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<h1><font size=6 color="#FF0000"><b>2 Articles follow<br><br>
</font>Israel's Open Jerusalem?</b></h1><font size=3>July 23, 2009 By
<b>Jonathan Cook</b> <br>
<a href="http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/22105" eudora="autourl">
http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/22105<br><br>
</a>Jerusalem. No one would have been more surprised than Fawziya Khurd
by the recent pronouncement of Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime
minister, that Israel operates an "open city" policy in
Jerusalem.<br><br>
Mr Netanyahu told his cabinet on Sunday that Israel's annexation of East
Jerusalem following the 1967 war -- what he called the city's
"unification" -- meant that all residents, Jews and
Palestinians alike, could buy property wherever they chose. <br><br>
"Our policy is that Jerusalem residents can purchase apartments
anywhere in the city," he said. "There is no ban on Arabs
buying apartments in the west of the city, and there is no ban on Jews
building or buying in the city's east."<br><br>
Mr Netanyahu was trying to justify recent construction in East Jerusalem
by settler organisations in defiance of demands from the US that Israel
halt all such work. In particular, US officials are objecting to the
recent takeover of property by settlers in the Sheikh Jarrah
neighbourhood, where Mrs Khurd used to live, as well as the Old City,
Silwan and Ras al-Amud.<br><br>
According to experts, however, the reality is that in both a practical
and legal sense Mr Netanyahu's "open city" is a fiction,
extended only to the settlers and not to Mrs Khurd or to the 250,000
other Palestinians of East Jerusalem. <br><br>
Mrs Khurd, for example, has been forced to live in a tent after settlers
ousted her from her East Jerusalem home of five decades in November. She
also has no hope of moving back to the house taken from her family in
Talbiyeh, now in West Jerusalem, during the 1948 war that established
Israel. <br><br>
In addition, movement restrictions mean that almost all of the nearly
four million Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza are banned from
entering the city or visiting its holy sites. <br><br>
Inside Jerusalem, as in the West Bank, Israel enforces a strict programme
of segregation to disadvantage the Palestinians, said Jeff Halper, of the
Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions.<br><br>
Israeli Jews have the freedom to live in both parts of the city, with
270,000 in West Jerusalem and a further 200,000 living in East Jerusalem
in rapidly expanding settlements heavily subsidised by the state.
<br><br>
Palestinians, meanwhile, are denied the right to live both in West
Jerusalem and in many residential areas of East Jerusalem. Even in their
tightly controlled neighbourhoods in the city's east, at least 20,000 of
their homes are subject to demolition orders, said Mr Halper.<br><br>
Daniel Seidemann, a Jerualem lawyer, said that in his 20 years of
handling residency rights cases for Palestinians he had never heard of a
Palestinian with a Jerusalem ID living in West Jerusalem.<br><br>
The reason, he pointed out, was that almost all land inside Israel's 1948
borders, including West Jerusalem, has been registered as "state
land" managed by a body known as the Israel Lands
Authority.<br><br>
The authority allows neither Palestinians nor Israelis to buy property on
state land. Instead long-term renewable leases are available to Israeli
citizens and anyone eligible to immigrate to Israel under the country's
Law of Return -- meaning Jews. <br><br>
The settlements in East Jerusalem -- now covering 35 per cent of the
eastern city, according to Mr Seidemann -- are also built on land
declared as "state land", in violation of international law.
