David Hearst 20 November 2014. Posted in News
This
uprising, if it is the third intifada, will be fought by Palestinians inside
the walls of Israel itself, says David Hearst.
TO BE A
PALESTINIAN resident of Jerusalem is to suffer from a special form of
statelessness. They are citizens neither of Israel nor of Palestine. They
cannot vote. They have no official passports and cannot freely cross borders.
They have the
right to residency in Jerusalem, but it is a daily battle to keep it. Under the
Israeli Ministry of Interior's "center of life" policy, they have to
continuously disprove a negative, that their real family life is not elsewhere.
This means
endlessly collecting receipts as proof of their life in Jerusalem like medical
prescriptions and school registrations. Inspectors go as far as counting the
clothes in a wardrobe or the food in the fridge, as evidence of the claimed
number of children living in the family home.
Obtaining
citizenship of any country or spending too long abroad are both reasons for the
revocation of the residency status, which cannot be handed down to children.
They cannot build onto their houses, and if they do, they have to pay to have
the extension knocked down, or knock it down themselves. This is the community
from which the two men who shot and hacked worshippers in early morning prayers
in a synagogue in West Jerusalem on Tuesday came from.
The red line
in this battle is al-Aqsa in particular and Jerusalem in general. There is no
question in the minds of the Palestinians of East Jerusalem but that Israel has
already crossed this line. Attacking places of worship has alas become
commonplace.
Since June
2011, 10 mosques in Israel and the West Bank have been set on fire by presumed
right-wing Jewish extremists. No charges have been filed. Over 63 mosques were
destroyed and 153 partially damaged in Israel's attack on Gaza.
Ever since
the occupation of East Jerusalem in 1967, there were Jews who aspired to remove
the mosque of al-Aqsa and the Dome of the Rock and replace it with the Third
Temple. There was always a brisk trade in pictures of the Holy City with
al-Aqsa and the Dome of the Rock photoshopped out. But this sort of wish
fulfilment remained on the fringe of Israeli political discourse. Now it has
entered the mainstream.
Movements for
the rebuilding of the Third Temple have gained ground and the religious veto
against praying on the Temple Mount has waned. Thirty years ago, Yehuda Etzion,
one the movement's leaders, was convicted of planning to blow up the Dome of
the Rock. Today, he enjoys right-wing backing. "The Temple will rise on
the expense of the mosques, there is no doubt about it," said Etzion.
Just a few
hundred meters away from al-Aqsa, the crowded and poor Palestinian
neighbourhood of Silwan is in the first stages of Judaisation. It is now
referred to as the City of David. Just after settlers took over 23 more
apartments in Silwan at the end of September, and violent clashes ensued, an
advert appeared congratulating the settlers on their Zionist endeavour.
"The strengthening of Jewish presence in Jerusalem is our common
challenge," went the ad. "With your settlement act, you make us
proud."
Who put their
names on the front page ad? Nobel Laureate Eli Wiesel; Shlomo Aharonishky,
ex-chief of staff of the Israeli Police; and retired general Amos Yadlin,
former head of intelligence in the Israeli Defense Forces and a possible
contender for the leadership of the Labor Party. As MEE contributor Meron
Rapoport noted: "In short, not a bunch of right-wing lunatics, but the
flesh and bone of the Israeli establishment."
The settlers
of the "City of David" are just the visible part of a broader act of
dispossession. Declaring the area a Jewish National Heritage site, despite the
fact that no reliable archeological evidence has been found linking King David
to the stones uncovered during the excavations, has legitimised the acts of the
settlers.
The takeover
of Silwan is not a fringe activity. Israel's housing minister Uri Ariel, a
senior minister from the Jewish Home party, has looked into renting an
apartment there.
Sami Abu
Atrash, a colleague of Yusef al-Ramouni, found hanging from a steel bar in the
Egged bus he drove summed up the atmosphere in East Jerusalem on Tuesday. He
told the Middle East Eye:
"They're
against us. They don't want any Palestinians to live on this earth. They want
to transfer all the people ...We work for the Jewish people, and help them, all
the time, day and night. But the Israelis - and it's not just the settlers -
it's the government - they are pushing them to kill us, and destroy our houses.
It's the system of the government against the Palestinian people."
What's going
in East Jerusalem has forced even the most West-leaning and compliant of Arab
leaders, King Abdullah of Jordan to withdraw his ambassador. The king is acting
out of pragmatism. He is mindful of the presence of Islamic State (ISIS)
supporters in Jordan, to say nothing of the Palestinian majority in the
Hashemite kingdom. Abdullah knows that nothing can unify Arabs as quickly as
Jerusalem.
Which brings
us to the last and perhaps most significant difference between this Palestinian
uprising, if such it proves to be, and the last two. If it does materialize, it
will be fought by Palestinians inside the walls that Israel has constructed
around itself, by the East Jerusalemites and the Palestinians of 1948, who are
Israeli citizens.
Unlike the
previous two intifadas, this conflict will not be contained inside secure
borders, such as were guaranteed by strong states, friendly and hostile alike.
Egypt's Mubarak has disappeared, and a very large jihadi insurgency is battling
for control of the Sinai Peninsula. Bashar Assad's forces no longer control
Israel's northern border on the Golan Heights. To make Jerusalem a battle zone,
in the circumstances of chaos in the wider Arab world, where four states have
failed, is to invite every Arab fighter in.
And Jerusalem
will surely become a battle zone, if the public security minister eases
controls on gun licenses to Israel's Jewish citizens, East Jerusalem becomes
locked down by roadblocks and police patrols, or the response of the government
is to demolish Palestinian houses while announcing 78 new settlements.
So Netanyahu,
for once, is right. This is a battle for Jerusalem. It will either be the last
battle Palestinians will fight before Israeli Jews take East Jerusalem over. Or
it is the first battle of a larger struggle -- in which Jerusalem serves as a
magnet for militants from wherever they hail -- Sunni or Shia, secular and
Islamist, takfiris, jihadis, or nationalists. Netanyahu has picked the one
battleground capable of drawing them all in.
David Hearst
is the editor of Middle East Eye.This is a slightly shortened version of his
article. The full version is here...
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