Jerusalem: The Suffocation of Shared Space

 A New and Old Jerusalem

In Jerusalem, tourist buses cart their cargos around, the faces behind the glass take in the sights and a lifetime of dreams of the holy city gets realised before their eyes. The EAPPI group took a tour of the city this week, but we are not tourists and this was not your normal tourist bus tour.

East Jerusalem lies in the West Bank, to the east of the green line which marks the limit of the Israeli state prior to the 1967 war. The area to the east of the Green line is still classified as occupied, but take a walk in the historic centre of Jerusalem and you could walk over the Green line without even noticing. Today part of it is marked by a brand new tram line -not unlike the Luas in Dublin- which runs by the walls of the Old City and out into the suburbs.

East Jerusalem is supposed be the capital of any future Palestinian state. Today it lies completely within the municipality of Greater Jerusalem and under Israeli control. A Palestinian living elsewhere in the West Bank needs a permit to travel into it. The vast majority are unable to obtain this. If you are a Palestinian living in East Jerusalem must carry a permit at all times while walking the streets of your hometown or run the risk of being arrested and detained by the police or the military, but this is not really news, it happens all the time.  

Our bus tour took us from the affluent, manicured West Jerusalem City Centre into the heart of East Jerusalem. Our tour guide, Angela Godfrey Goldstein (an Israeli peace activist) would have liked to take us into the Al Bustan district but safety concerns meant that we could not go. Al Bustan is currently a pretty tense place; it is subject to 1500 house demolition orders for homes the Israeli government claims are illegal, this is despite the fact that many of the homes were built pre 1967 when Israel had no authority over the area. Tensions are particularly high this week because a demonstration a few days earlier had resulted in the death of a 2 year old girl through tear gas inhalation.

The residents of East Jerusalem are mostly Palestinians, except for a number of pre-existing Jews and new Jewish settlers who live in heavily fortified houses built on the site of homes owned by evicted Palestinian tenants.  Those Palestinians who work pay taxes and national insurance to the Israeli state, they are entitled to benefits but according to Angela Godfrey Goldstein anything they get they usually pay back in fines. She continued; “despite the fact that (the Palestinians) pay rates and taxes not a single new road has been built in East Jerusalem since 1967”. The streets of East Jerusalem are littered with skips filled with the smoldering remnants of burnt rubbish. Many Israelis and tourists who find themselves in the area assume the Palestinians like to burn their own rubbish. In fact they are not provided with sufficient refuse collection to cope with the waste. They also cope with erratic water supply and are compelled to construct black water storage tanks on the tops of the houses so they can live when the water is turned off. According to the mayor of Jerusalem, there’s no problem, since the Palestinians like the security of “water on the roof over their heads”. The reality is that Jerusalem doesn’t seem that interested in providing basic services for the Palestinian populace.

The same Mayor, Nir Barkut aims to turn the Al Bustan district into a tourist amusement park themed on King David. A recent opinion piece in the main stream Israeli paper Jerusalem Post applauds the mayor for his vision for the economy despite the “always tough” demolition of homes.  Some within Israeli society think that the people in East Jerusalem need roofs over their heads more than they need an amusement park. For the Palestinians, it is just another chapter in a process that has been ongoing since 1967. According to the Israeli Committee against House Demolitions, the organization Angela Godfrey Goldstein works for, 24,000 homes have been demolished in the West Bank since the start of the occupation.



A Palestinian Girl faces a bulldozer on its way to a demolition



The bus moved out of East Jerusalem and onto a new highway which took us even further into occupied Palestinian Territory and into the new settlement of Ma’ale Adumim (The Hill of Olives). This area, planned by the Israeli government, built in large part by Palestinian labour and illegal under international law is an impressive suburb replete with lush green gardens; wide, palm lined avenues; sparkling new apartments and an educational institution which works with organisations such as NASA in the development of space age war technology. Its name resonates in the beautiful thousand year old olive trees which adorn roundabouts in the settlement. These we’re uprooted from confiscated Palestinian land and transplanted to give the area that all important touch of heritage.

The development is populated by Israelis who are economically incentivised to live there. It is part of a plan to encircle Palestinian East Jerusalem with new settlements and create “facts on the ground” which separate the Eastern part of the city from the rest of the West Bank.

In the distance beyond the Ma’ale Adumim the separation barrier winds its way along hilltops, creating to ultimate obstacle to movement between East Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank, beyond that, in the far distance you can see the hills of Jordan and the Dead Sea basin. Ma’ale Adumim is one of the last stops on the brand new, soon to be operational tram line which runs along part of the green line by the walls of the old city some miles to the West.

Uprooted Olive Tree in Ma ale Adummim

Former Israeli Prime minister and notorious military commander Ariel Sharon was quoted as saying over 30 years ago “we’ll make a Pastrami Sandwich out of (the Palestinians). We'll insert a strip of Jewish settlements in between the Palestinians, and then another strip of Jewish settlements right across the West Bank, so that in twenty-five years' time, neither the United Nations nor the United States, nobody, will be able to tear it apart."

Today Ariel Sharon lies in a sick bed (comatose since suffering a stroke in January 2006) but his vision for a fragmented West Bank has been realised in bricks, mortar and Israeli only highways. In pursuing their policy of fragmentation of the West Bank, Israel has repeatedly broken the articles 49 and 53 of the 4th Geneva Convention relating to the transfer of populations and destruction of property in an occupied territory. However, without political pressure these laws are meaningless. The hope that Jerusalem will one day be a shared city for Jews, Muslims and Christians alike is getting strangled.  Meanwhile the Palestinian proportion of the population of the city (current at around 35%) continues to rise; without permission to build houses, and with the threat of existing homes being torn down, the future of the Palestinian community in a shared Jerusalem looks bleak and tubulent.