Tag: Jerusalem

Campaigners for evicted Palestinians call on Barack Obama to intervene

Rachel Shabi | The Guardian

20 July 2009

Campaigners protesting at the eviction of two Palestinian families from their homes in East Jerusalem to make way for a Jewish development today appealed to President Barack Obama to stop the settlement going ahead.

The families, who have lived in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood north of the Old City, were given until last Sunday by an Israeli court to leave their homes, and now face fines, arrests and eviction. The decision affects 55 people, including 14 children.

The families say that, as refugees from the 1948 war, they were given the houses in 1956 by the UN’s refugee agency and the Jordanian government, which controlled the area until 1967.

But the Israeli court upheld a prior claim to the land by the Sephardi Community Committee, which subsequently sold the rights to an Israeli construction company with reported US investment ties.

“They have the power and we could be evicted or arrested at any time,” says Maher Hannoun, head of one of the families at Sheikh Jarrah. “But I will never run away from my house. It is my job to protest my house and my children.”

Nahalot Shimon International, the company that the court decreed current owner of the site, has plans to build a new 200-unit settlement in the area – which would affect a further 20 or so Palestinian families.

“My children keep asking me, ‘Daddy are we going to live in a tent?’ What do I tell them? I tell them I have hope that it won’t happen,” says Hannoun, a 51-year-old salesman whose family is from Haifa, now in Israel, and Nablus, in the occupied West Bank.

The neighbourhood is close to the site of the Shepherd Hotel, where the US recently demanded that Israeli halt a construction project. Building has not yet commenced at the site of the old, disused hotel – a vast stone building and sprawling terrace, once owned by the grand mufti of Jerusalem and bought by the American millionaire Irving Moskowitz in 1985.

Yesterday, the Guardian revealed that 80-year-old Moskowitz is funding many illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

East Jerusalem was annexed by Israel after the 1967 war – a move not recognised by the international community. Israel maintains the Jewish right to reside in any part of Jerusalem.

“It is not about the Jewish right to live in East Jerusalem,” says Meir Margalit, a Meretz party member of Jerusalem city council. “But about settlers who have come with a dangerous political agenda to ‘Israelise’ the area, change the demographic and in that way undermine any kind of political solution in the future.”

Most Arabs can’t buy most homes in West Jerusalem

Nir Hasson | Ha’aretz

21 July 2009

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed this week that Jerusalem is an “open city” that permits all its inhabitants, Jewish and Palestinian, to purchase homes in both its eastern and western parts.

“Our policy is that Jerusalem residents can purchase apartments anywhere in the city. There is no ban on Arabs buying apartments in the west of the city, and there is no ban on Jews building or buying in the city’s east,” Netanyahu said in response to the U.S. request to halt a Jewish construction project in East Jerusalem.

An examination by Haaretz, however, presented a rather different situation on the ground. According to Israel Lands Administration rules, residents of East Jerusalem cannot take ownership of the vast majority of Jerusalem homes.

When an Israeli citizen purchases an apartment or house, ownership of the land remains with the ILA, which leases it to the purchaser for a period of 49 years, enabling the registration of the home (“tabu”). Article 19 of the ILA lease specifies that a foreign national cannot lease – much less own – ILA land.

Attorney Yael Azoulay, of Zeev and Naomi Weil Lawyers and Notary Office, explains that if a foreign national purchases an apartment they must show the ILA proof of eligibility to immigrate to Israel in accordance with the Law of Return. Non-Jewish foreigners cannot purchase apartments. This group includes Palestinians from the east of the city, who have Israeli identity cards but are residents rather than citizens of Israel.

Most residences in West Jerusalem and in the Jewish neighborhoods of East Jerusalem are built on ILA land. All the neighborhoods built after 1967 – Gilo, Pisgat Ze’ev, Ramot, French Hill and Armon Hanatziv – are built on ILA land. Even in the older neighborhoods of Kiryat Hayovel, Katamonim and Beit Hakerem, tens of thousands of apartments are built on ILA land and cannot be sold to Palestinians. In the ultra-Orthodox central Jerusalem neighborhoods of Geula and Mea Shearim, as well as in Rehavia and Talbieh, there are homes built on private land – mainly owned by one of the churches or purchased in the past by Jews.

