Maps prove it: the Judaization of East Jerusalem gathers steam

A map of Palestinian residential areas in East Jerusalem

Maya Horodniceanu and Nir Hasson report in Haaretz on 6 April 2022:

The days when construction in East Jerusalem opened news broadcasts and rocked U.S.-Israeli relations may have passed, but on the ground Jerusalem keeps on morphing: Jewish neighborhoods are being built or planned beyond the Green Line in places like Har Homa, Givat Hamatos, Atarot and Ramat Shlomo.

And settler groups are continuing with their efforts to Judaize the neighborhoods of Silwan, Sheikh Jarrah, Jabal Mukkaber and Ras al-Amud. These and other Palestinian districts still face planning policies that work against them.

To a great extent, these events are shaping Israel’s capital and actually the whole country – no less than last week’s Negev summit with four Arab foreign ministers. Today, just like every day in recent decades, thousands of Jerusalemites are threatened with a home demolition or eviction, diminishing their quality of life and pushing the city to violence and despair. The construction of Jewish neighborhoods and the efforts to Judaize Palestinian neighborhoods greatly obstruct any future political agreement.

Atarot

At first glance, the Atarot construction project threatens nobody. The 9,000 housing units will go up where an airport used to be in north Jerusalem. No East Jerusalemites will be evicted from their homes, and it isn’t even private Palestinian land like most land in East Jerusalem.

But it’s the largest Jewish neighborhood to be built beyond the Green Line in Jerusalem since the 1990s. Moreover, the neighborhood – earmarked for the ultra-Orthodox community – will go up in the heart of Palestinian north Jerusalem in between Kafr Aqab, Qalandiyah and Beit Hanina. This construction will not only quash the Palestinians’ dream of operating the airport under their own flag, it greatly hinders the mission of dividing Jerusalem.

The plan is stuck for now at the regional planning and building committee – not because of pressure from the U.S. administration or the wider international community, but because the committee agrees with the environment and health ministries that an environmental review is needed first.

Beit Safafa

Beit Safafa suffers from a serious lack of land for construction and expansion. It is crowded to the point of being suffocating, but the Jerusalem municipality and Justice Ministry are advancing plans for a new Jewish neighborhood just to the north called Givat Hashaked.

The neighborhood, to lie entirely over the Green Line, is planned for around 38 dunams (9.4 acres) above the Nahal Refaim riverbed and Train Track Park. Under the plan, around 473 housing units are to be built along with a primary school, synagogues and nursery schools.  So, from the north, Givat Hashaked would block Beit Safafa, whose expansion south would be blocked by another planned neighborhood, Givat Hamatos. Israel has been advancing plans for a large neighborhood there for many years. In the 1990s, Givat Hamatos was home to prefab homes for new immigrants, but now permanent structures are going up. While some of these are designated for residents of Beit Safafa, most of the land is earmarked for Jewish newcomers.

The construction of a new neighborhood in Givat Hamatos would make it very difficult to divide Jerusalem in the future, and pressure from the international community has led to several freezes and delays. Still, work has begun on infrastructure and archaeological work ahead of the first stage of the neighborhood, which will feature 1,275 housing units.

All the units that the Construction and Housing Ministry is offering in its cut-price housing program in Jerusalem are in Givat Hamatos. When the lottery for these apartments is over and the winners’ names are published, construction of the neighborhood is likely to be a fait accompli.

Palestinians in Sheikh Jarrah, East Jerusalem, June 2021

Sheikh Jarrah

The famous battle for Sheikh Jarrah began decades ago. Jews lived in the western part of the neighborhood until 1948. After the war, Jordan rented out the abandoned buildings to Palestinian refugees from territories captured by Israel during the war; they were considered protected residents and could not be evicted. In 1967, following the Six-Day War when Israel took East Jerusalem, nothing changed; the properties continued to be rented out, this time by the Israeli authorities.

But eventually right-wing groups located the heirs to the real estate and provided them with legal assistance to reclaim it. The residents say that they are protected residents and cannot be evicted – and that they have nowhere else to go. But in many cases the courts have rejected their claims and the residents have been left dependent on the goodwill of Israel’s administer general and the owners of the properties.

To date, only one family has been evicted from the neighborhood, while settlers took over another building after all the tenants had died. But the threat of eviction hangs over another 15 families.

One of them is the Salem family, which has been living there since 1950. The family’s house was bought by Jerusalem city council member Yonatan Yosef of the right-wing United Jerusalem party, which demanded the eviction in a move that increased tensions in Sheikh Jarrah. In February, the Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court froze the eviction, which is not expected to take place before the end of Ramadan, which lasts all April.

Another sticking point lies on the eastern side of Sheik Jarrah, an area known as the Aljouni Vineyard. Empty lots were bought there in the late 19th century by Jerusalem’s Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jewish committees. In the 1950s, Palestinian refugee families settled there. The houses were built by the Jordanian government and the United Nations, and the refugees received the right to live there for a symbolic sum.

In the 1990s, right-wing group Nahalat Shimon bought the land from the Jewish committees. The plots had been returned to the committees via the law that lets Jews reclaim abandoned property from 1948 (and does not do the same for Palestinian refugee families, as these properties have been transferred to the state under the Absentee Property Law). So now some 30 families, around 200 people, may find themselves evicted in the coming years.

The Supreme Court recently ruled that the residents of several properties slated for eviction can continue to live there until the completion of land regulation procedures and a clarification of the rights to the land. When a decision is made, it will probably affect other families in the area.

Silwan

Three areas near each other are the focus of the dispute in the Silwan neighborhood. At the first, the municipality seeks to demolish the homes of over 100 families. The justification is that the neighborhood’s most recent zoning plan, from 1977, earmarks the area as open public land.

