Fifty-five years since Israel captured East Jerusalem in the 1967
Arab-Israeli war, East Jerusalem remains, with its iconic Old City, strikingly
and unmistakably an Arab city under military occupation, even with a
suffocating deadly necklace of illegal Jewish settlements close to smothering
it. The unblemished fact of its Arab identity was no more hauntingly true than
on Sunday when extremist Jews held their notorious flag march through the
narrow alleys of the walled city, passing through the Muslim Quarter,
assembling defiantly at the Damascus Gate — a decade-old symbol of Palestinian
steadfastness.
اضافة اعلان
Far-right Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett
approved the march for ideological and political reasons. He wanted to appease
the settlers and other extremists who make up the bulk of his voter base while
conveying that Jerusalem was Israel’s united and indivisible capital. A message
that did not resonate well inside Israel and beyond. In fact, with thousands of
border police, soldiers, and Shin Bet agents deployed in East Jerusalem to
protect the marchers from the city’s rightful residents, the world only saw
scenes of a sieged city under military occupation being breached by uninvited
outsiders.
Yet, the march underlined for many Israelis that
East Jerusalem, with the Old City, was, incontrovertibly, an unconquered
territory whose fate remains hanging in the balance. Else, why need so many
armed troops who had attacked, beaten up, and arrested countless Palestinian
residents just to protect a once-a-year Jewish march dominated by extremists,
fanatics, and racists who openly call for the death of Arabs and the burning of
their villages? Israel has a lot to be ashamed of in how it treats and
subjugates an entire nation. But the flag march epitomized the true nature of
Israeli society, especially in the last two decades: A society that preaches
hatred and dehumanizes Palestinians; a society that, ironically, continues to
claim that it shares common values with the civilized West.
Even to the dwindling secular Israelis who oppose
the occupation and seek a peaceful settlement, the march represented what is
ugly about Israel. It was an orgy of hate and vengefulness with ecstatic chants
of “Death to the Arabs”, “May your village burn”, “Mohammed is dead”, “Shoafat
is burning”, and ending with an ancient Talmudic curse against the
Palestinians: “May their name be accursed”.
The march was hardly an exclusive Jewish day of
celebration. Palestinian residents of the city had their day too. Palestinian
flags were raised inside and over the skies of the Old City. Palestinian
marches adorned the streets of occupied East Jerusalem — a confident certainty
that the city is theirs and remains Palestinian to the core. Third- and
fourth-generation Palestinian youth — who were once projected to forget in
David Ben-Gurion’s statement “the old will die, and the young will forget”— had
marred the Jewish festival.
But what happened on Sunday will boost Israel’s old
scheme that the only way to unite and Judaize the city truly, is to erase its
Arab and Palestinian identity. A tactic that can only be achieved through
“transferring” the indigenous Palestinian population — all 300,000 plus of them
— and replacing them with Jewish settlers, thus neutralizing the demographic
challenge. Yet, despite economic strangulation, denial of building permits, the
razing of entire neighborhoods, lack of equitable municipal services, home
demolitions, evictions, withdrawal of residency permits, and confiscation of
properties in the Old City, the Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem had
somehow persevered.
Palestinian marches adorned the streets of occupied East Jerusalem — a confident certainty that the city is theirs and remains Palestinian to the core. Third- and fourth-generation Palestinian youth — who were once projected to forget in David Ben-Gurion’s statement “the old will die, and the young will forget”— had marred the Jewish festival.
The long-term Israeli goal was to bring down the
percentage of Arabs in East Jerusalem to less than 10 percent. Today 220,000
Israeli settlers are living in illegal settlements in occupied East Jerusalem.
And since 1967, Israel has expropriated 35 percent of East Jerusalem for
Israeli settlements.
With the West’s
complicity or indifference, the Israeli encroachment on Palestinian lands and
property in East Jerusalem is likely to pick up in the coming months and years
as more hardline Israeli governments take over. Israeli leaders from all shades
of the political spectrum serve to present a stark belief that Jerusalem will
never be divided. This encroachment would have gone with little international
protest except for one crucial game-changer: Al-Aqsa.
Roughly from 1967 to 2000, various Israeli
governments, including right-wing ones, have respected, to some extent, the
existing status quo of Al-Aqsa Mosque. Jerusalem, they claimed, was open to the
freedom of religious worship. This has changed drastically, especially under
Bennett’s government. The daily storming of the Muslim site and the breach of
the status quo understanding, amid calls to demolish the mosque while allowing
Jewish fanatics to perform Talmudic prayers, is turning the conflict into a
religious one. This plays into the hands of religious extremists on both sides
of the divide and promises to fuel militancy and violence, pushing the entire
region towards a dangerous precipice and into a bottomless abyss.
The writer is a journalist and political commentator based in Amman.
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