The second Camp David summit in July 2000 brought to the forefront
the question of East Jerusalem and the control over the city's
Muslim holy sites. Israelis and Palestinians failed to reach an
agreement on the future of the Holy City, as the Palestinians
rejected the U.S.-backed Israeli request that they agree to Israeli
sovereignty over the Dome of the Rock compound, the third-holiest
site in Islam.
As a follow-up to the Camp David summit, and to bolster Israel's
unreasonable and insensitive demand of sovereignty over the Dome of
the Rock compound, the head of the right-wing Likud Party, Ariel
Sharon, with the connivance of Prime Minister Ehud Barak, visited
the compound under heavy Israeli security. The intention was to
impose this Israeli dictate not only on the Palestinians, but also
on the Muslim world at large. The Palestinians responded to this
provocative visit with the Al-Aqsa Intifada, bringing the current
peace process to an abrupt end.
Israel's insistence that the Dome of the Rock come under its
control is based on the claim that the compound is built on the
ancient site of the Second Temple, a claim that the archaeological
digs Israelis have been carrying out over the last 30 years have
failed to prove. It is worth noting that the Wailing Wall, or
Western Wall as it is also called, has historically been considered
part of the western wall of the Dome of the Rock, thus belonging to
Muslims. Indeed, it is a well-documented fact that, following the
1929 bloody riots over an incident at the Western Wall, an
international commission was appointed by the British Mandate, with
the approval of the League of Nations, to inquire into the rights
over the Western Wall. The commission found the Wall, as well as
the pavement in front of it where Jews perform their devotions, to
be Muslim Waqf property.1
Thus the present deadlock in the peace process stems from Israel's
desire to hold on to the Muslim holy sites in East Jerusalem, as
well as to most of the city. Since the June 1967 war that brought
the eastern part of Jerusalem, including the walled Old City, under
its domination, Israel has embarked on a series of measures
intended to maintain permanent Jewish control over the city and its
Palestinian population, and has proceeded to change its demographic
character.
Israeli Measures - A Summary
What follows is a summary of these Israeli measures and policies.
They are a testimony to the failure of Camp David. They also attest
to the fact that, since the first day it occupied the Arab part of
the city, Israel never intended to relinquish it, or indeed to
comply with UN resolutions and the requirements of a lasting peace
with the Palestinians.
1. On June 22, 1967, Israel formally annexed occupied East
Jerusalem by extending over the city the law, jurisdiction and
administration of the State of Israel.
2. The elected Palestinian municipality of East Jerusalem,
functioning since 1948, was disbanded and its mayor deported to
Jordan.
3. Jewish bulldozers destroyed over 135 homes in the centuries-old
Muslim Moghrabi (Moroccan) Quarter to make way for a plaza next to
the Western Wall. Subsequently, over 5,000 Palestinians were
evicted from the Muslim Quarter of the Old City for the expansion
of the Jewish Quarter.
4. The municipal boundaries of East Jerusalem were unilaterally
expanded to over ten times their pre-1967 area. Large tracts of the
West Bank were annexed to East Jerusalem, extending from the town
of Ramallah in the north to the towns of Bethlehem and Beit Sahur
in the south.
Israel's objective here was twofold: The first was to maximize the
open land area to be annexed from the West Bank, but simultaneously
to minimize the number of Palestinians to be included within the
boundaries. The lines were thus drawn in such a way as to exclude
an important number of Palestinian communities living around the
City of Jerusalem, but to include their land property. These
villages and neighborhoods comprise Bethany and Abu Dis to the
east; Beit Hanina and Beit Iksa to the west; and the neighborhoods
of Hizma, A-Ram, Dahiet Al-Barid and Qalandia refugee camp to the
northeast. Had these communities been included in the newly drawn
boundaries of expanded East Jerusalem, no less than 80,000
Palestinians would have been added to the present population of
Jerusalem.
The second objective was to facilitate the confiscation of private
Palestinian property that would be carried out in accordance with
Israeli laws and under the guise of "public purpose." For Israel,
this is a more convenient pretext than "state land" or "security
reasons," which have been the standard excuse for its land grab in
the occupied Palestinian territories, but more likely to be
challenged by Palestinians in the courts of law, while "public
purpose" is less amenable to litigation.
5. Within these enlarged boundaries of East Jerusalem, Israel
proceeded to confiscate thousands of dunums of private Palestinian
property for the construction of Jewish residential colonies that
Israelis euphemistically call neighborhoods. Between 1967 and the
present, the Jewish state has dispossessed the Palestinians of over
27,000 dunums of the most expensive real estate in the heart and
outskirts of East Jerusalem.
As stated above, Palestinian private property was seized invoking
its use for "public purpose." The "public" refers only to the
Jewish public and excludes the indigenous Christian and Muslim
Palestinian citizens of Jerusalem. The "purpose" is the
construction for Jews of private residential colonies or
settlements to encircle the Palestinian neighborhoods in the city.
Thus, under Israeli rule, the Palestinians of Jerusalem were not
only dispossessed and supplanted by Jews, but were also
impoverished, as the value of the confiscated property exceeds U.S.
$2 billion.