It goes without saying that a Palestinian seeking to purchase an apartment in a Haredi area would be rejected out of hand, and Rehavia or Talbieh would in any event be out of the range of most East Jerusalemites’ budget.

Nevertheless, dozens of Palestinian families have moved into Jewish neighborhoods, mainly French Hill and Pisgat Ze’ev. Most are renting, while a few buy apartments without registering them. Lawyers in the field say the law is not always applied, and that if a resident of East Jerusalem were to apply to register the apartment at the ILA, they would not have problems doing so.

If the amendment to the Israel Lands Administration Law is passed – the bill is in an advanced stage – an Israeli apartment owner would be able to take ownership of the land and could then sell it to anyone, including foreign nationals and Palestinians.

‘No difference to U.S. between outpost, East Jerusalem construction’

Akiva Eldar, Barak Ravid & Jack Khoury | Ha’aretz

20 July 2009

The United States views East Jerusalem as no different than an illegal West Bank outpost with regard to its demand for a freeze on settlement construction, American sources have informed both Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

This clarification came in the context of a growing crisis in U.S.-Israel relations over the planned construction of some 20 apartments for Jews in the Shepherd Hotel, in East Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood. The U.S. has demanded that the project be halted, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the cabinet meeting Sunday that “Israel will not agree to edicts of this kind in East Jerusalem.”

“United Jerusalem is the capital of the Jewish people in the State of Israel, and our sovereignty over the city is not subject to appeal,” he continued. “Our policy is that Jerusalem residents can purchase apartments anywhere in the city. This has been the policy of all Israeli governments. There is no ban on Arabs buying apartments in the west of the city, and there is no ban on Jews building or buying in the city’s east. This is the policy of an open city.”

Saying that Israel could not accept Jews being forbidden to live in anywhere in Jerusalem, Netanyahu added: “I can imagine what would happen if someone proposed that Jews could not live or buy in certain neighborhoods of London, New York, Paris or Rome. A huge international outcry would surely ensue. It is even more impossible to agree to such an edict in East Jerusalem.”

Asked to comment on these remarks, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who was in New Delhi, said the administration is trying to reach an agreement with Israel on settlements, and “the negotiations are intense,” the Associated Press reported.

Later Sunday, Netanyahu met with his advisors to discuss Israel’s response to Washington’s demand.

“I was surprised by the American demand,” a source present at the meeting quoted him as saying. “In my conversation with [U.S. President Barack] Obama in Washington, I told him I could not accept any restrictions on our sovereignty in Jerusalem. I told him Jerusalem is not a settlement, and there is nothing to discuss about a freeze there.”

“In my previous term [as premier], I built thousands of apartments in the Har Homa neighborhood of Jerusalem, defying the entire world,” Netanyahu added. “Therefore, it is clear that I will not capitulate in this case – especially when we are talking about a mere 20 apartments.”

Other ministers also criticized the American stance at the cabinet meeting. Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, for instance, termed it “puzzling,” while Interior Minister and Shas Chairman Eli Yishai declared that “no agency in the world can stop construction in Jerusalem.”

And Shin Bet security service chief Yuval Diskin told the ministers that the PA and its security services are engaged in widespread efforts to keep Palestinians from selling land in Jerusalem to Jews. He also said that Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi of Qatar has allocated $21 million to Hamas activists to buy buildings and establish infrastructure in Jerusalem.

Washington’s objections to the Shepherd Hotel project were first voiced by senior State Department officials at a meeting with Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren last Thursday, in response to a request by PA President Mahmoud Abbas. The officials complained that the construction would change the neighborhood’s demographic balance and harm its Palestinian residents.

Oren responded that the land in question was privately owned, having been purchased in 1985 by American Jewish tycoon Irving Moskowitz, and the project has received all the necessary permits from the Jerusalem municipality.

