The status of Jerusalem

A report published last week by the The Israeli Macro Center for Political Economics and the Friedrich Ebert Foundation found that within 20 years, Palestinians will make up a majority of the population of Jerusalem. 

According to the report, the Palestinian population in Jerusalem amounted to nearly 26% of the city in 1967, the year that East Jerusalem was annexed. Today it amounts to 35%.

The report’s findings suggest that the future status of Jerusalem will need to be dealt with sooner rather than later.

Over the years, Israel has attempted a variety of measures to strengthen the Jewish character of the city, including routing the security fence so as to disconnect surrounding Palestinian neighborhoods from the Jerusalem municipality (and connect outlying Jewish ones), evicting Palestinians from their homes in Jerusalem and assisting the building of hundreds of units of housing for Israelis within Palestinian neighborhoods of East Jerusalem.

The issue of the security fence is by no means new. In 2006, The Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies released a report on the implications of the security fence for Jerusalem. The current route follows Jerusalem’s municipal border, also considered by Israel as the country’s de-facto border after East Jerusalem was annexed following the Six Day War in 1967. Palestinians, who seek East Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state, objected to the fence’s route as an effort to predetermine Jerusalem’s status prior to Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.

Even so, the new demographic figures suggest that such efforts aimed at strengthening Jerusalem’s Jewish character are not working.

The director of the Macro Center, Dr. Roby Nathanson, recently told the Jerusalem Post:

"Paradoxically, as a consequence of the fence, Israel had to include different neighborhoods in the eastern part of the city into the municipal boundaries, thus increasing the Palestinian population even more."

Referencing the noticeable divisions and tensions between the Israeli and Palestinian segments of the city, Nathanson said "You have the Palestinian side of the city and the Israeli side of the city… The city is not divided but there is a kind of a glass wall between both parts. It's invisible but it is there and everybody knows that."

Attorney Danny Seidman, the author of the Macro Center’s report and founder of Ir Amim, the Israeli non-profit focused on the future of Jerusalem, told the Media Line:

"All of the responsible demographic projections envisage a Palestinian majority in the city within a generation and if you look at the fabric of life we're already living in a bi-national city… Even if you bring in a million Jews you can't change that... If during the surge of Israeli energies following the Six Day War we weren't able to change the facts we are certainly not going to be able to do this today."

The tensions between Palestinians and Israelis living in Jerusalem are apparent. Clashes between Israelis and Palestinians revolving around the Temple Mount and housing evictions have increased most significantly in recent weeks. Today, Jewish settlers used hired guards to push an elderly Palestinian woman out of a disputed house in East Jerusalem.

This past August, two Palestinian families were evicted from their homes in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, spurring public protests and demonstrations that are ongoing. On top of Palestinian families losing their homes in the city, Sheikh Jarrah is also the neighborhood playing host to the Shepherd Hotel controversy that developed in July, creating new apartments for Jewish families at the site of the hotel. The aim of these actions by the Israeli government is clear: create a stronger Jewish contingent in predominantly Palestinian segments of the city.

Orly Nir, also of Ir Amim, wrote in The Huffington Post last week that the clashes between Israelis and Palestinians on the Temple Mount are a perpetration of the “catastrophe” happening in Jerusalem on a daily basis.

In reality, every new and expanding Jewish settlement in the midst of Palestinian neighborhoods, every archeological tunnel dug under the homes of Palestinian residents in Silwan, every Palestinian home that is destroyed, every Palestinian family that is removed from its home in East Jerusalem - every such action undermines the possibility of a future political settlement in Jerusalem, and thus, the possibility of a political settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict itself.

It would be wise for the government to rethink their Jerusalem strategy and acknowledge the impact of the growing Palestinian contingent before Israelis lose their already declining majority.