Ethnic Cleansing Continues in Jerusalem

Israeli efforts to maintain a Jewish majority in Jerusalem by discriminatory administrative and development policies, which force Palestinians out of the city, continued unabated in the second quarter of 1999. These policies include land confiscation, settlement construction, ID card confiscation, house demolition, unequal neighborhood investment, closure etc. Between April and June at least five Palestinian homes valued at over US$250,000 were demolished. Settlement construction in key areas in and around Jerusalem, such as Ras al-Amud, Jabal Abu Ghnaim, and Ma'aleh Adumim continues to reduce the area available for the natural development of Palestinian neighborhoods while threatening to completely separate Jerusalem from the West Bank.

The upper areas of Jabal Abu Ghnaim in the south of the expanded Israeli borders of Jerusalem have been nearly denuded of trees over the past two months while infrastructure work and preparation of building sites continues. Land has been marketed for the construction of 1,642 out of 6,500 apartments planned for the new settlement. Most of apartments have been sold to groups, including some organized by the right wing Arutz Sheva pirate radio station and a group of National Religious Party activists.

In the north of the city, meanwhile outgoing Likud Defense Minister Moshe Arens authorized the overall urban construction plan to expand Ma'aleh Adumim and link the settlement to Jerusalem. If implemented the planning area of Ma'aleh Adumim will be expanded to four times the size of Tel Aviv. The plan would prevent the natural growth of Palestinian villages like az-Zaim and Isawiyeh and physically separate the north from the south of the West Bank. Based on its original survey of the area after 1967, the Israel Lands Administration (ILA) acknowledged that the vast majority of the land in the greater Jerusalem area was privately owned by Palestinians, only finding 400 dunums of what it considered to be "state lands."

Meanwhile, Israel continues to threaten to close Palestinian institutions in Jerusalem, maintain roadblocks and checkpoints at all major entrances to the city from the West Bank, and confiscate ID cards from Palestinian Jerusalemites.

(Sources: Ha'aretz (22/6/99) and (28/5/9, Meron Benvenisti, Jerusalem, The Torn City, Minneapolis: Israel Typeset Ltd. and the University of Minneapolis, p. 289.)

Sumoud Camp:
Social Profile and Need for National Institutions

When Sumoud Camp residents were asked in a recent survey how they could contribute towards strengthening Palestinian national rights in occupied Jerusalem their answer was hesitant - "We will stay in the camp." Although Sumoud consists of only 16 Jerusalemite families, their answers reflect the current distress within Palestinian resistance movements in Jerusalem: that of recognizing very tangible rights but not having the means necessary to realize them.

The families of Sumoud have endured nearly two years of extreme social and political duress but any reward for their steadfastness remains distant. Rather, over two thirds of the 70 plus children in the camp still have no ID card and, without a permanent address, the chances of receiving one are few. Moreover, the majority of the children, including several newborns, has no health insurance and are routinely neglected basic health care. On average, each family at Sumoud has lived in 6 houses within the past ten years.

Many of the families have been displaced so many times, either by war, ID card confiscation, home demolition, or the exigencies of financial hardship, that their overall expectations of ever achieving full Palestinian rights in Jerusalem have lowered. Without any real prospects for change or the creation of an alternative social welfare base by the Palestinian civil society and leadership, the process of social atrophy and political disempowerment within the Palestinian Jerusalemite public will become more acute.

While Palestinian institutions do offer many needed services to the Palestinian Jerusalemite public, the aid is sporadic and, many times, responsive only to crisis. Credible and effective social welfare institutions need to be created to meet the daily needs of the Palestinian public if an effective struggle to secure Palestinian rights is to be launched. Only after their daily needs are met will the answer from the Sumoud families change from "staying" to "living" in Jerusalem.