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Democracy, the best form of government
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Mar 6, 2010 Economist Magazine Jerusalem A city that should be shared Israel builds still more facts on Palestinian ground, while stalemate persists
EVEN as the Americans strive to jump-start fresh talks between
Israelis and Palestinians, the Israeli government has been using the hiatus
to intensify the refashioning of East Jerusalem, which the Palestinians see
as their future capital. This week the city’s Israeli mayor, Nir Barkat,
unveiled his latest plan to turn Palestinian districts into Jewish biblical
heritage parks. Fearing that their half of the city is being cast in an
increasingly Israeli mould, Palestinian stone-throwers clashed with Israeli
forces on the Haram al-Sharif, or Noble Sanctuary, which Muslims venerate
for its al-Aqsa mosque, Islam’s third-holiest shrine, and which Jews revere
as the site of the biblical Temple. While George Mitchell, Barack Obama’s
envoy, is yet again bidding to open “proximity talks” between the two sides,
the Palestinians have been literally losing ground. |
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The digging feeds Arab fears that Israel is eroding the very foundations on which the Arab districts, and in particular the al-Aqsa mosque, are built. Parts of Silwan, on the eastern slopes below the Old City, are already precariously propped up on iron stilts, to facilitate the excavation of King David’s biblical city, which is said to lie beneath. A settler outfit called Elad has turned the site into Israel’s third-largest tourist site and is laying Jewish heritage trails through the adjoining valleys.
So far the number of new settlers in Palestinian areas is fairly small. All but 3,000 of Jerusalem’s 200,000 settlers live in outlying neighbourhoods that ring the city and avoid the built-up areas where the city’s 270,000 Palestinians still live. But the zealots who opt to move into Arab districts bring with them the armed support of the Israeli state. The housing ministry has recruited hundreds of security people who, says a guard, are empowered to arrest and shoot on sight to protect the settlers. “What Arab East Jerusalem?” asks a settler in an Arab area. “Today it’s all Jewish.”
Can the Palestinian Authority, which runs a fledgling state on the West Bank, do anything to salvage its putative capital, other than plaintively cry “theft”? Efforts to rouse international ire have had mixed success. Last year America’s secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, berated Mr Barkat for his plan to demolish Arab homes to create a biblical tourist park in the valley below the Old City, where David is said to have composed his psalms. Wary of a foreign outcry if the bulldozers move in, Mr Netanyahu has publicly asked Mr Barkat to slow down. But Mr Barkat seems unfazed.
The Palestinians are ill-equipped to bar the encroachment. In 1996, when he became prime minister for the first time, Mr Netanyahu’s decision to open a tunnel alongside the al-Aqsa compound sparked a Palestinian uprising that left scores dead. Since then, Palestinian clout in the city has eroded. Whereas Palestinians recently cried foul when Mr Netanyahu added two shrines in the West Bank that are holy to Muslims as well as to Jews in his latest list of Israeli heritage sites, they hardly stirred when he included David’s City, which is in East Jerusalem.
One reason for the apparent futility of Palestinian dissent is the Israeli security barrier that bites into the West Bank and runs through chunks of East Jerusalem. It prevents most West Bank Muslims from reaching the city’s holy places and has cleft its Arab districts in two, leaving tens of thousands of Arab residents on the wrong side. Further impeding access, traffic lights flick green only briefly for cars from Palestinian districts while staying green for cars from Jewish settlements for minutes. And Israel’s interior ministry is stripping ever more East Jerusalem Palestinians of residency papers. In 2008 nearly 4,600 lost them, 20 times the previous years’ average.
Severed from its West Bank feeder towns, Ramallah and Bethlehem, Arab East Jerusalem at night feels like a ghost-town sunk in neglect. The climb up Silwan’s hillside stairways is a tricky obstacle course. The streets are littered and broken. Streetlights have long ceased to work. Israeli gendarmes cruise past in military vehicles, but Israeli ambulances have sometimes been told not to venture into Palestinian areas to answer emergency calls. Jewish cemeteries on the east side are pristine whereas the few Muslim ones in the west lie desolate.
Some say Bill Clinton, when negotiating as president in the late 1990s, unintentionally speeded Israel’s encroachment. What is Jewish would stay Jewish, he said, and what is Arab would stay Arab. Instead of cementing the status quo, his words may have spurred Israel on to establish “facts on the ground” before someone calls a halt or negotiations begin anew.
