Ethnic Cleansing in Jerusalem: Block by Block and Day by Day

By Kathryn Casa

Under that curious Swiss cheese known as the Oslo Accord, negotiations on the final status of Jerusalem aren't set to begin until 1997. In the interim, Israel is losing no time in creating what, in another two years, could easily be a fait accompli: an overwhelmingly Israeli city.

Since September 1993, when Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat signed the Oslo agreement, settlement activity within the boundaries of what Israel has defined as "greater Jerusalem" has accelerated rapidly. By design, the Israeli development is choking off any natural growth of the Palestinian population which, at 150,000, is now several thousand less than the number of Israelis who also live in East Jerusalem.

At the same time, Israel has stepped up its campaign to cleanse the city of Palestinians by denying them residency rights to the place of their birth. Although relatively dormant for some time, an Israeli policy has been revitalized that would strip Jerusalem-born Palestinian women of their advantageous blue identity cards if they marry men from the West Bank, who carry yellow ID cards.

Also, if an Arab resident of Jerusalem must replace an ID and cannot show proof of current residency within the city, the card color will be changed. Yellow card-holders seeking access to the city for work, shopping, family visits, religious or medical reasons must request—and are usually denied—a special permit during Israel's frequent border closures.

It's true that Tel Aviv has also offered Israeli passports to some Palestinian residents of Jerusalem; but the burden of proof to qualify includes evidence of full tax payments. Approximately 55 percent of all East Jerusalem Palestinians—who are placed among the highest tax categories—are behind on their municipality taxes. By contrast, Jewish settlers in East Jerusalem are exempt from paying municipal taxes for five years, and after that pay at a reduced rate.

Further, as one Palestinian independent businessman who is eligible for naturalization put it: "So what if we do accept Israeli citizenship? Then when they get to negotiations on the final status of Jerusalem, Israel can say, 'Look, there's nothing to talk about. These people are Israeli citizens.'"

And like the Eveready battery bunny, Israel's definition of Jerusalem's boundaries just keeps going and going. Currently, the area "annexed" by Israel extends almost to Ramallah in the north, to Bethlehem in the south, west well into Israel and east to Anata. These 17,500 acres—claimed by Israel as Jerusalem after the 1967 war—include 28 villages and land from the towns of el-Bireh, Bethlehem and Beit Jala.

To the east, construction is scheduled on a sizable chunk of land that will eventually bring the border out to the massive settlement of Ma'ale Adumin. And there are plans to enlarge the area even further, north past Ramallah and south toward Hebron, thereby stretching "greater" Jerusalem into about 28 percent of the West Bank.

But perhaps nowhere in that vast region is the takeover so blatant and the mix so vulnerable as in the Old City, the symbolic nerve center of both Palestinian and Israeli claims.

Within the ancient walls that surround the Old City are a tangle of densely crowded streets and alleyways that have for centuries maintained the characteristics that made them unique to each of the four sectors—Muslim, Armenian, Christian and Jewish. But today those lines have muddied as the four quarters blend into an overtly Israeli city.

At first glance, this new character has the unexpected air of acceptance. Black-clad Orthodox Jews with side curls and flat, fur-trimmed hats once almost ran down el-Wad Street from Damascus Gate through the Christian and Muslim quarters, on their way to Shabbat prayers at the sacred Western Wall. Today they walk casually, discussing something with a colleague or, on workdays, even stopping to pick up a few supplies in a Palestinian's hardware store, where the dialogue between customer and merchant shifts easily between Hebrew and Arabic.

Yeshivas outside the Jewish quarter, once few and heavily guarded, now dot the Muslim sector in regular intervals along some of the main streets. Yeshiva students saunter assuredly along the choked el-Wad Street amid throngs of Muslims pouring from al-Aqsa mosque after prayers. Jewish women stroll alone, and small Israeli pre-schoolers—still too young to understand that their armed, plainclothes escorts are the result of decades of seething animosity between the people of this city—are now allowed to dawdle a bit, singing songs in Hebrew as they walk the ancient cobblestones.

