Feeling lost in Jerusalem? It’s called Palestinian self-demolitionshttps://en.majalla.com/node/315586/politics/feeling-lost-jerusalem-it%E2%80%99s-called-palestinian-self-demolitions
Occupied East Jerusalem: Since the beginning of the 1967 Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem, successive Israeli governments have been implementing a policy of "Israelification” and changing the demographic character of the city.
The administrative borders of Jerusalem (East and West) have extended to more than 70 kilometres (they were about 54 kilometres in 1948) after Israel annexed and occupied the West Bank, built a wall that cut deep into Palestinian land, established at least 12 settlements in East Jerusalem, and issued demolition orders or actually demolished thousands of housing units in Palestinian neighbourhoods in the Old City.
The Israeli army’s bulldozers demolished dozens of Arab archaeological buildings after the control and occupation of the Old City in the 1967 war.
The Israeli Ministry of Tourism used to distribute a map to tourists at the Jaffa Gate (a copy of which was obtained by Al Majalla) that incorrectly showed only 57 religious, sacred and heritage sites, categorising them as mostly Jewish, while the real number proved to be more than 700 sites for the three religions and cultures.
The ministry withdrew that map from circulation about ten years ago after realising this grave error, or rather after Israeli and Palestinian fact-checkers discovered it.
Israel's unspoken goal is to limit the presence of Palestinians in Jerusalem to a small space that is about 11% of the total area of Jerusalem by not issuing new building permits to them on their own land. Allowing too many new homes to be built in Palestinian neighbourhoods means too many Palestinian residents in the city.
Al Majalla has obtained a copy of the Israeli Ministry of Tourism's inaccurate old map of religious and heritage sites in the Old City, which's out of circulation today.
The municipality's urban planning and official building controls have designated several parts of the Old City as public spaces and parks, as well as imposed astronomical fees on most Palestinians in the city—estimated in the tens of thousands of dollars—if it decides to approve connecting some part of their neighbourhoods to the main infrastructure. This official policy has resulted in a double crisis: A severe shortage of housing units and skyrocketing rents.
As population growth accelerated, many Palestinians were forced to build residential floors and expand their homes on the perimeter of their land without a permit—the reason being that Israeli authorities have not enacted an alternative system of neighbourhood development and urban planning to meet the increasing needs of the Palestinian population. Today, tens of thousands of Palestinians are threatened with home demolitions.
If a Palestinian resident of Jerusalem were to leave the city for areas outside its administrative boundaries—even by a few meters— to find affordable housing, their Jerusalem residency would be revoked because they must prove that the city is their "centre of life," according to the relevant Israeli laws. There are already thousands of Palestinian Jerusalemites who have been stripped of their right to reside in the city since the occupation began due to economic and social difficulties as well as Israeli restrictions.
Allowing too many new homes to be built in Palestinian neighbourhoods means too many Palestinian residents in Occupied East Jerusalem.
'Affordable' demolitions
The demolition of houses and their annexes is perhaps the most troubling thing for Palestinian Jerusalemites, not only because of the severe and long-lasting psychological impact but also because of the cost, which sometimes reaches more than $30,000 when the municipality proceeds with the demolition.
This is what happened recently with Fakhri Abu Diab, who took me to see the ruins of his house in the Silwan neighbourhood after the municipality completely demolished it in February for "violating" Israeli building rules.
Abu Diab was not given a choice between official demolition and self-demolition. According to Israeli laws, the municipality usually gives violators the option of "affordable demolition," as Abu Diab sarcastically puts it, meaning that the Palestinians take care of the demolition procedures themselves to save on the cost.
"It's a humiliating experience as we demolish my future and the future of my family with my own hands," said Abu Diab.
Abu Diab describes the demolition policy as selective and indiscriminate. The authorities have left his house and its extension intact since a court order to demolish it was issued in 2010, after which he began paying fines in the hope of getting a permit. Since then, he has dished out a total of $85,000 in fines, taxes, utility bills, and lawyers' fees.
In most cases, the crisis begins as soon as the illegal construction is completed. Those who expand their homes are not fined during the construction process but after its completion. A vicious cycle of legal prosecution and financial penalties then kicks off.
In other words, Palestinians delay the demolition for years to remain in their homes as long as they can.
"It's as if you buy time," explains Abu Diab, adding that one has to wait desperately until a final decision or a court order is issued, at which time residents are faced with two options: To become indebted to the municipality as they are obliged by law to foot the backbreaking official bill that runs in tens of thousands of dollars, or to demolish their own houses themselves to save on the exorbitant expenses.
Abu Diab's house is located in the Al-Bustan neighbourhood near the southern side of the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Israel wants to turn this area into a national park with a biblical theme: the City of David National Park. It argues that it wants to preserve the historical status of the area, believing that Al Bustan has been built on the archaeological ruins of an ancient Jewish site thousands of years ago.
Abu Diab—who was born in the same house in 1962, five years before the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip began—said he was unable to obtain a building permit from the municipality to expand the house when he first applied in 1987, even though his land and the main house are registered under his name and the name of his family.
Abu Diab's house, which was once home to three families of ten, including four children, became a cultural hub due to its unique location and after he became a spokesperson for Silwan neighbourhood residents threatened with Israeli demolition orders.
