Divided Jerusalem: The Struggle for the Holy City (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Divided Jerusalem: The Struggle for the Holy City Thomas A. Idinopulos Divided Jerusalem: The Struggle for the Holy City, by Bernard Wasserstein. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001. 412 pp. $29.95. After conquering the Arab-populated eastern half of the city in 1967, and reuniting Jerusalem under Israeli sovereignty, and ostensibly setting forth to practice peaceful co- existence with the more than half-million Arab Jerusalemites living for the first time under a Jewish government, the Israeli government has left a sad and sorry record of the treatment of Arab Jerusalemites from 1967 to the present day. [End Page 181] Begin with the confiscation of Arab-owned lands which provided the territory for the construction of a number of massive exclusively Jewish high-rise apartment complexes that today ring East Jerusalem. The complexes effectively shut off Arabs living in the city from Arab villages and towns that neighbor the city. In addition to fragmenting Arab living space, the complexes made an important political statement: With Jews inhabiting apartment buildings on the edges of east Jerusalem, a demographic argument is provided against any future proposal to re-divide Jerusalem between predominantly Jewish- inhabited West Jerusalem and the Arab-populated eastern half of the city. The government-funded confiscations and constructions were thus meant to bolster the extension of Israeli sovereignty to the Arab-populated half of the city. The annexation of East Jerusalem in June 1967 was received joyously by Israelis, who also cheered the demolition of the ugly concrete wall which the government of Jordan had built to keep Israelis and Arabs from moving freely about the city. But whatever new freedoms Arabs enjoyed under the Israeli-governed “unified” city, they were more than offset by unexpected losses. Beyond the land confiscations, Arabs found themselves combating a government effort to impose an Israeli school curriculum on their school children. Arab Jerusalemites consistently refused to participate as voters and candidates in municipal elections, once their own original pre-1967 Arab municipal leaders had been dismissed from office by Jewish authorities. The offer to the Arabs of joining the Jewish municipality under the leadership of Jerusalem’s Jewish mayor, Teddy Kollek, was rejected. The record of Jewish administration of the “unified city” under Teddy Kollek was also a sad and sorry one. While both Arab and Jewish inhabitants of the city were taxed equally, Arabs received a disproportionately lower level of services affecting housing, education, welfare, sewage, waste collection, recreation, green areas, electricity, and water. While millions of shekels were spent on refurbishing and beautifying Jewish West Jerusalem, Arab East Jerusalem was allowed to fall to increasing ruin. Israeli policy in Arab Jerusalem, dictated by the government and the municipality, was to do as little as possible so as to encourage the Arabs to leave the city in the hope of bolstering Israel’s demographic right to act as sovereign over all Jerusalem. With exemplary honesty and courage Bernard Wasserstein has told the story of Jerusalem under Israel’s rule. Much of the book recounts the past and present-day history of Jerusalem well known from previous studies. The final pages are worth examining for what they reveal about the last serious efforts to politically divide Jerusalem to allow for both an Arab capital and a Jewish capital in one city. Anyone who knows the past history of Jerusalem recognizes that coexistence between often contentious communities was only possible by mutual and clear respect for each other’s space. The American poet, Robert Frost, said it best when he wrote the line, “. . . good fences make good neighbors.” The Israeli slogan of an “undivided Jerusalem” flies in the face of the elementary truth of co-existence through recognition of areas, [End Page 182] borders, or “fences.” In this regard it is worth considering the Beilin-Abu Mazen plan for introducing “fences” in Jerusalem that would have allowed for coexistence. As described by Wasserstein the plan called for a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. Jerusalem “would remain an open and undivided city with free and unimpeded access for people of all faiths and nationalities.” The eastern borders of the city would be expanded to include several Arab villages...