Most Popular Choices
Share on Facebook 111 Printer Friendly Page More Sharing Summarizing
OpEdNews Op Eds    H2'ed 3/31/19

How Israel is working to remove Palestinians from Jerusalem

By       (Page 1 of 3 pages)   5 comments

Jonathan Cook
Follow Me on Twitter     Message Jonathan Cook
Become a Fan
  (28 fans)

The message is: 'You either accept your subjugation or leave'
The message is: 'You either accept your subjugation or leave''
(Image by The Times of Israel)
  Details   DMCA

The 350,000 Palestinian inhabitants of occupied East Jerusalem are caught between a rock and hard place, as Israel works ever harder to remove them from the holy city in which they were born, analysts and residents warn.

That process, they say, has only accelerated in the wake of US President Donald Trump's decision a year ago to relocate the American embassy to Jerusalem, effectively endorsing the city as Israel's exclusive capital.

"Israel wants Palestinians in Jerusalem to understand that they are trapped, that they are being strangled, in the hope they will conclude that life is better outside the city," said Amneh Badran, a politics professor at Jerusalem's Al Quds university.

Since Israel seized the eastern part of Jerusalem in 1967 and then illegally annexed it in 1981, it has intentionally left the status of its Palestinian population unresolved.

Israeli officials have made Palestinians there "permanent residents," though, in practice, their residency is easily revoked. According to Israel's own figures, more than 14,500 Palestinians have been expelled from the city of their birth since 1967, often compelling their families to join them in exile.

Further, Israel finished its concrete wall slicing through East Jerusalem three years ago, cutting some 140,000 Palestinian residents off from the rest of the city.

A raft of well-documented policies including house demolitions, a chronic shortage of classrooms, lack of public services, municipal underfunding, land seizures, home evictions by Jewish settlers, denial of family unification, and police and settler violence have intensified over the years.

At the same time, Israel has denied the Palestinian Authority, a supposed government-in-waiting in the West Bank, any role in East Jerusalem, leaving the city's Palestinians even more isolated and weak.

All of these factors are designed to pressure Palestinians to leave, usually to areas outside the wall or to nearby West Bank cities like Ramallah or Bethlehem.

"In Jerusalem, Israel's overriding aim is at its most transparent: to take control of the land but without its Palestinian inhabitants," said Daoud Alg'ol, a researcher on Jerusalem.

Like others, Mr Alg'ol noted that Israel had stepped up its 'Judaisation' policies in Jerusalem since the US relocated its embassy. "Israel is working more quickly, more confidently and more intensively because it believes Trump has given his blessing," he said.

Demographic concerns dominated Israel's thinking from the moment it occupied East Jerusalem in 1967, and subordinated it to the control of Jewish officials in West Jerusalem in what Israel termed its newly "united capital".

City boundaries were expanded eastwards to attach additional Palestinian lands to Jerusalem and then fill in the empty spaces with a ring of large Jewish settlements, said Aviv Tartasky, a researcher with Ir Amim, an organisation that campaigns for equal rights in Jerusalem.

The goal, he added, was to shore up a permanent three-quarters Jewish majority to ensure Palestinians could not stake a claim to the city and to allay Israeli fears that one day the Palestinians might gain control of the municipality through elections.

Israel has nonetheless faced a shrinking Jewish majority because of higher Palestinian birth rates. Today, Palestinians comprise about 40 per cent of the total population of this artificially enlarged Jerusalem.

Next Page  1  |  2  |  3

(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).

Must Read 4   Valuable 3   Well Said 2  
Rate It | View Ratings

Jonathan Cook Social Media Pages: Facebook page url on login Profile not filled in       Twitter page url on login Profile not filled in       Linkedin page url on login Profile not filled in       Instagram page url on login Profile not filled in

Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. He is the 2011 winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His latest books are "Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East" (Pluto Press) and "Disappearing Palestine: (more...)
 

Go To Commenting
The views expressed herein are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.
Writers Guidelines

 
Contact AuthorContact Author Contact EditorContact Editor Author PageView Authors' Articles
Support OpEdNews

OpEdNews depends upon can't survive without your help.

If you value this article and the work of OpEdNews, please either Donate or Purchase a premium membership.

STAY IN THE KNOW
If you've enjoyed this, sign up for our daily or weekly newsletter to get lots of great progressive content.
Daily Weekly     OpEd News Newsletter

Name
Email
   (Opens new browser window)
 

Most Popular Articles by this Author:     (View All Most Popular Articles by this Author)

Blocking roads isn't crazy - It's our last hope that sanity will prevail

Military pollution is the skeleton in the West's climate closet

The battle for Syria's skies will see a move from proxy clashes to direct ones

After Sy Hersh's Bombshell Investigation, Why Won't Media Tell the Real Story of Trump's Military Strike in Syria?

American liberals unleashed the Trump monster

Uninhabitable: Gaza Faces the Moment of Truth

To View Comments or Join the Conversation:

Tell A Friend