Also Sunday, Abbas’ bureau chief, Rafiq Husseini, said he hoped the U.S. would not back down on its demand for a complete settlement freeze, including in East Jerusalem.

In an interview with the Nazareth-based radio station A-Shams, Husseini said, “from our standpoint, there is no room for a compromise [on this issue], and we expect the American administration to stick to the determined stance that envoy [George] Mitchell expressed as far back as 2001. Any compromise that enables continued construction … will do nothing whatsoever to advance the diplomatic process.”

Dozens protest east Jerusalem eviction plans

Ronen Medzini | YNet News

19 July 2009

Maher Hanoun, a resident of the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in east Jerusalem, has been ordered by court to vacate his home. Dozens of the neighborhood’s residents, as well as Jewish and Arab politicians and human rights activists arrived at Hanoun’s house on Sunday to protest the court’s decision.

Earlier Sunday it was reported that the US is pressuring Israel to halt the development of a planned hotel in Sheikh Jarrah.

The protestors held up a poster carrying US President Barack Obama’s image and the caption in English, “President Obama, yes you can – stop the evictions and house demolitions in east Jerusalem.”

“My responsibility is to protect my house, in which I was born in 1956, and to protect my children who were also born here,” said Hanoun. “Should they evacuate us, we have no place else to go. We ask everybody to help the families of Sheikh Jarrah.”

Hatem Abdel-Qader, who several weeks ago resigned from his post as Palestinian Authority minister for Jerusalem affairs, told Ynet: “The Americans are pressuring Israel to suspend all changes in the status quo and not to build a settlement at the Sheppard Hotel. The area in question is Palestinian and is under Israeli occupation. We hope that the American pressure will yield results.”

Abdel-Qader added: “We are here to support the Hanoun family and send a message to the whole world – the decision to raze houses and build a settlement is illegal.”

‘Attempt to Judaize east Jerusalem’

The former minister believes that the US can have tremendous influence on the issue. “Who else can do it but Obama? However, we need more than speeches; we need real pressure that would stop the Israelis actions in east Jerusalem.”

Jerusalem City Council member for Meretz Meir Margalit also attended the rally Sunday. “The Sheppard Hotel is another part of a larger effort of the Israeli government to promote the Judaization of the eastern city, sometimes directly and sometimes through settlers,” he said.

According to Margalit, “The goal is to take over as many properties in the eastern city as possible, in a bid to create a situation in which most of the area could be claimed as Jewish according to the Clinton outline (under which in the event of a peace agreement and land exchange, areas where there is a Jewish majority will remain in Jewish hands, and vice versa).

“The Americans understand that there is a broad strategic plan here, whose purpose is to change the demographic balance in the area. They therefore ant to stop it before it’s too late,” he concluded.

Wiping Arabic names off the map

Jonathan Cook | Counterpunch

18 July 2009

Thousands of road signs are the latest front in Israel’s battle to erase Arab heritage from much of the Holy Land.

Israel Katz, the transport minister, announced this week that signs on all major roads in Israel, East Jerusalem and possibly parts of the West Bank would be “standardised”, converting English and Arabic place names into straight transliterations of the Hebrew name.

Currently, road signs include the place name as it is traditionally rendered in all three languages.

Under the new scheme, the Arab identity of important Palestinian communities will be obscured: Jerusalem, or “al Quds” in Arabic, will be Hebraised to “Yerushalayim”; Nazareth, or “al Nasra” in Arabic, the city of Jesus’s childhood, will become “Natzrat”; and Jaffa, the port city after which Palestine’s oranges were named, will be “Yafo”.

Arab leaders are concerned that Mr Katz’s plan offers a foretaste of the demand by Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, that the Palestinians recognise Israel as a Jewish state.

On Wednesday, Mohammed Sabih, a senior official at the Arab League, called the initiative “racist and dangerous”.

“This decision comes in the framework of a series of steps in Israel aimed at implementing the ‘Jewish State’ slogan on the ground.”

Palestinians in Israel and Jerusalem, meanwhile, have responded with alarm to a policy they believe is designed to make them ever less visible.

