… is here. Also here.
Since you can’t currently comment here, why don’t y’all go over and comment over at the second of those locations.
My view is that Jerusalem is emerging as increasingly central to the Palestinian-Israeli interaction. Of course, it is an issue that captures the imagination and allegiance of Muslims, Jews– and quite a few Christians– around the world. (Did you know that one of the oldest Orthodox Jewish communities inside Jerusalem, the Naturei Karta, is still resolutely anti-Zionist?)
But even at the raw political level Jerysalem is crucial because it is, if you like, a kind of “bridge issue” between the issue of ending the post-1967 occupation and the issues around the decidedly second-class citizenship that Israel’s own 1.2 million indigenous Palestinians are forced to live with.
In addition, the situation of East Jerusalem’s 220,000 Palestinians is in many ways far more precarious than that of their compatriots (and often close relatives) living elsewhere in the West Bank, outside the municipal boundaries that Israel expanded, for purely Zionist-ideological reasons, back in 1967. Primarily because, though these Palestinians do live in indubitably occupied territory, the vast majority of members of the US-dominated international community has done almost nothing to provide them with the kinds of financing and other support that the Palestinian communities in the rest of the West Bank have been receiving.
In that respect, their situation is very similar to that of Gaza’s grossly under-supported (until now) Palestinians.
Though the Jerusalem Palestinians are now nearly completely cut off from daily contact with their confreres in the rest of the West Bank they do have fairly good contacts with the Palestinians who are citizens of Israel. Thus, new coalitions of solidarity have been emerging among these different segments of the Palestinian people; and the plight of the Jerusalem Palestinians throws a helpful spotlight on the challenges of continuing land-grabs and decidedly inferior civil and political status that the Palestinian Israelis face, within their own different context.
Anyway, the issues of Jerusalem’s Palestinians will certainly be important in the months ahead…