive parts of the city. More recently, the Jerusalem municipality has earmarked large tracts of Palestinian land around the Old City, ostensibly for a national park development, but in fact in order to entrench Jewish control over the area surrounding the sacred sites, and to stop Palestinians from building there.

Settlements of both types have increased and accelerated since 2000, in a bid to create facts on the ground before any final settlement. The ‘unofficial’ type has also gained more overt governmental support.

Despite Israel’s 30:70 ratio target, the number of Palestinians in Jerusalem in 2008 was 268,000, and its total population was 763,000.

(For a more detailed discussion of Israeli approaches to settlements in East Jerusalem, of recent developments in Israeli government policies and of US responses to them, see JNews editorial: Israel, the US and Jerusalem: Challenging deep-seated assumptions)

Concluding remarks

Israeli government policies in the city faithfully reflect the ambivalence of Israelis who are unwilling to contain the Palestinian residents and grant them equal rights, yet are unable completely to exclude them, due to Israel’s aspiration to a greater, ‘united’ Jerusalem. This pattern of simultaneous acceptance and rejection, annexation and occupation seems untenable.

The Palestinian Authority, for its part, is more interested in symbols of sovereignty in Jerusalem than in catering to the needs of its inhabitants. It is more likely to organise demonstrations against threats to religious symbols than act to protect the social benefits and housing rights of residents.

Palestinian residents of the city are thus caught between the national aspirations of both authorities and splintered into multiple groups, both socially and physically. They have become highly vulnerable, since they are dependent on Israel for their civil and social rights, and find it difficult to resist the growing measures taken against them in an organised manner.