As the Palestinian Authority negotiates on handing whatever is left of the West Bank to the Israelis, it remains suspiciously silent toward the systematic Judaization and demolition of Jerusalem. Israel carefully plans to expulse Palestinians from the city and replace them with Jewish settlers. If successful, such a plan threatens to erase Jerusalem from the collective memory of the Palestinian people.
In his article “Erased from Historical Narratives,” Palestinian-American professor Beshara Doumani explains that an obsession with land and the tools of struggle necessitate the omission of the Palestinian people from historical narratives. Such a discursive omission managed to deeply infiltrate both academic and ordinary texts in the 20th century and, ever since the 1920s, contributed to narrowing the scope of such writings, which became too focused on the official political conflict.
As this historical omission takes place, Jerusalem’s municipality has been putting forth Israeli laws that confiscated lands and expulsed residents in order to maintain a demographic advantage in the interest of settlers. Meanwhile the Palestinian Authority remained busy with negotiations. Such deliberate actions aim to turn 284,000 Jerusalem residents into future displaced people, ones that remain invisible in the Palestinian Authority’s official position, whenever it decides to denounce Israeli policy in Jerusalem.
As recently as October 31, the Jerusalem Municipality and Israeli forces delivered dozens of new demolition notices in the Ras Khamis and Shahadeh neighborhoods north of occupied Jerusalem. The municipality put up administrative demolition orders on 200 residential buildings, each having 20 to 40 apartments accommodating 15,000 to 16,000 residents.
These notices were maybe Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat’s twisted way of expressing his gratitude and warmth toward Beit Hanina residents who welcomed him with open arms just 10 days before.
On the same day, The Jerusalem Post published a story on its website on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s approval to build 1,500 new settlement homes in the Ramat Shlomo neighborhood behind the green line in East Jerusalem. The Israeli government also approved adding new rooms to existing homes and establishing two new touristic destinations, one of them near the walls of old Jerusalem and the second in downtown’s Sheikh Jarah district.
The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics estimated losses due to home demolition in Jerusalem at about $3 million, excluding the huge fines related to the so-called “building violations.” Also, Israeli authorities approve 3,000 new residential units every month in the settlements.
Further enflaming the situation, the separation wall completely isolates about 37 communities made up of over 300,000 people. Twenty-four of these communities – making up over a quarter-million people – are in Jerusalem, but the wall prevents about 50,000 holders of Jerusalem identification cards from accessing the city.
The obvious and rather deliberate lack of an official Palestinian Authority stand on the Israeli policy that seeks to take over Jerusalem only serves the Zionist position. This position combines the religious history of the city to justify setting new borders and making up artificial demographics.
Between 1967 and 2010, Israel revoked the residency permits of 14,000 Palestinians to preserve a demographic advantage for an estimated 200,000 settlers.
Systematic expulsions, demolitions, and the building of settlement homes all aim to reassure the Zionist mind. As Edward Said said, these violent actions seek to create a collective memory of the place that would meet the needs of invaders.
A Palestinian presence in the holy city threatens Torah geographic theories and raises doubts about inherited historical allegations that Palestine is the geographical territory mentioned in the Jewish holy books. By reinventing the place and creating a new geographic space named “Yerushalayim,” Israel gives little consideration to real geographic and demographic facts.
However, by omitting Jerusalem’s displaced people from its official position, the Palestinian Authority serves the Zionist reshaping of Palestine’s geography, allowing Israel to confiscate 35 percent of East Jerusalem for settlements.
They Want to Bury Us Alive
Abu Samer is a Jerusalem resident whose home was demolished in 2011. As Israeli soldiers were tearing down the house he built, he tried to sit on one of the falling stones and was refused.
“A soldier started yelling ‘move away,’” said Abu Samer. “You demolished the house and you don’t even let us to sit on its stones,” he told the soldiers.
Abu Samer’s testimony is not the first and it sure won’t be the last. There are thousands of similar stories about demolished homes in Jerusalem. Some displaced residents are now living in caves, like Khaled Zir al-Husseini and his family.
In a musty cave near Salwan Street in occupied Jerusalem, Husseini said, “We awoke at 6 am to the sounds of municipality bulldozers heading to our place. They gave us only five minutes to evacuate the house before it was demolished.”
This article is an edited translation from the Arabic Edition.