JERUSALEM SHARED? JERUSALEM DIVIDED?

Angela Godfrey-Goldstein, 2009

Today on Jerusalem Day, I remember my first experience of Jerusalem
Day, when still a new immigrant to Israel, in 1982. I attended a
Hebrew language school in Netanya, north of Tel Aviv, which
participated with thousands of other Israelis in the 40 km national hike
to Jerusalem through hills and forests, culminating in a parade down
Jaffa Street in the centre of West Jerusalem, where we released white
doves. The school principal, Shulamit Katznelson, was regularly
nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, so her gesture was typical – and
indeed our studies were accompanied by Palestinian lawyers, teachers,
doctors or housewives from the West Bank, or Druze from the Golan,
all of them past students still devoted to her.
Of course, they weren’t present on Jerusalem Day, an Israeli national
holiday celebrating Israeli conquest of Jerusalem, a day considered by
Religious Zionists as even more important than Independence Day; but
there is a day echoed in the Palestinian community called International
Day of Quds, an annual day of protest on the last Friday of Ramadan,
which opposes Israeli control of occupied Jerusalem.
Since the ’80s, Oslo happened and Jerusalem and Israel have changed
drastically as a direct result, since those heady early Oslo days of
doves and olive boughs, paraded then by Palestinians through the
streets of East Jerusalem, totally baffling the Israeli Border Police. For
example, settlements have doubled, both in number and demography.
Not only that: Religious Zionists are increasingly militant, having been
massively supported by all governments since the 70s – indeed, Israel
is an “ethno-security system” rather than the usual concept of a
democracy - so all those bodies -- government, settlers, security
authorities -- have worked together to increase settlement of the
Occupied Palestinian Territories, in order deliberately to prevent a
viable Palestinian state from emerging. And nowhere more so than in
Jerusalem, the Jewel in the Crown so coveted.
So it’s a historical fact that the more peace has been discussed (yet
deliberately delayed), the more facts on the ground speeded up, as the
rightwing militated, determined not to allow Jerusalem to be shared
(they would say “divided”). It’s obvious, especially in retrospect, that
those settlers have become a far more powerful minority, not least in
their political impact as evidenced by the murder of Yitzchak Rabin,
and have quite literally grabbed every hilltop, obedient to Ariel
Sharon’s urging in 1998. And nowhere more so than in Jerusalem, the
Queen secured by sacrificing the Gaza Pawn, when settlers were
evacuated in 2005.
Therefore what I remember as a day of hope, of release of white doves
in a call for peace, has now become a Jerusalem Day of nationalist
hysteria to be avoided, best illustrated by this photograph by
ActiveStills co-operative, with whom I worked to produce JERUSALEM
DISPOSSESSED – the photo exhibition on display [outside this hall].
The exhibition highlights our tours of East Jerusalem and surrounding
settlement cities such as Maale Adumim, east of Jerusalem, part of
Greater Jerusalem, increasingly linked to it once a 12 sq.km tract of
land between East Jerusalem and Maale Adumim (called “E-1”) has
been filled in with 3,500 housing units – which will completely deny the
Palestinian state viability, since it will prevent Palestinians from having
East Jerusalem as their capital, or having use of the Ramallah/East
Jerusalem/Bethlehem economic salient which normally represents 30-
40% of the Palestinian economy, due to tourism there; it will prevent
Palestinians from having the last remaining open green space on which
to expand and will slice the West Bank in that region into at least two
“cantons” – a southern canton isolating Bethlehem and Hebron from
the northern “canton” of Ramallah and the communities north. There
are already two huge police stations and two massive highways on E-1,
and the entire Maale Adumim “bubble” is due to be surrounded by the
Wall, which will also quite literally cement the region to Jerusalem, and
stifle the Palestinian neighbourhoods left fragmented inside East
Jerusalem.
You can see for yourselves the nationalist icon that the Israeli flag has
become, in these photos and as it stands triumphantly over every
militant settlement in the Holy Basin around the Old City or inside it.
The message is “This is exclusively Israeli,” while all efforts are
directed at forcing Palestinians out of the city, in what we call “The
Quiet Transfer”, not least by the cruel, bureaucratic policies of home
demolition, aimed almost exclusively at dispossessing Palestinians in a
way that is clearly racist.