As in many Palestinian neighborhoods in Jerusalem, there is a disconnect between planning and the needs of the people – and most of the families have built their homes without permits. For the past 15 years, the residents have been trying to advance a plan that would redesignate the neighborhood’s land.

The latest development came in November when the Jerusalem District Court rejected an appeal by 58 families against the demolition of their homes. But talks continue between the residents and the municipality in an effort to find common ground.

The homes in Silwan’s al-Bustan area are also being targeted by the municipality – in this case, to build an archaeological park called the King’s Garden – part of the City of David National Park managed by the right-wing Ir David Foundation, also known as Elad. More than 100 families live in this area, which is designated for demolition.

The families are in talks with the municipality and have submitted a plan crafted by architect Youssef Jabarin: The buildings would be demolished and homes for the residents would be built on 60 percent of the land, with the rest going to a park.

The municipality recently rejected the residents’ plan and proposed moving them to buildings that would go up on only 20 percent of the land. Negotiations continue.

The third Silwan area in danger is Batan al-Hawa, where dozens of families live. These houses went up in the 19th century on land that once belonged to the Jewish property trust (hekdesh); they were built to house Jewish Yemenite families.

In 1938, during the 1936-39 Arab revolt in British Mandatory Palestine, the Mandate government ordered the Yemenite immigrants to leave the neighborhood. The houses were destroyed and Palestinians later bought the land and built homes there. Afterward, they said they didn’t know that the land hadn’t actually been owned by the seller.

The situation in Silwan was calm until 2001 when the Jerusalem District Court granted a petition by settler group Ateret Cohanim to become the trustees of the Jewish property trust. A year later, the administer general released the land to the new trustees, putting some 70 families in danger of eviction.

Last year the Supreme Court rejected a petition by Palestinians against the Jewish property trust, and the Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court granted a petition by Ateret Cohanim and ordered the families’ eviction. The Supreme Court’s decision on Sheikh Jarrah could influence the fate of the people in this neighborhood.

Old City

Two weeks ago, Ateret Cohanim took over part of the Petra Hotel next to Jaffa Gate in the Old City as part of the group’s legal battle to take over the entire property. Ateret Cohanim is also trying to obtain a nearby hotel, the Imperial. The settlers took over part of the Petra after a complex 18-year legal battle between the Greek patriarchy – which obtained the hotels in 2005 – and front companies controlled by Ateret Cohanim.

The heads of the churches in Jerusalem play a vastly important role. To them this is a disaster that will change the character of the Christian Quarter in the Old City. Thus all the heads of the churches have united – a rarity in Jerusalem – to form protest initiatives against the Israeli government.

“The seizure of the Little Petra Hotel by the radical extremist group Ateret Cohanim is a threat to the continued existence of a Christian Quarter in Jerusalem, and ultimately to peaceful coexistence of the communities of this city,” the Greek Orthodox Patriarch said in a statement.

Jabal Mukkaber and Isawiyah

The residents of Jabal Mukkaber are threatened neither by the Jewish property trust, Jewish residents who fled the neighborhood or even a new park. Here, the municipality aims to expand the road that links Jabal Mukkaber and Sheikh Sa’ad. In recent weeks, neighborhood residents have protested the plan outside City Hall. The plan still needs final approval.

Unlike their neighbors, the residents of Isawiyah have received good news, albeit with a caveat. The Jerusalem municipality has authorized a new zoning plan for the neighborhood, where most  homes have been built without permits. The plan would enable many neighborhood residents to obtain permits.

Isawiyah, East Jerusalem

Still, many residents believe that the chances for final approval are weak – plus there is no plan to expand the crowded neighborhood. One plan that does exist is for a nearby national park, though that’s stuck in the pipeline for the moment.

Walaja

Ostensibly the Palestinian village of Walaja is outside Jerusalem. But parts of the village – some 800 dunams that are home to around 1,000 people – have been annexed to the capital. There, some of the homes are in danger of demolition.

In recent years the state has demolished around 30 homes in the village, and demolition orders are pending against another 50. The residents have petitioned the Supreme Court to instruct the regional planning committee and the Jerusalem municipality to discuss a zoning plan that they have prepared for the village. In a hearing last week, the state agreed to freeze demolitions for six months to give the zoning plan a chance to be pushed through.

Walaja is an extreme case of planning discrimination in Jerusalem. Even though half of the village was annexed to Jerusalem in 1967, the state never bothered to draw up a zoning plan for the neighborhood – so there is no chance to build there legally.

On the hills surrounding the village, there is no such problem; over the years there has been construction at Gilo, Har Gilo and elsewhere. When these were buildings were put up the residents of Walaja were fenced in – the village was also surrounded by the separation barrier, and its agricultural land and well-kept terraces were declared a national park.

For its part, the Jerusalem municipality told Haaretz that it has “led a historic process to advance legal construction in East Jerusalem, after more than 50 years of neglect. Mayor Moshe Leon is leading projects for urban renewal in cooperation and dialogue with the residents and their leaders. Only recently a new neighborhood was announced for the outskirts of Jabal Mukkaber.

“Moreover, in the past year, detailed and unprecedented zoning plans have been advanced for Isawiyah and Ras al-Amud, and in the coming years we will advance similar plans in further neighborhoods.

“With regard to planning permission, in the past three years we have granted 424 permits for projects in East Jerusalem, compared with 212 projects in 2017 and 186 permits in 2018. Thanks to the authorization of a master plan and new zoning plans in Arab neighborhoods, the number of permits is expected to increase dramatically in the coming years.”

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