Again this means that only Israelis and Jewish foreign nationals are
entitled to lease land there. <br><br>
Because they do not hold Israeli citizenship, the Palestinians of East
Jerusalem are disqualified from acquiring property either in West
Jerusalem or in the settlements of East Jerusalem. <br><br>
"The extraordinary situation is that a Palestinian who had his land
expropriated to build the settlement of Har Homa [on the outskirts of
East Jerusalem] cannot lease land there, whereas a Jew from Paris or
London who is not even an Israeli citizen can." <br><br>
Mr Seidemann also pointed out that the country's Supreme Court ruled in
1978 that a Palestinian family forced out of what became the Jewish
quarter of the Old City in 1967 had no right to return to their
property.<br><br>
The court justified its decision on the grounds that each religious
community should have its own quarter. "However, that ruling has not
stopped the Israeli government from helping Jewish settlers to encroach
on the Muslim and Christian quarters."<br><br>
This week, the Israeli media reported, several families from a settler
organisation, Ateret Cohanim, had moved into a building in the heart of
the Muslim quarter. The property was bought by Ariel Sharon in the 1980s
to assert Jewish sovereignty over all of the Old City, although he never
moved in.<br><br>
Mr Halper said that, in addition, Jerusalem's Palestinians, unlike its
Jews, faced municipal policies designed to make life as unbearable as
possible. Demolitions of Palestinian property are widespread. Police, for
example, have torn down Mrs Khurd's tent on six occasions since November
and she faces a series of fines.<br><br>
"Even according to Israeli figures, East Jerusalem lacks 25,000
housing units to cope with the Palestinians' minimal needs," said Mr
Halper. "The land is available, it's just that Israel wants to
induce a severe housing shortage for Palestinians."<br><br>
The hope is that they would move to the West Bank, he said.<br><br>
Mr Seidemann said a handful of Palestinian families -- faced with this
housing shortage -- had managed to rent homes short term from Israeli
owners in East Jerusalem's larger settlements, such as French Hill and
Pisgat Zeev. This marginal phenomenon, he said, had been misleadingly
trumpeted as proof of the "egalitarian nature" of Israel's
property laws. <br><br>
According to the Israeli media, Mr Netanyahu's remark may have been
intended to throw mud in the eyes of the US Administration as it steps up
pressure on Israel to halt settlement building in East Jerusalem.
<br><br>
Mr Seidemann said: "The [US] State Department understands these
issues better than Mr Netanyahu. There is zero possibility that his
comments will be treated as credible by any of their
negotiators."<br><br>
Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His
latest books are "Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran
and the Plan to Remake the Middle East" (Pluto Press) and
"Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair"
(Zed Books). His website is
<a href="http://www.jkcook.net/" eudora="autourl">www.jkcook.net</a>
<<a href="http://www.jkcook.net/" eudora="autourl">
http://www.jkcook.net</a>> .<br><br>
A version of this article originally appeared in The National
(<a href="http://www.thenational.ae/" eudora="autourl">
www.thenational.ae</a>
<<a href="http://www.thenational.ae/" eudora="autourl">
http://www.thenational.ae</a>> ), published in Abu Dhabi.<br>
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</font><h1><b>Arabic names of Palestinian cities inside Israeli borders
and Jerusalem changed to
Hebrew</b></h1>
<img src="http://www.imemc.org/graphics/date.gif" width=12 height=10 alt="author">
</b></h1><font size=3> Wednesday July 22, 2009
13:30<img src="http://www.imemc.org/graphics/person.gif" width=14 height=12 alt="author">
by IMEMC News - <br>
<a href="http://www.imemc.org/article/61172" eudora="autourl">
http://www.imemc.org/article/61172</a><br><br>
<br>
</font>In a recent and bold move by the Netanyahu government, the Arabic
names of cities within Israeli borders and Jerusalem are being changed to
Hebrew.<a name="attachment37310"></a><br>
<br>
The Israeli Minister of Transport has been charged with the task of
erasing the Arabic names in Israel, in what has been condemned as a
bigoted attempt to deconstruct the Palestinian legacy, especially in
Jerusalem. The Arabic name of Al Quds is also set to be changed, as is
Nazareth, and other cities within Israel.Palestinian Chief of Justice has
responded by declaring this as a means of erasing the Arab idenity in
Jerusalem and greater Israel. The Chief Justice and Chairman of the
Comission in Support of Islamic and Christian Sanctities in Jerusalem has
made similar statements, and calling it an act of racism. In addition to
these implications, it is against international law to make such changes
to a city that is still constested territory.From the creation of the
Israeli state, Jerusalem has been a heavily contested area, subjected to
many changes, land confisaction, home demolitions, evacuations, and
settlements to cut the city off from its Palestinian heritage.<br><br>
<br><br>
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