Scenes such as these are also very much part and parcel of Israel’s
current slide into fascism, represented by the election as third largest
party in our Knesset of Avigdor Lieberman, a man whose main policy
plank is transfer of Palestinians out of Israel (one may safely call such a
policy ethnic cleansing) – such politics resulting in the predecessor
Kach political party led by Meir Kahane having being banned from the
Knesset as a terrorist organisation. Again, an example of how far Israel
has moved from its original socialist Zionist roots. Now we will have as
foreign minister Lieberman (under investigation for corruption), who
has openly threatened to bomb the Aswan High Dam to wipe out
millions of Egyptians living in Cairo and its delta; who called for all
Hamas parliamentarians in Israeli prisons to be drowned in the Dead
Sea and who has campaigned on a ticket demanding that all voters
(Israeli Jews and Palestinians) take an oath of loyalty to the State of
Israel or be forced to surrender their citizenship. He has also predicted
that he will win the next elections. He was previously Netanyahu’s
chief of staff, and together they are both determined not to allow a
Palestinian state to be created and to continue expansion of
settlements. Lieberman himself is an ideological settler.
Currently, there are some 190,000 Israeli settlers living illegally under
international law in Palestinian, Occupied East Jerusalem, as against
some 240,000 East Jerusalem Palestinians. Those East Jerusalemites
suffer huge discrimination on all fronts. Municipal budgets are not
invested in their welfare or services, so even though Palestinians pay
their taxes and rates, and represent 34% of the city’s population, they
receive on average less than 10% of the municipal budget so in many
places live without services, including sewage pipelines, running water,
street lighting, street cleaning, garbage collection, clinics, libraries,
playgrounds, parks or swimming pools, postal deliveries, tarred roads,
pavements, community centres, enough classrooms, etc. Whilst there
are 36 municipal swimming pools in West Jerusalem or East Jerusalem
settlements, there are none in Palestinian East Jerusalem, as just one
example of the obvious, raging discrimination.
This discrimination is not a fiction of the imagination of The Israeli
Committee Against House Demolitions or other Israeli peace activists.
Only last month, the EU Heads of Mission Special Report on East
Jerusalem was leaked to me, having been previously leaked to me in
2005, as it was obvious to caring, concerned diplomats that its
recommendations were to be ignored. It states in December 2008
that:
“Long-standing Israeli plans for Jerusalem, now being implemented
at an accelerated rate, are undermining prospects for a Palestinian
capital in East Jerusalem and a sustainable two-state solution.
Although Israel has legitimate security concerns in Jerusalem,
many of its current illegal actions in and around the city have
limited security justifications. Israeli “facts on the ground” –
including new settlements, construction of the barrier,
discriminatory housing policies, house demolitions, restrictive
permit regime and continued closure of Palestinian institutions –
increase Jewish Israeli presence in East Jerusalem, weaken the
Palestinian community in the city, impede Palestinian urban
development and separate East Jerusalem from the rest of the
West Bank. Israel is, by practical means, actively pursuing the
illegal annexation of East Jerusalem.”
The report continues to underline that:
“The daily creation of ‘facts on the ground’ in the city undermines
the credibility of the Palestinian Authority and weakens popular
support for the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. In addition, these
on-going actions will further complicate the already delicate final
status arrangements for the City. More Israeli settlers – and fewer
Palestinian residents – in East Jerusalem will only make eventual
Israeli concessions on Jerusalem much harder. Furthermore, the
current pervasive Israeli presence in East Jerusalem will make
Israeli-Palestinian separation much more convoluted and difficult to
achieve in practical terms. Thus Israel’s actions in and around
 Jerusalem constitute one of the most acute challenges to Israeli-
Palestinian peace making.”
And the report continues to detail all the various ways in which Israel’s
ongoing policies of judaisation of Jerusalem – i.e. its landgrab for purely
Jewish, nationalistic benefit – are undermining the possibility of
Jerusalem being a shared capital, or even for Palestinians to have free
access to their holy sites, staffing by priests at their churches, and so
forth. The report says categorically that
“the vitality of smaller religious communities and institutions
disclose issues that transcend those of religious freedom, as
important as this might be. The decline of the religious minorities
in Jerusalem is threatening its historical diversity, legacy and its
iconic significance as a place where civilizations meet rather than
clash.”
And what do the settlers themselves say? Those who are deliberately
taking over Jerusalem?