In March, I sat in a tiny Palestinian shop crammed with earrings, embroidered dresses and the pre-peace-process revolutionary postcards and posters once so common and today almost impossible to find in Jerusalem shops. The shop owner, Samir, a grade-school art teacher and Fatah activist whose labor union involvement earned him 2-1/2 years of administrative detention in Israeli prison, was talking about the peace process: "We had to accept it," he was saying about the Declaration of Principles signed 17 months earlier. "We Palestinians had lost. We had nothing left in our hands to bargain with."

Listening to Samir, I watched with curiosity as four Israeli yeshiva students browsed in some nearby Palestinian souvenir shops. Engaged in conversation as they emerged from a doorway, the students inadvertently stumbled into a small Palestinian child and knocked her down. The little girl began to wail, and as her father hurried toward her, one of the Israelis picked her up, dusted her off and comforted her. "Sorry," he said, handing the child to her father.

"Ma'lesh," replied the Palestinian—"It's OK."

An unremarkable scene in almost any city but Jerusalem, with its history of communal strife. Although I watched tensely, the incident apparently passed unnoticed by everyone else. There had been no aggression or deference in any of the few words that had been exchanged. The yeshiva students continued on their way, browsing and talking. The child returned to her play and the father to his grocery store. Samir, who had paid no attention whatsoever, was still talking about the peace process.

The peace process does appear to have changed the mood in the intense, emotional Old City. But what's emerging is not a united community, as the Israelis like to call it, but rather a city that's being counterfeited piece by piece...in the name of "peace." The Jews' apparent confidence as they stroll through the Old City or live and study behind iron doors and barred windows is bolstered by heavily armed, uniformed soldiers on every vulnerable street corner and undercover agents with semi-concealed weapons and radios, whose combined numbers rival those of the Jewish residents themselves.

And almost every morning, Palestinian merchants find fresh Hebrew graffiti spray-painted on their doors with messages like "The Arabs out!" and "Jerusalem is for us."

"What can we do?" shrugged one shop owner after he translated the bright red Hebrew characters on his door for me early one morning. "If we cover it it's always back; and besides, they all have guns. They do what they want here."

Just off David Street, the road that runs from the heavily touristed Jaffa Gate straight into the heart of the Arab marketplace, there is a small staircase leading to the rooftops of the souk. The stairs make for a quick escape from the bustling market, and from that abruptly quiet vantage point one is awed by the grace of the towering golden Dome of the Rock, and by the many places of worship within such close proximity, including the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the ring of minarets that spring to life in a resonant round of "Allahu akbar" five times each day.

This rooftop spot is popular among tour guides, who can speak to their groups there without shouting above the din of the souk or losing their unwary followers in the market's maze.

Late in February, I listened to one guide, his accent as clearly native-born American as my own, explaining to some 30 compatriots about the appearance of so many small, blue-and-white Israeli flags fluttering over the Arab quarters of the Old City. As I listened, I watched several men clad in the black clothing and hats of Orthodox Judaism scurry like rabbits across a rooftop pathway and disappear quickly into a low doorway. "You see," explained the guide with a friendly, paternal air, "before the riots of the 1920s and '30s the quarters of the Old City were mixed. After the riots came a distinct separation. But now, many young Jews are re-purchasing the properties that were formerly Jewish."

The Americans, somewhat bored, shuffled their feet and nodded unquestioningly. Then one woman pointed to a makeshift lean-to of corrugated tin. "This flimsy structure here, what is it?" she asked.

"I don't know," replied the guide.

"Yes, but what quarter is it in?" she persisted.

"Why, the Muslim quarter," he responded matter-of-factly.

The woman pursed her lips and shifted her gaze to the tidy rooftops of the multi-million-dollar renovations of the Jewish quarter to her right with a self-satisfied look that seemed to say, "Enough said."