Ahmed Tibi, an Arab legislator in the Israeli parliament, said: “Minister Katz is mistaken if he thinks that changing a few words can erase the existence of the Arab people or their connection to Israel.”

The transport ministry has made little effort to conceal the political motivation behind its policy of Hebraising road signs.

In announcing the move on Monday, Mr Katz, a hawkish member of Likud, Mr Netanyahu’s right-wing party, said he objected to Palestinians using the names of communities that existed before Israel’s establishment in 1948.

“I will not allow that on our signs,” he said. “This government, and certainly this minister, will not allow anyone to turn Jewish Jerusalem into Palestinian al Quds.”

Other Israeli officials have played down the political significance of Mr Katz’s decision. A transport department spokesman, Yeshaayahu Ronen, said: “The lack of uniform spelling on signs has been a problem for those speaking foreign languages, citizens and tourists alike.”

“That’s ridiculous,” responded Tareq Shehadeh, head of the Nazareth Cultural and Tourism Association. “Does the ministry really think it’s helping tourists by renaming Nazareth, one of the most famous places in the world, ‘Natzrat’, a Hebrew name only Israeli Jews recognise?”

Meron Benvenisti, a former deputy mayor of Jerusalem, said Israel had begun interfering with the Arabic on the signs for East Jerusalem as soon as it occupied the city in 1967. It invented a new word, “Urshalim”, that was supposed to be the Arabic form of the Hebrew word for Jerusalem, “Yerushalayim”.

“I was among those who intervened at the time to get the word ‘al Quds’ placed on signs, too, after ‘Urshalim’ and separated by a hyphen. But over the years ‘al Quds’ was demoted to brackets and nowadays it’s not included on new signs at all.”

He said Mr Katz’s scheme would push this process even further by requiring not only the Arabic equivalent of the Hebrew word for Jerusalem, but the replication of the Hebrew spelling as well. “It’s completely chauvinistic and an insult,” he said.

Meir Margalit, a former Jerusalem councillor, said official policy was to make the Palestinian population in East Jerusalem as invisible as possible, including by ignoring their neighbourhoods on many signs.

The transport ministry’s plans for the West Bank are less clear. In his announcement Mr Katz said Palestinian-controlled areas of the territory would still be free to use proper Arabic place names. But he hinted that signs in the 60 per cent of the West Bank under Israeli military rule would be Hebraised, too.

That could mean Palestinians driving across parts of the West Bank to the Palestinian city of Nablus, for example, will have to look for the Hebrew name “Shechem” spelt out in Arabic.

Mr Benvenisti said that, after Israel’s establishment in 1948, a naming committee was given the task of erasing thousands of Arab place names, including those of hills, valleys and springs, and creating Hebrew names. The country’s first prime minister, David Ben Gurion, told the committee: “We are obliged to remove the Arabic names for reasons of state.”

In addition, the Arabic names of more than 400 Palestinian villages destroyed by Israel during and after the 1948 war were lost as Jewish communities took their place.

Israel’s surviving Palestinian minority, today one-fifth of the population, have had to battle in the courts for the inclusion of Arabic on road signs, despite Arabic being an official language.

Many signs on national highways were provided only in Hebrew and English until the courts in 1999 insisted Arabic be included. Three years later the courts ruled that Arabic must also be included on signs in cities where a significant number of Arabs live.

However, as the political climate has shifted rightward in Israel, there has been a backlash, including an unsuccessful bid by legislators to end Arabic’s status as an official language last year.

Recently the Israeli media revealed that nationalist groups have been spraying over Arabic names on road signs, especially in the Jerusalem area.

Israel has also antagonised Palestinians in both Israel and the West Bank by naming roads after right-wing figures.

The main highway in the Jordan Valley, which runs through Palestinian territory but is used by Israelis to drive between northern Israel and Jerusalem, is named “Gandhi’s Road” – not for the Indian spiritual leader but after the nickname of an Israeli general, Rehavam Zeevi, who called for the expulsion of Palestinians from Greater Israel.

Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.