In a Jerusalem Report article of November, 2004 (entitled HOUSE BY
HOUSE), journalist Matti Friedman quotes settlers of Ateret Cohanim, a
nationalist Religious Zionist organisation with an agenda, together with
another settler organisation, El-Ad (which is largely focusing on Silwan
next to the Al Aqsa Mosque), to take over the entire Old City and
surrounding Holy Basin, all of which are currently predominantly
Palestinian but under Israeli occupation, (as opposed to the large
settlements in East Jerusalem occupied by mostly secular economic
settlers, who represent 85% of all settlers). Ateret Cohanim settler
Nadav Fisher says:
“If I told you that in 20 years this whole neighbourhood will be filled
with Jews," Nadav says, gesturing out toward the Arab houses that
surround us, "you'd think I was crazy. But reality isn't something that
can be predicted. Everything changes, and I'll leave that up to God. We
see ourselves as part of a divine act. A small part. Knowing this is what
gives us strength to move forward," he says. "Slowly, slowly." And
Asaf Baruchi, the Ateret Cohanim planner, says: "I don't know anything
about the future, I just know my job in the redemption. I know that
Jerusalem is the heart of the struggle. The heart. One house, another
house, and another. The number will continue to grow."
Ateret Cohanim, he says, isn't doing anything that contradicts stated
Israeli policy since 1967. "Every single Israeli government has declared
that Jerusalem is Israel's eternal and undivided capital, and not one has
ever done anything about it," says Baruchi, 29, who has a wispy blond
beard and a goofy smile. "They could have, but they didn't, so we
shouldn't be surprised that people are talking about the division of the
city. We won't let that happen. Forty families wanted to move into the
Yemenite Village," he says. "They were fighting over spaces. And the
village is the most difficult, complicated place in all of Jerusalem,
because it's in the middle of such a dense Arab population. But the
residents know that their presence is guarding Jerusalem. They come,
and then the police come, and the army. It works," he says with a
smile. "The parts of Jerusalem where we've settled are safer for Jews
now than they were 20 years ago. The security situation always gets
worse at first, and then gets much better once people calm down, once
the neighbours see that we're not violent, that we're not crazy."
(Actually, there is a current municipal and national plan to demolish
over 80 homes in Silwan’s Bustan neighbourhood, which is actually
provoking talk of a Third Intifada; this threat has been taken seriously
even by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who referred to those
demolitions as “unhelpful.”)
The article continues: ‘Still, Baruchi says, beyond the rational
explanation for Ateret Cohanim's activities - making any division of the
city impossible by extending Jewish presence all over it - is one rooted
in the movement's messianic ideology. "It's not that we're settling to
achieve a goal," he tells me. "Settling is the goal. It's a stage on the
way to deliverance."’ These are messianic, somewhat psychopathic
people, whose inability to share Jerusalem or renounce covetousness,
seems to threaten the future at the least, and at the most to prevent
Jerusalem from ever being decided in Final Status Negotiations. The
Shas political party, for example, caused Tzipi Livni’s downfall recently,
refusing to enter into a coalition, since she was intent on negotiations
to avoid the impending demographic reality that will make Palestinians
a majority from the Jordan to the Mediterranean and therefore a
potential threat for them if the only option becomes a one state
solution – which they certainly don’t want, and are trying to avoid.
Quite soon after that article was published in 2004, the 2005 EU
Special Report on East Jerusalem was leaked to me. It stated that:
“Clear statements by the European Union and the Quartet that
Jerusalem remains an issue for negotiation by the two sides, and that
Israel should desist from all measures designed to pre-empt such
negotiations, would be timely. We should also support Palestinian
cultural, political and economic activities in East Jerusalem.” Those
clear statements were never made, definitely not loud and clear in
public. On the contrary, the Bush Administration (not to mention the
EU) has been conspicuously silent for the past 8 years and certainly no
pressure, leverage or effective threats of sanctions have been made to
stop these pre-emptive judaisation policies. Nor have the EU or the
Quartet or the American Bush administration supported Palestinian
cultural, political and economic activities in East Jerusalem. While
European diplomats (including EU decision-makers) have told me on
numerous occasions that they believe they can achieve more as
“friends” than as enemies, I believe the effect has been appeasement
– as witness recent moves to upgrade the EU-Israel relationship, which
Israel then touted to prove that the world approves of Israeli policies.
George Bush, has been, in my opinion, disastrous as to the future of
Jerusalem and its ability to remain a shared capital.
Other recommendations in 2005 were far reaching, including:
 Phase One of the Roadmap calls for the re-opening of Palestinian
institutions in East Jerusalem, and in particular the Chamber of
Commerce. The re-opening of these institutions would send a
signal to the Palestinians that the international community takes
their concerns seriously, and is taking action.
[No surprise to note that they all remain closed to this day!]
 Request the Israeli Government to halt discriminatory treatment
of Palestinians in East Jerusalem, especially concerning working
permits, building permits, house demolitions, taxation and
expenditure.