Clearly, enough had not been said. What the guide had failed to mention was that if Israelis can't purchase property in East Jerusalem, they take it under the arcane land-confiscation and "Absentee Property" laws that have led to the Palestinians' loss of scores of homes and buildings within the Old City in the past decade alone, and the expropriation of 40 percent of all annexed East Jerusalem since 1967.

Also left unsaid was why a Palestinian might have to erect a tin shed on his roof to shelter pigeons or a dog, since permits to build even those types of structures, let alone an additional room or other home improvements, are routinely denied by the authorities.

Another of the guide's glaring omissions is how, according to a 1994 municipal report, only 2 to 12 percent of the exorbitant taxes paid by Palestinian merchants and homeowners are re-invested in services or a Palestinian infrastructure. But residents in the Jewish quarter, where a flat overlooking the Western Wall is listed for sale at U.S. $1.3 million, get all the services they need at a discount.

Struggling to Make a Living

The propaganda perpetuated by Israel's grip on Jerusalem tourism is galvanized every day, as Israeli tour guides shepherd thousands of pilgrims through the Old City's gates. After staying clear of Jerusalem in droves during the intifada, tourists again throng the narrow streets. But Palestinian merchants, their inventory increasingly dominated by menorahs, Stars of David and yarmulkes, are struggling harder than ever before to make a living.

"Before the intifada, business was much better than this," complains Jamal, a Palestinian shop owner crouched outside his store on Chains Street, a major thoroughfare in the Muslim quarter leading from the main souk to the al-Aqsa compound and the Western Wall.

Next door, a merchant explodes: "Today there's been maybe 50 groups. Each day maybe 1,000, 1,500 people walk this street and how's my business? Very quiet. Why? Because the guide, he takes them to Bethlehem, to the big shops, or to the Cardo to buy. Look, it's about 2 o'clock right now. We haven't made 30 shekels (about $10) today."

The merchant jumps up as a gaggle of Norwegian visitors loyally follow their quick-stepping guide down Chains Street, launching the row of Palestinian shop owners into their standard multilingual sales pitches.

"Yes, please, welcome. Take a look."

"Like to see my shop?"

"You like postcards? Earrings? We have many more inside."

Many tourists say they have been forewarned by their guides that the Palestinian merchants will take advantage of them, or that if they venture back to the souk later they'll become hopelessly lost or robbed in this exotic market so far from home.

"No, we're not shopping," said one of the Norwegians. "We have no time today. We must hurry!"

A Greek tourist on a flight into Tel Aviv said her travel agent had adamantly warned her to stay out of the Old City without a guide.

Palestinian merchants in the Old City say their livelihood is being strangled by tour guides who get a commission for taking their groups to large shops outside the walls. Many go to the Cardo, a clean, homogenized remodel of an ancient Roman marketplace in the Jewish quarter, where the sale signs, fixed rates and price tags make Western tourists feel right at home.

Israel's closure of the West Bank during Ramadan, a traditional Muslim time of gift-giving, also hit the Old City merchants hard this year. The Voice of Palestine, the PLO's radio broadcast, reported the number of Muslim worshippers allowed to pass through Israeli checkpoints this year on Ramadan's holiest days was only about half the number that usually come.

Luai Abdeen's family has lived and worked in the Old City not less than a century, he says. Standing in his brightly remodeled shop recently, the young man commented, "Owning this city is a dream for them [Israel]. They also said one day this will belong to the Jews. Now they need Israelis, especially religious people, to live here. This is a holy place, but it's holy for Christians, Jews and Muslims, and it should belong to the Palestinian people. This is where we were born.

"They can live here with us, of course," Abdeen continues. "But let them live with us like we are living with them now. Let the Palestinians have control. We are not going to kick them out, we are going to live together."

"Someday, do you think they're going to leave this country and go away from here?" Abdeen asks rhetorically. I wait for him to answer his own question. "I don't think so either," he grins. "They're not going to leave it and neither are we."

Kathryn Casa is a free-lance writer based in Sacramento, CA.