Summary:
Dreaming about “Orshalim” as the unified capital of the Jewish State, has been an indication of the extent to which the Hebrew state is established in Palestine. Despite the passing of 61 years since the establishment of the Israeli occupation state, the Islamic and Christian monuments still have strong presence in the holy city.
In the light of the final arrangements for the course of settlement, the occupation authorities’ dismay over the increasing numbers of Arab Jerusalemites, and the fading deterrence power of the Israeli state following the Second Lebanon War in 2006 and the Operation Cast Lead war on Gaza 2008/2009; confirming the goal of “resolving the fate of Jerusalem” was again a priority for the Israeli political community. The pace of Judaizing the city at the geographic and demographic levels was accelerated; accompanied by security and administrative procedures and the separation wall.
The project of judaization is officially backed politically and financially from the Israeli state, in addition to being overlooked internationally; while the efforts to thwarting this project, and to support the steadfastness of Jerusalemites are characterized by weakness and the absence of a Palestinian, Arab, and Islamic political reference.
Consequently, there are three possibilities for the future of Jerusalem;
1. The success of the judaization project in decisively dominating the identity of the city,
2. Problems and difficulties impeding the implementation of the judaization,
3. Thwarting and termination of the Judaization east of Jerusalem.
Introduction
The Fields of Confrontation … “Orshalim”, Or “Al-Quds”
A. Confrontation in the Religious and Cultural Fields
B. Confrontation in the Demographic Field
The Conflicting Projects: Fixation vs. Judaization
A. Judaization project
B. The Fixation Project
Possible Scenarios
Recommendations
Summary
Dreaming about “Orshalim” as the unified capital of the Jewish State, has been an indication of the extent to which the Hebrew state is established in Palestine. Despite the passing of 61 years since the establishment of the Israeli occupation state, the Islamic and Christian monuments still have strong presence in the holy city.
In the light of the final arrangements for the course of settlement, the occupation authorities’ dismay over the increasing numbers of Arab Jerusalemites, and the fading deterrence power of the Israeli state following the Second Lebanon War in 2006 and the Operation Cast Lead war on Gaza 2008/2009; confirming the goal of “resolving the fate of Jerusalem” was again a priority for the Israeli political community. The pace of Judaizing the city at the geographic and demographic levels was accelerated; accompanied by security and administrative procedures and the separation wall.
The project of judaization is officially backed politically and financially from the Israeli state, in addition to being overlooked internationally; while the efforts to thwarting this project, and to support the steadfastness of Jerusalemites are characterized by weakness and the absence of a Palestinian, Arab, and Islamic political reference.
Consequently, there are three possibilities for the future of Jerusalem;
1. The success of the judaization project in decisively dominating the identity of the city,
2. Problems and difficulties impeding the implementation of the judaization,
3. Thwarting and termination of the Judaization east of Jerusalem.
Dreaming about “Orshalim” as the capital of the Hebrew state has existed since the early Zionist inceptions. “Orshalim” was the romantic embodiment of the dream of the purely Jewish state that is “sponsored by God”. It was the label that entitled the Zionist propaganda since its earliest years. The dream about “Orshalim” in the Zionist mind, simply means to turn the city into a Jewish city in all its culture, language and population aspects.
After 42 years have passed from the beginning of the organized Judaization east of Jerusalem, and despite the considerable accomplishments of the project on many fronts, the golden dome (Dome of the Rock) and the colossal mosque covering a whole mountain in Jerusalem (al-Aqsa Mosque) are still dominating the scene; the minarets of mosques and towers of churches, together, still align the horizon of the city. Architectural patterns and buildings from the Roman to the Islamic eras are still present in the city, forming its predominant character. Praying in the Temple Mount had not been realized yet, and the Jews continue to pray at the same place they seized to pray in prior to establishing their Hebrew state in 1948. Finally, despite of all Israeli measures to put pressure on the Arab population on the one hand, and on the other bringing Jewish immigrants luring them to stay, the absolute population majority is still by far unattainable for the Israelis.
These alarming facts for the Zionists launched a series of “hard efforts” since 2002 to resolve the future of Jerusalem, “as a unified Jewish capital” to the state of occupation. The growing sense of losing deterrence power on behalf of the Israelis, which was deeply rooted after the Second Lebanon War in 2006 and Gaza war in 2009 / 2008, made resolving the future of Jerusalem the first priority to the Israeli political community, along its different ideologies. The idea of creating “Orshalim” in its final form topped the list of priorities, as opposed to the chronic regress of the Jerusalem issue on the Arab, Islamic and even Palestinian agenda.
