Jerusalem, Unholy Fault Lines

The recent escalation of violence in Jerusalem does not bode well for future co-existence in the city, let alone between two peoples. In fact, it could usher a new cycle of confrontation with far reaching regional consequences.

Every decade over the last half a century, Zionist/Israeli and Palestinian confrontations have shifted from one front to another drawing new fault lines of hatred and violence in the region.

In the 1960s, confrontation continued across the Jordan river before moving to Lebanon in the late 1970s, ending with the 1982 invasion by Israel.

Israel then pursued the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in Tunisia and the rest of the Arab world, leading to the first Palestinian uprising or Intifada in the occupied West Bank and subsequent tension in the 1990s in the shadow of the failed 'peace process', before shifting to the blockaded Gaza Strip over the last decade.

Will the next decade of tension centre on Jerusalem along religious, national and colonial fault lines?

Worse, will Jerusalem's fault lines extend beyond the occupied city into the greater Middle East region and indeed the world? After all, no other Palestinian-Arab issue fuels as much emotion and fires so much anger in the Arab and Muslim world than Al Quds or Jerusalem.

Playing with fire

Israel could not have been more aggressive or provocative in its 'Judaisation' of the city since its occupation in 1967. Paradoxically, Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, is counting on the commitment of Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, to prevent another Intifada.

Likewise, Israel banks on its success in separating Jerusalem from its Palestinian hinterland leaving the quarter of a million Palestinian Jerusalemites isolated from their national socio-economic and political landscape through military means.

However, as with previous upheavals, a new one will be shocking, but hardly surprising if the Israeli escalation continues with impunity.

Annexed East Jerusalem might not be militarily occupied like the rest of the Palestinian territories, but Israel's systematic takeover and its diminishing Palestinian/Arab identity is leading to increased desperation and humiliation.

Paradox

The city Israel calls its 'eternal capital' is made up of two parts, the western part was taken over in 1948, and the eastern part was occupied in 1967, neither of which are recognised by the international community, including the US and Europe. This explains why there are no foreign embassies there that are worth mentioning.

Paradoxically, recent US pressures on the Israeli government to freeze all illegal settlements have instead worsened the situation in East Jerusalem.

When the Netanyahu government finally agreed to temporarily freeze settlement activity in the West Bank, it accelerated its takeover of Al Quds.

And in order to dispel any notion of dividing or sharing the city with the Palestinians as wished by Barack Obama, the US president, the Israeli government took additional provocative steps in and around the holy sites that ended in confrontation around the al-Aqsa mosque over the last couple of days.

'Ethnic cleansing'

Israel's systematic transformation of Jerusalem by widening its Jewish identity and squeezing its Palestinian side is the most open and embarrassing secret in the Middle East.

The Arabs have accused Israel of ethnically cleansing the city of its indigenous people.

Israel tries to keep a one to three ratio between Palestinians and Jews in city, while its 'development' is controlled by the Jewish municipality and Israeli ministries.

Israel expropriated lands in and around Jerusalem to develope new neighbourhoods for Jews (called settlements by the UN), while choking Arab neighbourhoods and preventing their inhabitants from building new housing.

Much of the Palestinian housing has been completed without Israeli "permits" and hence awaits demolition. According to a recent UN report, Israel considers 28 per cent of all Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem to be illegal, leaving 60,000 Palestinians at risk of having their homes demolished.

Published last year, the UN report states that only 13 per cent of East Jerusalem land is zoned by the Israeli authorities for Palestinian construction, and much of that is already built up, severely restricting the possibility of obtaining a permit.

Meanwhile, more than a third of Al Quds has been expropriated for Israeli construction while 22 per cent is zoned for green areas and public infrastructure and 30 per cent remains "unplanned".

All of which prompted the Obama administration to ask Israel to freeze all demolition of Palestinian homes so as not to exacerbate tensions in the city.

Fear of reconsacration

Israel's unilateral dealings with religious sites have been most provoking to Palestinians, both Muslim and Christians. Frequent confrontations in and around al-Aqsa mosque in the past have been quite bloody and politically unsettling.

While this has been standard Israeli policy since its founding, the diplomatic void, political frustration and pent-up violence places Muslim sites in East Jerusalem in the eye of the storm.

Meron Benvinisti, the former deputy mayor of Jerusalem, in his book Sacred Landscape, says reconsacration of religious sites in Palestine has been unparalleled since medieval times. Israel, he claims, has replaced the Arabic names of more than 9,000 natural features, villages, ruins in Palestine after taking it over.

Mindful of Israeli intentions, Unesco's 1968 General Conference issued a strong condemnation of Israeli archaeological excavations in the old city of Jerusalem (despite Western reservations), and condemned any attempt to alter the "occupied" city's features or its cultural and historical character, particularly with regard to Christian and Islamic religious sites.

It is no surprise that Israel has not been exactly eager to heed UN resolutions, toothless as they usually are.

The battle for Al Quds

With more than a quarter of a million Jewish settlers in and around East Jerusalem, Israelis reckon their complete takeover of the city is only a question of time.

Jerusalem is the last of several attempts by Israel to create "new facts on the ground" to alter the internationally recognised basis for a comprehensive peace settlement.

Israel's illegal wall and settlements in the West Bank and its rejection of the Palestinian refugees' Right of Return, destruction of over 350 Palestinian communities, villages and towns and erecting over 600 new Jewish settlements have, for all practical reasons, imposed a new de facto reality on the Palestinian authority.

By imposing a permanent new Jewish reality in its Yerushalym, Israel hopes to keep its greatest war prize and underline the theological legitimation of its colonial enterprise.

And the Palestinians hope their fight for Al Quds as the capital of their future sovereign state will be the trump card that rallies for them Arab and Muslim support.

In other words, Jerusalem could turn into the most contentious, protracted and unholy battleground, or it could emerge as the ultimate catalyst for peaceful co-existence.

http://blogs.aljazeera.net/imperium/2010/03/01/jerusalem-unholy-fault-lines