And even these recommendations:
1. The EU might consider and assess the implications and
feasibility of excluding East Jerusalem from certain EU/Israel
co-operation activities.
2. Organise political meetings with the PA in East Jerusalem,
including meetings at ministerial level.
3. Initiatives (statement letters, contacts, meetings) focused on
issues like access, building permits, the consequences of the
barrier, etc.
4. In view of the Palestinian legislative elections scheduled for 25
January 2006, encourage the parties to agree on the terms
and substance of their co-ordination to allow for satisfactory
elections to take place in East Jerusalem, referring to the
parties’ obligations under the interim agreements and the
Roadmap (PA to hold elections and Israel to facilitate them).
[..]. Offer 3rd party technical assistance and monitoring
capacity if required and adequate.
Tragically and ironically, where the Report’s recommendations were
implemented, the result has been disastrous, since the EU chose to
condemn the legitimate election success of Hamas and facilitated the
split between Fatah and Hamas, which has developed into the
colonialist policy of “divide and rule” to undermine the already
terminally ill body politic of Palestine. The 2005 recommendations
continued:
 The Jerusalem Masterplan that is currently in the approval
process should undergo a technical assessment followed by a
decision as to how to evaluate the plan in terms of legal
implications, public awareness etc. The plan currently exists
only in Hebrew (the plan should be translated into Arabic and
English).
It still is not available in English. Some of its plans involve huge new
settlements, such as Givat Yael in East Jerusalem – 13,500 new
housing unit; others call for a thinning out of the Palestinian population
in the Old City. No surprise that Israel is currently negotiating,
according to Peace Now Settlement Watch, a further 73,300 housing
units, to increase the settler population in Jerusalem and the West
Bank by some half million settlers, bringing the full number up to 1
million -- in a country of 6 million Jews, albeit over a million of those
Israelis are living abroad, for a variety of reasons, not least the
hopelessness of the current ethno-security system which fosters
conflict and short-lived, volatile coalition governments – all of which
agree on settlement expansion, but some of whom (such as Tzipi Livni
and Kadima) have pretended to be involved in a peace process, even
though she refused to discuss Jerusalem, being unprepared to share it
on any equitable basis. Even the Clinton Parameters (which called for
what is Israeli to remain Israeli, what is Palestinian to remain
Palestinian) are now irrelevant, due to the excessive settlement
development during the Bush administration (I note that Madeleine
Albright as Secretary of State forced Netanyahu to freeze Maale Zeitim
settlement in Ras al Amud – the same settlement now doubling in size,
soon to take over a police compound, since those El-Ad settlers have
built that $10 million E-1 police station.
No surprise that increasingly analysts question the viability of the 2-
state solution, something we have been warning about for the past 7
or 8 years. So we see the current configuration of land as only offering
a Bantustan, a cantonised version of Swiss cheese that cannot deliver
a viable, normal Palestinian state.
Whilst what I am describing is somewhat bureaucratic and perhaps
tedious, it’s no coincidence that Ilan Pappe, the Israeli revisionist
historian whose most recent book was entitled THE ETHNIC CLEANSING
OF PALESTINE, is currently working on a book entitled THE
BUREAUCRACY OF EVIL. In this context, I’d add that whilst most West
Bank Palestinians are prevented from access to their holy sites,
hospitals, churches and other institutions by the Closure Regime,
including checkpoints and permit system, for the past many months
only East Jerusalem Palestinians over the age of 45 can go to the Al
Aqsa Mosque for Friday prayer. Soon, once the strategically placed
Ateret Cohanim and El-Ad settlements – City of David in Silwan, Maale
Zeitim in Ras al Amud, Choshen and Beit Orot on the Mount of Olives
and Shimon HaZaddik in Sheikh Jarrah – (all of them bestraddling the
access roads to the Holy Basin) have increased as currently planned –
not even East Jerusalem Palestinians over the age of 45 will be able to
gain free access without running the gauntlet of settlers, who will no
doubt practice similar policies as those same people have done in
Hebron, where the Worshippers’ Way has been cleansed of Palestinians
who no longer have any viable foothold or ability to live in Hebron’s Old
City or even travel through it or regularly pray in its holy sites.
I recommend that you study the photo exhibition, visit our website
(www.icahd.org) and read our publications which are available in full
there (including Jeff Halper’s well-known thesis: THE MATRIX OF
CONTROL). You can even screen JERUSALEM DISPOSSESSED if you go
to ActiveStills’ website and use the powerpoint presentation of it there.
