More Jerusalem

I wrote here Thursday about why Jerusalem plays a special role within the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations as a whole. I didn’t write much about the ever threatened physical-planning situation faced daily by the roughly 250,000 Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem. (Population figures are here.)
The respected DC-based organization the Foundation for Middle East Peace has recently published an excellent map that shows in some detail how the building and further expansion of new settlement mini-nodes is being used to carve up the Palestinian-populated heart of occupied East Jerusalem. As the map shows, this is the case both within and outside the historic walled Old City. The map is best read alongside the accompanying article on the topic (which sadly is not linked to on the current web version of the map.)
As the article says, the map,

illustrates the broader territorial context of Israel’s settlement program in the heart of East Jerusalem where land and land use are the central instruments of containment, control, and margininalization of the Palestinian community. Large scale residential settlement, a key feature employed by Israel elsewhere in East Jerusalem in its effort to divide and contain the Palestinian community, anchors both the targeted small scale settlement and the creation of open areas around and with in areas of Palestinian habitation that are the key features of Israeli policy in this critical and sensitive area.
In the north, the structural cohesion of Palestinian neighborhoods like Sheikh Jarrah and Wadi Joz is eroded by a variety of means—the construction of Ma’alot Dafna in what was formerly no man’s land, the placement of government offices and institutions, the creation of open or “green” spaces, and the establishment of small civilian settlement areas.
Isolation of this area from the Old City is visible in efforts to employ similar instruments along and within the northern perimeter of the Old City…

I guess the only change I’d make in their description is to use the term “designate” rather than “create” when it talks about parks and open or “green” spaces. It is not that the Israeli planning authorities actually “create” any beautiful parks in these spaces for the equal-opportunity enjoyment of all the city’s residents. Rather, here as elsewhere throughout the occupied territories, they simply slap a land-use designation of “designated Green space” or “designated park” onto a chunk of Palestinian land, whether privately or publicly owned– but it is all Palestinian land, either way– expressly in order to render the development of that land by any Palestinian individual or entity as “illegal”.
Quite frequently, having kept land in that status for a number of years, the Israeli planning authorities will then suddenly “discover” it need not be kept green after all, but can be developed– into yet another Jews-only settlement. So those green designations are very frequently used as a way of, in effect, putting Palestinian land “into the bank” for Israel’s future development uses.
The abuse of allegedly pro-green planning orders is a long-time staple of the Zionist venture, and has sometimes also served to give it a welcome “progressive” image in the west. Many of my Jewish-American friends remember saving their US cents as children so they could buy trees for “Jewish forests in Israel”. Too bad that so many of these forests– like Canada Forest, down by Latrun– were actually established on recently destroyed Palestinian villages and farmlands…
Anyway, back to Jerusalem, and the FMEP map. I find it very disturbing to see represented there the degree of geographic threat now posed to the Sheikh Jarrah and Salah ad Din Street neighborhoods– and of course, to the Old City. The FMEP article notes, “the effort to establish small but significant Jewish residential and institutional centers [in portions of the Old City other than the traditional ‘Jewish Quarter’] whose isolation from one another is, in part answered by the creation of passageways both under and above ground.”
It seems like the situation of Palestinians in the Old City of Jerusalem may soon be as physically threatened as that of their compatriots in the historic central souq (market) area of Hebron.