The Fields of Confrontation … “Orshalim”, Or “Al-Quds”
Although the issue of Jerusalem is being lost in the maze of many details, from excavation to the confiscation and modification of the city’s makeup and obliteration of its identity; and from settlements to separating wall to displacement and the withdrawal of permanent residency cards from the Palestinian Jerusalmites – known as their “identities” – to high taxes and the imposition of the National Insurance, and the “domicile” law; however, the conflict over the city is going in the direction of resolving the identity on two main tracks: the resolution of the city’s identity is centered along two confrontation lines: the religious and cultural identity of the city, and the demographic identity of the city.
A. Confrontation in the Religious and Cultural Fields
The occupier seeks in this field to replace the Arab and Islamic identity of the city with a Jewish identity in all religious, cultural and architectural aspects. The Israeli Occupation is attempting to achieve this through four tracks:
The First Track: Creating a Jewish holy city parallel to the Old Town
The Second Track: Achieving a permanent and direct Jewish presence in al-Aqsa Mosque and its surroundings; through the repeated incursions by extremist Jewish groups, and through synagogues built at and around the walls of the mosque, or under it, and in its surrounding areas.
The Third Track: Depopulating the Palestinian neighborhoods surrounding al-Aqsa Mosque, and limiting the ability of the Palestinians to reach al-Aqsa Mosque and the Old Town.
The Fourth Track: Promoting Jerusalem as a Jewish city, through organizing guided tourism in the city that ignores the Islamic holy sites; and through festivals, and celebrations of Jewish religious and national events.
B. Confrontation in the Demographic Field
Since its occupation of the whole of Jerusalem in 1967, Israel was haunted by the demographic obsession. Various attempts have been forted since then to achieve a comfortable demographic Jewish majority in Jerusalem as the capital of the Hebrew state; a law was enacted for this end in 1973, ceiling the proportion of Palestinians in the city by 22%, although this percentage has never been realized. Today, the proportion of Palestinians in the city is 35%. It is expected to reach 40% in 2020 according to Israeli estimates. Therefore, the issue of changing the demographic balance tops the occupation priorities in the city, and directs most of the municipal policies and plans, especially the structural plan of “Jerusalem 2020”.
Today, the occupier is attempting at changing the demographic balance through four tracks:
The First Track: Intensification of settlement activity; Today in Jerusalem, and within its adjusted surface area bounded by the separation wall, 69 settlements with around 270 thousand settlers population, occupying 163km2 of the land that is estimated by 289 km2.
The Second Track: promotion of Jerusalem as a residential center: Jerusalem is a repelling city for the Jewish population; during the years 1980-2005 the reverse migration from the city amounted to about 105 thousand settlers. To address this issue, the Israeli government approved a 200 million dollars plan in 7/8/2007, designed to attract the Jewish population to move and live in Jerusalem.
The Third Track: The Separation Wall: The first goal of constructing the wall in Jerusalem is to include the largest possible area of land within the municipal boundaries of Jerusalem, while excluding the largest possible number of Palestinian Jerusalemites from it. Although, the Jerusalemites tried to respond intrinsically, through moving in large numbers to the neighborhoods bounded within the wall, the occupation succeeded in isolating more than 154 thousand of them outside the city, and confiscated more than 163km of the Palestinians land, at the date when 90% of the wall was constructed.
The Fourth Track: Depopulating the Palestinian Jerusalemites: The efficiency of this approach in changing the demographics of the city has been limited, because its implementation is difficult as it raises political problems and discerns. The occupation thus rarely applied this approach on a large-scale, although now it tend to adopt it as an approved policy, and as a part of its desperate efforts to change the demographic balance of the city, before conditions get even worse for them. The Israeli occupation forces the Jerusalemites out of their city by two major approaches: withdrawing permanent residence cards, or the so-called “blue ID cards,” where between 1967 and 2006 a total of 6,396 cards were drawn. The second approach is the mass deportation, where the occupation authorities have re-activated it during the years 2008 and 2009 to include more than 174 buildings in five neighborhoods: al-Boustan, al-Abbasiyah, al-Sheikh Jarrah, al-tour, and the northern district of the Old Town.
