'Quiet
Transfer' In East Jerusalem Nears Completion
By Elodie Guego
20 September 2006
Forced Migration Review
Israel is close to implementing
a long-term plan to transform the demographic structure of annexed East
Jerusalem. Policies to revoke the residency permits of Palestinian Jerusalemites
and to Judaise the city have been described as ethnic cleansing.
After victory in the 1967
Six Day war, Israel annexed East Jerusalem - that part of the city that
had been under Jordanian rule since the end of the British Mandate in
1948 - together with an additional 64 square kilometres which had been
part of the West Bank. Jerusalem thus became Israel's largest city and
was declared to be its 'united and eternal capital'. The international
community, led by the UN, has continuously denounced this act of unilateral
annexation, arguing it is a violation of the fundamental principle in
international law prohibiting the forcible acquisition of territory.
The international community has consistently considered East Jerusalem
to be an occupied territory, thus akin to the West Bank and Gaza.
Their support of the Palestinian
claim to East Jerusalem was bolstered by the fact that at the time of
occupation Palestinians constituted the majority of residents in this
sector of the city. Israel has engaged in a demographic battle to secure
Israeli sovereignty over the whole city. For almost four decades successive
governments have implemented policies designed to transform the city's
population structure and ensure the numeric superiority of Jews. Until
the construction of the Wall in and around East Jerusalem, these objectives
were pursued through a series of discriminatory regulations to reduce
the Palestinian population by rendering their lives increasingly intolerable
and encouraging the growth of Israeli settlements in Palestinian neighbourhoods.
Today the approximately 230,000 Palestinian Jerusalemites represent
around 30% of Jerusalem's total population.
Under the post-1967 plan
designed by Israeli military commanders, heavily populated Palestinian
areas were not included, but land belonging to several Palestinian villages
was incorporated into Jerusalem. Those who were left outside the new
municipal boundaries, or who happened to be outside Jerusalem in 1967,
remained residents of the West Bank and, as such, subject to military
rule. The Israeli government conducted a census of the Palestinian population
living within the city's new administrative boundaries and granted permanent
residency status to the Palestinians residents of the annexed areas.
They were entitled to become Israeli citizens provided they agreed to
swear allegiance to the State of Israel. Mass refusal to recognise Israeli
sovereignty over occupied Jerusalem meant that only 2.3% of Palestinian
Jerusalemites became Israeli citizens. The others became permanent residents
of Israel subject to Israeli law and jurisdiction, just as foreigners
who voluntarily settle in Israel.
Jerusalem permanent residency
status differs significantly from citizenship. Permanent residents of
Israel are entitled to live and work in Israel without special permits,
to receive social benefits from the National Insurance Institute and
to vote in local elections. Permanent residency is not automatically
granted to the holders' children or spouses, however, and permanent
residents, unlike Israeli citizens, do not enjoy the right to return
to Israel at any time.
Between 1967 and 1994 Israel
confiscated 24.8 square kilometres of land in East Jerusalem, 80% of
it belonging to Palestinians. Land expropriation is continuing. Today
a mere 7% of the area of East Jerusalem remains available to Palestinians.
Confiscated land has mostly been used for the construction of Jewish
settlements and settlers' bypass roads, in violation of international
humanitarian law prohibiting an occupying power from transferring part
of its own population into territory it has occupied. The Jerusalem
Municipality has expediently used zoning restrictions to establish 'green
areas', supposedly set aside for environmental and recreational purposes,
but actually deployed as a tactic to remove the land from Palestinian
use and create a reserve for Jewish housing.
The Town Planing Scheme (TPS),
another key instrument of 'quiet transfer', restricts building permits
in already built-up areas, the only areas available for Palestinian
use. TPS has been used to restrict the development of Palestinian neighbourhoods.
Palestinians are only permitted to build one- or two-storey buildings
while adjacent Israeli housing units may have up to eight floors. Palestinians
must go through a complex and time-consuming administrative process
to obtain a building permit. These cost around $25,000 - a considerable
obstacle as Palestinian incomes are significantly below those of Israelis.
Palestinians obtain a disproportionately small percentage of the building
permits issued every year by the Jerusalem Municipality. Only 7.5% of
the homes legally built during the period 1990-1997 belong to Palestinians.
