Facts on Jerusalem

During the recent debate over settlement construction in East Jerusalem, I think it’s become clear that many people inclined to support Israel’s position over the Obama administration’s position don’t actually understand what Israel’s position amounts to. Daniel Seideman’s response to Elie Wiesel on Jerusalem contains a useful overview of the main facts:

93 percent of Israel – including most of West Jerusalem and the 35 percent of privately-owned land in East Jerusalem expropriated by Israel since 1967 – is categorized by Israel as “State Land.” Only Israeli citizens and those entitled to immigrate under the Law of Return may acquire properties on this land. Palestinians of East Jerusalem, with rare exception, are in neither of these categories. So while Wiesel may purchase a home in anywhere in East or West Jerusalem, a Palestinian cannot.

Since 1967, Israel has built more than 50,000 dwellings for Israelis in East Jerusalem, but has built fewer than 600 for Palestinians (the last was built 35 years ago). And from 1967 until today, as East Jerusalem’s Palestinian population increased from 70,000 to 280,000, Israel has issued only 4,000 permits for private Palestinian construction in East Jerusalem. Barred from building legally, the Palestinians built without permits – leaving them subject to Israeli demolition of their “illegal” homes.

Today extreme settler groups have launched a campaign to evict Palestinian families – refugees of Israel’s War of Independence – from densely-populated Palestinian neighborhoods in the heart of East Jerusalem. They are doing so based on the “right” of Jews to recover properties lost in the 1948 war. But under Israeli law Palestinians have no such right. So while Israel insists that Palestinians renounce any “right of return” – something understood as necessary for the two-state solution – it is implementing a Jewish right of return to Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, and turning 1948 refugees into 2010 refugees.

Point being, I know a lot of people who are happy to take an anti-settlement line on the West Bank, but who think East Jerusalem is different. It isn’t, really. In both cases the basic structure of the situation is the same. You can have a Jewish democracy that doesn’t claim to control Palestinian land. Or you can have a binational state that claims all the land. Or you can have a Jewish-controlled apartheid state in which the ethnic status of an individual determines the scope of his rights—separate building permit regimes for Jews and Arabs, different rights of return for Jews and Arabs, different land ownership rules for Jews and Arabs, etc.