A few days ago Adam Horowitz filed an important piece for this site on the idea that settlers are now trying to "Juda-ize" Arab sections of Israel proper (whatever the border is). Today the Times caught up with him with a piece on the efforts to settle Silwan, a neighborhood of Arab East Jerusalem that uses that word "Judaize" in the lede . Horowitz again:
The Times should really be
complimented for its article on Silwan, which is ground zero of the Israeli settlement
project. Silwan is strategically located: between the Old City of Jerusalem and E-1, the track of
land Israel wants to settle to complete its ring of settlements around Jerusalem.
If Israel is able to settle Silwan, and E-1, then any hope for Jerusalem as the
capital of Palestine is over (assuming it isn't already), and the West Bank
will be completely separated into North and South cantons. Silwan is also an
interesting case of Israel
using archaeology as a
weapon in its effort to establish the "City of David" and claim more and more Palestinian land. Although
the Times's Kershner doesn't go into that in depth (as that link does), she does allude to this being part of a broad plan.
Unfortunately, the Times quotes a Jerusalem city spokesman at face value: "A spokesman for Jerusalem City Hall, Gidi
Schmerling, rejected the accusations [of expansionism], saying that municipal enforcement is
carried out equally and according to the law in the eastern part of the city
and the predominantly Jewish western part. He added that the demolition of the
houses, which were built on public land, was carried out after the residents
lost their appeals in the district and supreme courts."
This claim has been disproven many times. One of the most telling statements has come from Amir Chesen, an
adviser to Jerusalem mayors Teddy Kollek and Ehud Olmert: "In Jerusalem, Israel
turned urban planning into a tool of the government, to be used to help prevent
the expansion of the city's non-Jewish population. It was a ruthless policy, if
only for the fact that the needs (to say nothing of the rights) of Palestinian
residents were ignored."
Within Jerusalem,
building permits have been awarded on a disproportionate basis to Arabs and Jews and demolitions
have been carried out in a discriminatory manner. Approximately 55% of the
building violations detected each year in Jerusalem
are in Jewish neighborhoods, 72% of the home demolitions in Jerusalem are of Palestinian homes. Rabbis
for Human Rights paints a sobering picture:
The [Jerusalem]
Municipality grants an average of 150 – 200 permits a year for Arab
housing and
demolishes 25-50 units a year. Between 1967-2001, 80,800 units were
built in Jerusalem for Jews, most of them with government subsidies
and 44,000 of them on land expropriated in East Jerusalem.
Some 19,900 homes were built for Palestinians. Only 500 were subsidized. Some
7,000 are deemed illegal by the Municipality.
The discriminatory nature of home demolitions was summed up
in 1998 by Jerusalem's
Deputy Mayor Haim Miller, "I don't sign demolition orders for Jewish homes,
only for Arabs."
This article is a great
step for the Times, but there is still so much of the story to tell.
