PLUNDERING PALESTINE - Jerusalem Quarterly

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Jerusalem Diary December 2007 – March 2008 In 1967, when Israel occupied previously Jordanian-controlled eastern Jerusalem, it took control of a city that was 26 percent Palestinian and 74 percent Jewish. Forty years later, the Palestinian population in the city has risen to 34 percent, due largely to a higher birth rate. Israel has worked hard to maintain demographic and geographic control over the city it annexed as its capital. It expanded the city’s boundaries and is putting massive investment into Jewish settlements in order to beat back inching Palestinian growth. In 2005, Jerusalem was home to 245,000 Arabs and 475,000 Jews, 184,000 of the latter living in settlements considered illegal under international law. (More recent numbers put the settlement population at 210,000.) Since Palestinians and Israelis kicked off talks in Annapolis, Maryland in November, Israel has escalated settlement construction in Jerusalem, according to a recent report by the Ir Amim organization. Over 9,500 housing units for Jews have been constructed, 471 of them in the heart of Palestinian population centers. In addition, Israel has announced tenders for 1,550 units in four separate settlements within the redrawn Jerusalem boundaries. These moves contradict Israel’s commitments to stop settlement construction under the road map, the basis for the US-sponsored Annapolis talks. The road map plan for peace was first endorsed in 2003 by the United States, European Union, Russia and United Nations. Palestinian officials have protested the new building to no avail. Palestinian Authority efforts to counteract settlement by designating the city an Arab cultural capital have been broken up by Israeli police, and its organizers detained. One civil society organization canceled a conference to be held in the city after it was notified that no Palestinian events in Jerusalem were being allowed to proceed. Meanwhile, Palestinian neighborhoods in Jerusalem suffer from systemic neglect. Almost 90 percent of the city’s sewage networks, roads and sidewalks are found in the city’s western side for the use of Jewish residents, says the human rights group B’Tselem. Since 1967, Israeli officials have planned no new Arab neighborhoods in eastern Jerusalem. Construction permits are expensive and difficult to obtain and unlicensed structures are threatened with demolition. In March alone, city officials demolished four unlicensed Palestinian structures in Jerusalem and its Arab suburbs. Jerusalem Quarterly 31 [ 83 ]
Poverty in Jerusalem is growing at staggering rates, increasing by 40 percent over six years and touching 33 percent of the city’s residents in 2005. Palestinians in the city had a 70 percent poverty rate, found an Israeli study – as did the city’s growing ultra-orthodox community. The increase in poverty is largely due to low workforce participation by Palestinian women and ultra-orthodox men. Approximately one quarter of the city’s residents are ultra-orthodox Jews. Secular Jews often cite their numbers as reason for moving out of Jerusalem. Jerusalem’s mayor and most of its city council members are ultra-orthodox. (Palestinians typically boycott the city government.) The yeshiva where a Palestinian gunman from the Jerusalem neighborhood of Jabal al-Mukabber killed eight ultraorthodox men injuring 35 others on 6 March was a major training ground for the West Bank settlement movement. Jerusalem police were ‘caught off guard’ days after the shooting when Israeli demonstrators, among them settler representatives, entered a Palestinian neighborhood and attacked homes and businesses. On 14 May, Khayri al-Qam, 51, a father of nine, was stabbed in the back about 5:30 A.M. on his way to work in the Beit Yisrael neighborhood in what was said as a revenge killing for the yeshiva deaths. Police said this was the sixth stabbing of Palestinians since the lethal stabbing of an Orthodox Jew in February. “A cycle of bloodshed has been opened,’’ Jerusalem police chief, Yair Yitzhaki, told the New York Times. While many large Jewish settlements ring the city, newer settlements near the historic old city are set within Palestinian neighborhoods. Settlers in Silwan are actually digging under Arab homes, expanding an archeological site, despite an Israeli court order to stop. Authorities are also considering a massive new Jerusalem settlement for ultra-orthodox Jews just meters from the Palestinian town of Ramallah. Former deputy mayor Meron Benvenisti called the proposal “complete insanity” for its potential to create friction. In the absence of intensive efforts to reach a political compromise over the city and its related issues of settlements and borders, Jerusalem is increasingly tense. Worrying trends indicate a shift to violence between city residents along ethnic and religious lines, as Israeli authorities push hard to gain a demographic advantage also along ethnic and religious lines. [ 84 ] JERUSALEM DIARY [December 2007 – March 2008]
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PLUNDERING PALESTINE Ownerless Obje
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Table of Contents EDITORIAL Why Are
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course of the Wall. “It’s all o
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law applied in the West Bank and th
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later resold to Arab schools. Some
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war and exile in Egypt, where Sakak
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the collection project had begun -
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Two other things seem worthy of men
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The National Library and Orientalis
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The Owners of the Objects Following
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19 I recently had the opportunity t
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the cultural heritage of the region
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as commodities, consumer demand and
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as a springboard, and in consultati
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for the fifth draft on Palestinian
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Chapter 4 Section 20 Presumption of
Page 33 and 34: Later in the draft under Section IV
Page 35 and 36: The archives of the IAA also contai
Page 37 and 38: In interviews conducted as part of
Page 39 and 40: 19 Garstang, “Eighteen Months Wor
Page 41 and 42: and thereby devising a comprehensiv
Page 43 and 44: tomb robbing from foreign archaeolo
Page 45 and 46: Impact of the western separation wa
Page 47 and 48: ministry appeared willing to accept
Page 49 and 50: Khalat al-Qadat The most interestin
Page 51 and 52: The excavation had uncovered what a
Page 53 and 54: That may be true, but conditions in
Page 55 and 56: epatriating antiquities are still e
Page 57 and 58: Reparation for Lost Palestinian Pro
Page 59 and 60: ights of Palestinian land owners st
Page 61 and 62: it sought to shield itself from lia
Page 63 and 64: Annex 7 included details concerning
Page 65 and 66: Endnotes 1 United Nations General A
Page 67 and 68: There are more revelations in Pappe
Page 69 and 70: The most prominent of these was Ord
Page 71 and 72: Jewishness-Judaism has many faces a
Page 73 and 74: a truly commercial run of the volum
Page 75 and 76: Kletter does one thing that is virt
Page 77 and 78: ‘Time Out’ in Jerusalem Penny J
Page 79 and 80: Counting Game: Israel In, Palestine
Page 81 and 82: ‘I Come From There and Remember
Page 83: these buildings are permanent - hom
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