Article74 Magazine

With the change of government in Israel, those in the international and local human rights community dealing with Palestinian residency rights issues must get used to a new set of faces on the Israeli side.  
The Ministry of the Interior, as that branch of government responsible for maintaining population registries in Israel and for approving or denying applications for family reunification has tremendous influence over residency and demographic policies, both on a long-term and day-to-day basis. The Ministry of the Interior is also closely connected to the town planning process in Israel, another administrative function which has a crucial impact on demographic trends.  
With all this in mind, ARTICLE 74  would like to acquaint its readers with Israel’s new Minister of the Interior, Eli Suissa, whose sterling work in the past with regard to housing rights for Jerusalem’s Palestinian residents certainly augurs well, now that he is in charge of all the Ministry’s various functions:  
Eli Suissa, of the Shas party, was placed in charge of the Jerusalem District of the Ministry of the Interior ten years ago, after his predecessor in this position, Raphael Levy, was arrested and imprisoned.  
In the last years, Suissa accumulated a lot of experience in the field of housing and urban planning. According to the Legal Advisor to the Jerusalem District Planning and Construction Committee, Advocate Tami Reva: “I think that [Suissa] really believed those controversial plans that he placed before the Commission were justified.”  
Those “controversial plans” referred to by Reva involved various plans for building settlements in East Jerusalem, sponsored by such voluntary associations as Atert Cohanim, an organization whose purpose is to promote Jewish settlement in the Old City of Jerusalem, as well as ‘to enhance the Jewish presence on the Temple Mount’, and eventually build the Third Temple at that location. Suissa was also behind the plans to build a Jewish neighborhood at Ras al-Amud, as well as near Herod’s Gate and in the City of David - all sites in East Jerusalem in close proximity to the Old City. All these proposals, which Suissa placed before the Planning Commission, were opposed by the then Mayor of Jerusalem, Teddy Kollek. It’s not that Kollek opposed building Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem, but rather that he adhered to the traditional Labor Party aversion to building Jewish settlements  “in the middle of heavy concentrations of Arab population.” When the Labor Party came to power in June 1992, most of Suissa’s pet projects were put on the back-burner. However, these plans may now be revived.  
Suissa, was also in charge of the Committee which dismissed all the objections to the planned new settlement (to be known as “Har Homa”) at Jabal Abu Ghneim, in annexed southeast Jerusalem, on lands belonging mainly to Beit Sahour and Bethlehem residents. In this case, Suissa and Kollek saw eye-to-eye.  
During his term as the Interior Ministry official in charge of the Jerusalem District, the number of new housing units slated for Palestinian-Arabs in northern Jerusalem was reduced from 18,000 to 5,000. When Kollek announced he would cease signing orders calling for the demolition of homes built “illegally” by Jerusalem Palestinians as long as no building permits for them were being issued, Suissa announced that he would sign the orders himself.  
[Some of the information in this article was taken from the Hebrew daily, Ha’aretz, 18-6-96]