The Conflicting Projects: Fixation vs. Judaization
Today, there is a conflict in Jerusalem between two projects: The first is judaization which seeks to seize the city, and redefine its cultural, religious, and demographic identity. The second is the fixation project which seeks to preserve the identity of this city.
A. Judaization project
This project aims to transform the city of Jerusalem into “the unified and eternal Jewish capital” of the state of occupation; seeking to achieve this through:
1. Preserving “the demographic balance in the city”, i.e. to maintain a Jewish majority set by the Government of the State of the occupation in 1973 by 70% of the total population.
2. Judaizing the city’s identity, its religious and cultural faces, its architecture, and foremost, Judaizing al-Aqsa Mosque and the Old Town and its surroundings.
The empowering aspects of this project are the political and financial support it enjoys, and additionally specialized expertise and legal support;
At the political level, this project has a local consensus in the State of occupation and it is agreed upon, or at least not objected to, by the Americans; with few exceptions, in which Americans and Europeans denounce some measures such as demolishing houses or ifringing on al-Aqsa Mosque.
At the financial level, this project is officially supported on a large scale; the Israeli Municipality of Jerusalem alone has allocated to it an annual budget estimated at 1.019 billion US dollars, not to mention the allocations of other official Israeli bodies in Jerusalem. The Jewish community and the “Jews of the Diaspora,” provide for this project an annual contribution that amounts minimally to 180 million dollars annually.
At the operational and executive level, all factors of professional and logistical support are provided on a professional level, such as specialists of expertise and qualified staff. The project is also provided with legal support factors provided by the Occupation Government and its relevant authorities.
B. The Fixation Project
We metaphorically call this a “project”, although it mostly stems from the spontaneous and subjective individual reaction from the original population of the city. This project aims to fix the Arab and Islamic identity of the city, and to maintain the status quo until its liberation from the occupation; through:
1. Supporting the Jerusalemites; to be able to survive and live in the city, facing the expulsion policies and restrictions, while maintaining their population growth rate.
2. Preserving the religious and cultural identity of the city; through the protection and maintenance of holy sites, and protecting the real estate and property of Jerusalemites, especially in the Old Town and its surroundings.
The project suffers from some weakening factors, mainly the absence of political and material support.
At the political level, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) -and practically the Palestinian National Authority- is the basic spokesperson for the Palestinian people; as it is the body empowered to represent the Palestinians and defend their rights; but since the death of Faisal al-Husseini and the closure of Orient House in 2001, the PLO deals with Jerusalem as a neglected issue. Meanwhile, the Palestinian factions deal with Jerusalem issue politically not in a much better way; they adhere to the Palestinian right to the city and refuse giving it, considering it one of the fundamental stipulations in their policies, but they are still dealing with the city as an agenda title without an actual or efficient on-ground presence there.
On the other hand, Jordan deals with its guardianship of the holy sites and the Islamic Waqf in the city, within the roof of its foreign policy, which presupposes that Jordan is a country of limited capacities and capabilities that it prefers to avoid confrontation and exposure to pressures.
At the material level, the fixation project suffers from the almost complete absence of financial support, the Palestinian Authority (PA) responsible for Jerusalem ceased to support almost all sectors; under its new leadership, the PA deals with Jerusalem issue as a hopeless case of burden. The material support from the Palestinian factions for Jerusalem is very limited, and does not focus on the key priorities for the city. This fact coincides with the erosion of the endogenous capacity of Jerusalemites due to the constant targeting they were exposed to, over the past years.
In addition, the weakness of external interaction makes the stakeholders in this project in Jerusalem feel that they are left alone to face their fate in confronting the occupation machine.
This difficult reality did not prevent the existence of some strengths working in favor of this project, such as: the task of the performers in this project is to maintain an existing reality, reinforcing this reality without the need to create new facts or a radical change on the ground. Jerusalemites are aware of the price they will pay to stay in the city, and in doing so, they are ready to withstand the harsh and difficult life. This made them maintain, since the occupation, a high rate of growth of at least 3%. This rate is expected to remain the same or in range in the coming two decades.
First Scenario: The Judaization project succeeds in decisively changing the identity of the city.