He used to receive visiting prominent politicians and ambassadors, including former US President Jimmy Carter. Ironically, a high-profile foreign delegation led by ambassadors from several Western countries, including US Ambassador Jack Lew, visited the house one week before its demolition to express their solidarity with the people of Silwan and their rejection of changing the character of the Old City.
"The municipality sent me a new bill after the demolition to pay the house tax for the current year (2024) amounting to about $1400, even though the house, as you can see, was reduced to rubble," he said.
"Do you see that building next door? It was originally a one-story building, and today it consists of six illegal floors built by Israeli settlers, yet the municipality did not issue a demolition order against them. This is a simple but glaring example of oppression, racism and injustice. Today I have become a refugee in my own city."
The first demolition in East Jerusalem
There is a consensus among Israeli and Palestinian historians and researchers that the first demolition in Palestinian areas of the Old City since 1967 occurred in the Mughrabi neighbourhood adjacent to the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Western Wall on 10 June, when Israeli military bulldozers demolished dozens of historic buildings in one of Jerusalem's oldest neighbourhoods.
Al Majalla has obtained an archived copy of a paper by Zionist affairs researcher Shmuel Bahat—published in 1980 by the Hebrew Union College Press—highlighting the story of demolishing the Mughrabi area.
He says that senior officials in the then-Israeli government led by Levi Eshkol approved the demolition order and singled out Jerusalem Mayor Teddy Kulik, who was known as the "architect of the occupation" in the Old City, and General Uzi Narkiss, commander of the Central District in the Israeli army during the 1967 war, whose portrait was raised in Jerusalem after the city's occupation.
His research further discusses the fate of the neighbourhood's residents who were forcibly displaced either outside the city or to Jordan and Morocco, as well as Jewish and Arab demonstrations to denounce the demolition.
Fakhri Abu Diab stands on the ruins of his home in the Silwan neighbourhood of occupied East Jerusalem
Daniel Sidemann—an Israeli lawyer specialising in the geopolitics of contemporary Jerusalem—has been known for his advocacy against the Israeli occupation and settlements for decades. He has defended Palestinians against evictions from their houses in Sheikh Jarrah and has been a vocal critic of the systematic house demolitions in occupied East Jerusalem.
"Behind this traffic light, you see East Jerusalem," Seidman told me as he received me in his office in West Jerusalem. "Jerusalem can't be alive if half of it is occupied and the other half is free. Here we are free; there they are occupied."
On 4 July 1967, UN General Assembly Resolution 2253 was passed, calling on Israel to rescind all measures taken and immediately cease any action that would change the status of Jerusalem.
In total disregard of the resolution, Israel has since occupied and designated Palestinian territories as state land. In 1970, an Israeli law empowered Jewish Israelis to claim property lost in the Old City of Jerusalem before Israel's creation in 1948.
Jerusalem can't be alive if half of it is occupied and the other half is free. Here we are free; there they are occupied.
Daniel Sidemann
It is confusing, if not difficult, to obtain accurate data on the amount of Palestinian land Israel has since confiscated mainly due to a 1967 military order preventing Palestinians from registering land in the occupied territories as Israel wants to "protect the property of absentees."
However, data from the Bethlehem-based Applied Research Institute in Jerusalem, a Palestinian NGO, indicates that 51% of the approximately 176 Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank (to 2023) were built on land classified by Israel as state land and 49% were built on Palestinian land.
Kareem Jubran, Field Research Director at the Israeli Information Centre for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories (B'Tselem) and the centre's Arabic-language spokesperson, says that Israel plans to redefine Jerusalem's administrative boundaries to exclude the two most populous Palestinian areas: Kafr Aqab and Shuafat refugee camp, as they are home to more than half of Jerusalem's 300,000 Arab residents.
"Israel obviously wants to upset the demographic balance of Jerusalem. They are already spatially outside Jerusalem after the construction of the Apartheid wall in the West Bank," he told Al Majalla.
Jubran says that Israeli policy in Jerusalem since 1967 has centred on the concept of "more land for Israeli Jews and less land for Palestinians."
Israel has turned urban planning into "one of the political tools it uses to stop Palestinian expansion in occupied East Jerusalem, to ensure that the percentage of Palestinians in the city does not increase and is always limited to around 25% of the total population of about one million today," he adds.
A 3D model of the Old City designed by Israeli lawyer Daniel Seidmann and showing hundreds of Jewish, Christian and Islamic sites in blue, yellow and green.
When talking about Jerusalem, the religious character of the city cannot be ignored, as it is impossible to understand Jerusalem without understanding its religious dimension. Jerusalem cannot be reduced or portrayed as a real estate issue or within a narrow Palestinian-Israeli framework.
The protests, violence, Israeli human rights violations and alteration of its architectural and demographic features are echoed by large numbers of Jews, Christians and Muslims in many cities around the world.
Seidmann showed me a three-dimensional model of the Old City that took ten years to design. He assigned three colours to specifically identify its holy sites: Blue for Judaism, Orange for Christianity, and Green for Islam.
He also co-authored a booklet detailing the story of nearly each of the hundreds of documented religious and heritage sites.
"Jerusalem is a very wise and peaceful city for those who take this complex religious context seriously. But it becomes a very dangerous place if we ignore this context," he says.