Centre of life
In 1995 the Israeli Interior
Ministry introduced a new regulation requiring Palestinian residents
to prove they had continuously lived and worked in Jerusalem during
the preceding seven years. The standard of proof demanded is so rigorous
that even persons who have never left Jerusalem have difficulties in
meeting it. Palestinians who fail to prove that their 'centre of life'
is Jerusalem risk having their residency status revoked and their requests
for family reunification and child registration rejected. The number
of Jerusalem residency ID cards confiscated after promulgation of the
'centre of life' policy rose by over 600%. Suburbs on Jerusalem's outskirts,
to which many East Jerusalemites had moved as a result of earlier discriminatory
policies, were declared to be outside Jerusalem, thus removing the residency
rights of over 50,000 people. In order to defend their claims to residency
and the social rights which go with it, some 20,000 Palestinians returned
to live within Jerusalem's municipal boundaries.
Israel's 'centre of life'
policy seriously affects Palestinians' entitlement to health and social
benefits, to family reunification, child registration and membership
of the Israeli national insurance scheme. The 'centre of life' is verified
for each annual renewal of spouses' residence permits. Thousands of
Palestinian children born in Jerusalem of parents who do not both hold
a Jerusalem ID have been denied registration and are unable to exercise
their basic rights, including their right to education. While the 'centre
of life' policy had been officially discontinued, the outbreak of the
Al Aqsa intifada in September 2000 led to its reactivation. Since May
2002, Israel has refused to accept applications for family unification
and refused to register the children of permanent residents who were
born in the OPT.
The Wall consolidates the
objectives of the 'centre of life' policy. It not only isolates East
Jerusalem from the West Bank and effectively incorporates it to Israel
but also divides Palestinian neighbourhoods of East Jerusalem. The Wall
is being erected to the west of neighbourhoods previously part of the
municipality of Jerusalem (the Shu'afat refugee camp and West Anata
with a population of 55,000), most of whose inhabitants hold Jerusalem
IDs. It also separates from Jerusalem neighbourhoods which are entirely
dependent on the city for their survival and the approximately 50,000
Palestinian permanent residents forced to relocate due to the discriminatory
tax regime and the building permits' restrictions imposed by Israeli
authorities.
Palestinians holding Israeli
permanent residency permits who now find themselves on the West Bank
side of the Wall, particularly those living outside Jerusalem's boundaries,
are set to lose their residency status under the 'centre of life' policy.
The Wall makes many unable to reach their places of work and basic services
inside Jerusalem which they must do to retain Israeli residency status.
Family members who do not hold permanent residency cards will now be
unable to circumvent Israeli regulations on residency and their spouses
holding an Israeli ID will have to choose between living on a different
side of the Wall or losing their jobs and residency rights in Jerusalem.
According to the UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human rights
in the OPT, "Israel hopes to further reduce the Palestinian population
of East Jerusalem by compelling spouses to move to the West Bank side
of the wall."
The housing crisis and the
level of overcrowding of Palestinian neighbourhoods are such that Palestinians
have been forced outside the city's municipal boundaries or compelled
to build homes in violation of Israeli laws. By building illegally they
expose themselves to high fines and the threat of house demolition.
In recent years, the number of houses demolished for lack of building
permits has grown significantly According to the Israeli human rights
organisation, B'tselem, between 1999 and 2003 in East Jerusalem 229
houses and other structures were demolished while in 2004 and 2005 alone
198 houses were demolished, displacing 594 people. This acceleration
coincides with new land expropriations and plans for the development
of new Jewish settlements in the heart of Palestinian neighbourhoods
such as in Ras-al-amud or the Mount of Olives.
The construction of the Wall
along and inside Jerusalem's municipal borders will definitively prevent
the return of Palestinians expelled from Jerusalem by land confiscations,
house demolitions or pressure from extremist settlers' groups. They
will lose their rights to permanent residency in Jerusalem under the
'centre of life' policy and will no longer be able to enter the city
without special permits. The properties that they have abandoned in
Jerusalem risk being seized under Israeli's Absentee Property Law.
This eight-metre high Wall
has given Israel a pretext to achieve long-established goals under the
guise of security. Jerusalem is at the heart of all the antagonisms
in the Middle East. International silence and failure to speak out against
Israeli's transfer strategy is likely to have irreversible consequences
and destroy regional prospects for peace. The transfer of Palestinians
will soon be an undisputed reality but should not remain 'quiet'.
Elodie Guego, a lawyer specialised in human rights law, worked as a
volunteer in the OPT in 2005 and is currently Assistant Country Analyst
at the Norwegian Refugee Council's Internal Displacement Monitoring
Centre, Geneva. This article was originally published in the August
2006 edition of Forced Migration Review