Finally, I strongly recommend that you visit Israel-Palestine (especially
East Jerusalem where facts on the ground speak for themselves),
guided by critical Israelis, so you get away from the regular tourism
sites and meet with average Palestinians to see life under closure from
their perspective and then report back to your communities, especially
your churches to let them know that Jerusalem is being cruelly
configured so it can never be shared, but is becoming an exclusively
Jewish, nationalistic city, denying Judaism its moral, ethical code in that
celebration of hubris. And I firmly believe that just as friends don’t let
friends drive drunk, so a true pro-Israel friend is one who calls for Israel
to be restrained for its own good and for tough love to be the best
advice.
So I’d like to end with some more concrete suggestions as to what we
as civil society, together, especially as part of Sweden’s EU Presidency
later this year, could advocate as to Jerusalem on the one hand,
bearing in mind the need to save it for the world as a shared city and
as part of the world’s spiritual heritage, to prevent it from being
ethnically cleansed of its indigenous Palestinians – and on the other
hand, suggestions as to Gaza which recently suffered the intensely
disproportionate Israeli military policies of An Eye for an Eyelash.
This discussion is tardy or even too late. The world increasingly
understands something has gone awfully wrong with the modern State
of Israel, settlements being the main problem. Increasingly, people are
beginning to question – rightly – whether Israel is serious about
wanting peace. And there is, I believe, a gulf on that issue between
Israelis and our governments – most Israelis want to end the
Occupation, and are in favour of the 2-state solution with the Green
Line as border, but held ransom by corrupt politicians such as -- oh the
list’s too long – most of them, I fear….
We should therefore urgently consider:
1. Ending the siege on Gaza, by pressuring Israel to immediately
open the borders and sea-lane to goods and people (including a ferry
service), to recognise Palestinian democracy and to empower the EU
and governments to engage with the Hamas in order to progress
towards peace.
2. Ending the arms trade with Israel, to prevent complicity with war
crimes, so that respect for international law should be upheld, as called
for recently by Amnesty International after its investigations into Gazan
war crimes by Israeli soldiers.
3. Pushing for war crimes trials to be instituted, so that Israel
becomes a normal country, and not the exceptional state that has
allowed it increasingly to flout international norms with impunity.
Hamas war crimes should also be addressed, if investigations warrant
that treatment.
4. Working for the suspension of the EU-Israel Trade Agreement,
based on the human rights clauses which Israel has always flouted, as
well as participating in non-violent campaigns of Boycott, Divestment
and Sanctions, especially of settlement goods, to raise public
awareness and express disapproval of Israeli government policies,
especially the systematic and ongoing policies of dispossession and
displacement of Palestinians from their lands, including by settlement
expansion, home demolition, military evictions, annexation of land for
roads, etc.
5. Insisting on Israeli financial participation in the rebuilding of
Gaza, and Israeli compensation to Gazans who have suffered
deliberately inflicted losses for no security purpose (such as every
single factory systematically demolished in order to completely destroy
the Palestinian economy there). And finally:
6. Insisting on a total freeze on all settlement expansion, including
in East Jerusalem and the West Bank settlement blocs, in conformity
with international law, to protect the final vestiges of the 2-state
solution, which is fast sliding into the bog of a 1-state solution or an
apartheid state. Neither could deliver peace or bring justice to the
Palestinian cause.
This way, psychological closure may ultimately be granted to Israel,
after 60 years of living without borders or limits to its traumas,
covetousness and exceptionalism, so the benchmarks of international
law and international institutions will be safeguarded, for our mutual
benefit. We may even start to benefit from a revitalised United
Nations, which has been so undermined by its inability to deal even-
handedly or neutrally with Israel.
I believe when Israelis are pressured into accepting a border on the
Green Line (again, there are no equivalent landswaps, that’s a non-
starter for peace), they’ll be surprised at how simple peace or sharing
Jerusalem is. The alternatives -- never-ending militarism and
occupation, fascism and fragmentation – are no solution, they are
simply an invitation to more cycles of violence, suffering and hell. For
the life of me, I cannot understand why anyone else must die for all
this nonsense – Is it because we are silent? Scared to speak out?
Threatened by predictable and deliberately preventive taunts of anti-
semitism? We must tear down the walls and teach traumatised human
beings with patience, humour and common sense that those on the
“other side” are human beings just like us. That the world cannot ever
be divided, because it is one fully-integrated planet. We are all one
and normalcy is even preferable. Life is so rich intrinsically, there’s no
need to be stolen into messianic missions that see deliverance in
landgrab, because we are all already part of a divine act, just by
waking up breathing in the morning. Just by being blessed to be born.