A Chronology of Violations
The big bulk of Palestinian property in East Jerusalem was seized
in the early 1970s and 1980s, but the land grab has continued
through the 1990s and up to the present. A chronology of this
violation of Palestinian property rights in occupied East Jerusalem
and the confiscation of their lands is summarized below:
* January and April 1968: immediately after the June 1967 war, some
4,800 dunums in the heart of East Jerusalem were confiscated from
the Palestinians for the construction of the first Jewish
residential colonies in the Holy City. These include French Hill,
Ramat Eshkol and their extensions, all located on the property of
Palestinian owners from the Sheikh Jarrah quarter and Lifta. In
addition, the Atarot industrial zone was established in Qalandia on
the property of Palestinian owners from Qalandia and Rafat.
* August 1970: an additional 13,800 dunums of privately owned
property were seized for the construction of four large residential
settlements. These include Ramot to the west, on the property of
Palestinian owners from the villages of Beit Iksa and Beit Hanina;
Gilo to the south, on the property of owners from Bethlehem, Beit
Jala, Beit Safafa and Sharafat; East Talpiyot to the east, on the
property of owners from Sur Baher; and Neve Ya'acov to the
northeast, on the property of owners from Beit Hanina.
* March 1980: 4,500 additional dunums were seized for the
construction of another large Jewish settlement to the northeast
called Pisgat Ze'ev, on the property of owners from Beit Hanina and
Hizma. Twenty years on, the construction of apartments in this
settlement is still ongoing and more land in this area is being
seized quietly, so much so that this fortress settlement is turning
into one of the largest encircling the Palestinians from the
east.
* April 1991: 1,850 dunums were seized in Jabal Abu Ghneim from
their Palestinian owners from Beit Sahur and Bethlehem in the south
of Jerusalem for the settlement of what Israelis call Har Homa. The
building on this site began in May 1997, on the order of the
previous right-wing Likud government, and, at the time, brought the
peace process to a halt. The purpose of this settlement is to
create a southern wall that will separate the Palestinians of the
Bethlehem area from Jerusalem. According to the redrawn boundaries
of the Municipality of Jerusalem, Israelis consider this new
settlement as part of Jerusalem, while, in fact, Jabal Abu Ghneim
is, and has been, part of the Bethlehem area for the past 2,000
years.
* April 1992: 2,400 dunums were seized from the Palestinian owners
of Shu'fat for the residential Jewish settlement of Reches Shu'fat.
This land had been declared a "green zone" by the (West) Jerusalem
Municipality, barring its legitimate Palestinian owners from
building on their land; while the former mayor of Jerusalem (Teddy
Kollek) quietly authorized the construction of this Jewish
settlement on the same land. In an article published in August 1993
in the Palestinian daily al-Quds, a former member of the Israeli
Municipality of Jerusalem disclosed that large tracts of East
Jerusalem land are painted in green, with the sole purpose of
preventing the Palestinians from building on their own land. These
"green zones" are conveniently changed when Israelis decide to
build on the same land.
With the completion of the settlement of Jabal Abu Ghneim/Har Homa
in the Bethlehem area, the 200,000 Palestinian population of East
Jerusalem will be encircled by Jewish settlements from the north,
south, east and west.
It should be noted that despite the peace process, the Israeli
authorities continue to create new facts on the ground in Jerusalem
in violation of international law and UN resolutions. Since 1967,
when Israel occupied the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East
Jerusalem, the world community, represented by the UN Security
Council, has taken a number of resolutions condemning Israel's
expansionist activities in the city:
* Resolution 252 of May 1968 calls upon Israel to rescind all
measures that change the status of Jerusalem;
* Resolution 279, September 15, 1969, calls upon Israel "to
scrupulously observe the provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention
to which it is a signatory, and all international law governing
military occupation";
* Resolution 446, March 22, 1979, affirms once more the
applicability of the Geneva Convention "to the Arab territories
occupied by Israel since 1967, including Jerusalem; determines that
the policy and practices of Israel in establishing settlements have
no legal validity and to desist, in particular, from transferring
parts of its own population into the occupied Arab
territories";
* Resolution 468, August 20, 1980, censures in the strongest terms
Israel's annexation of occupied Jerusalem and its refusal to comply
with relevant Security Council resolutions.
Israeli Denial of International Law
The problem before and after the second Camp David summit is the
fact that Israel has never been made to comply with the Security
Council resolutions pertaining to Jerusalem or, for that matter,
the rest of the occupied Palestinian territories. At the Camp David
summit, Prime Minister Ehud Barak is reported to have offered to
annex a mere 10 percent of the West Bank and to have considered
giving the Palestinian Authority limited administrative rule over
some of the Palestinian neighborhoods in Jerusalem, but retaining
Israeli sovereignty over the Jewish settlements and the Muslim holy
sites in the city. For the U.S.A., and even for some on the Israeli
left, this is regarded as a generous concession against the
background of established Israeli "red lines."
To the Palestinians and the Arab world, this offer is considered an
unacceptable dictate that condones and rewards Israel for all the
destruction and havoc it has wreaked upon the Palestinian people
over the past 33 years of occupation, in defiance of the
international community and international law. Had Israel complied
with Security Council resolutions and the terms of reference for
the peace negotiations, based on the equation of total withdrawal
in return for total peace, the final-status negotiations would have
been successfully completed, and Israel and Palestine would have
been living in peace and security since September 1999.
1. Report of the International Commission of Inquiry,
December 1930, Section A.