This scenario requires that the occupier manages to divide al-Aqsa Mosque, and reinforce the principle of “the right of the Jews” to pray side by side with Muslims in it. It also requires the occupier to inaugurate the giant synagogues in the vicinity of the mosque, to complete the inauguration of the tunnels it is preparing to be tourist attractions, to be able to depopulate the Jerusalemites from the neighborhoods near the Old Town to establish the “City of David,” thus demolishing large parts of the suburb of Silwan, and to redefine the municipal boundaries to include all the surrounding settlements thus forming a new demographic reality which is difficult to predict its outcome from now.
It is important here to confirm that the onset of dividing the mosque is becoming an imminent move in the light of the Israeli and Zionist measures and preparations; a maneuver has already been done simulating the closure of the southern courtyard of al-Aqsa, on the dawn of 11/6/2009, on the pretext that it is a “closed military zone”. Any one knowledgeable about Jerusalem issue can deduce that the difference between the maneuver and enforcement is not big, especially in light of the current Israeli government and municipal leadership.
Second Scenario: the occupier faces serious problems in implementing the requirements of the first scenario, thus hindering and delayed its implementation; or even leading it to search for other alternatives.
This scenario requires real strengthening for the endurance of the Jerusalemites through systematic support, and an active public movement within Jerusalem that confounds the occupier; and in addition, public and political movement outside Jerusalem and Palestine that make the price of the occupier’s movements towards Jerusalem more expensive than it expected or prepared to, forcing it to adopt “less extreme” alternatives that would, certainly, prevent it from decisively changing the identity of the city.
This scenario also requires a change in the behavior of primary concerned parties, that is supposed to be supportive to the Jerusalemites and Jerusalem issue; which is possible but takes considerable time, effort and money, and a change in some concepts at the level of Palestinian, Arab and Islamic decision-makers; something that we might now be out of time to achieve.
Third Scenario: Jerusalemites manage to maintain the original identity of the city.
This requires preventing the occupier from achieving any progress on all fronts of confrontation, and for the Jerusalemites to continue to make progress in the demographic field, adding real achievements in the architectural and cultural identity of the city. This scenario seems to be impossible with the harsh Israeli occupation measures, and under the current political circumstances.
In light of the above reading, the second scenario remains the closest one to reality, without excluding the first scenario which is still realistic, although the current conditions are not in its favor to the required extent. The battle for Jerusalem today had become to a large extent a battle of time; the occupier no longer has the patience to make schemes and plans for decades to come, and is looking for fast observable results in the next few years, considered by it the most crucial. If the occupiers managed to resolve the identity of the city in these years, it would feel its ability to survive and viability. If it fails, a sense of despair to resolve the identity of this city will overwhelm it, and this would have serious implications on its confidence of being able to survive; if “Orshalim” was not possible, would “Israel” be?
Recommendations
– Raising awareness, amongst the peoples of the Arab and Islamic worlds, of the eminence of Jerusalem and the nature of the threats it faces from the Israeli occupation, and raising the level of response and interaction to the harsh occupation circumstance the city and the Jerusalemites are suffering; in order for the occupier to understand that any infringement on the holy sites will be responded to, making it pay a price that might be unaffordable.
– Activating the role of civil society institutions, and providing additional support and assistance to Jerusalemites, thus enabling them to face the measures of the occupation; helping them to survive in their city, especially as the demographic factor is critical in determining the future and identity of the city,.
– Reminding the official authorities (Palestinian, Arab and Islamic) of their responsibility towards Jerusalem and its people, requiring them to take the initiative through fixation and support projects, at the level of buildings, land and population; and suing Israel and senior occupation officials for their aggressive practices against Jerusalem and Jerusalemites.
– Overcoming the political divide between the governments in Ramallah and Gaza, at least when it comes to the issue of Jerusalem and the Jerusalemites; especially that both sides declare their determinacy to having Jerusalem as the capital of the Palestinian state.
– Declaring a clear political position on behalf of the PA presidency, reaffirming the rejection of any infringement on Jerusalem or its status or its identity as the capital of the Palestinian state, and accordingly making devoid any agreement that might threaten the status the city or its people.
Ziad al-Hassan is the Executive Director of al-Quds International Institution.
The Arabic version of this Assessment was published on August 2009
[…] result is a continual conflict in Jerusalem between two projects, as we learn from a 2009 study on a site called Al-Zaytouna Centre, which conducts strategic studies […]