The politics of Jerusalem since 1967

Abstract

The Politics of since 1967, by Michael Dumper. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997. x + 272 pages. Notes to p. 322. Bibl. to p. 333. Index to p. 365. $29.50. Reviewed by Oren Yiftachel This is a welcome addition to the accumulating work on the political conflict over Jerusalem. Michael Dumper's study is a detailed, empirically grounded, thorough and clearly expressed journey through many aspects of the conflict. These elements of the conflict govern the lives of the city's residents but also have enormous repercussions for Middle East politics and beyond. Despite the book's title, which emphasizes the post-1967 era, the study actually provides a fairly comprehensive review of the city's history and religious significance that goes back to antiquity. The author, however, spends a good deal of time and effort contextualizing the contemporary conflict to its British origins. Modern developed during the British mandate, and it was then that the seeds of the Jewish-Palestinian struggle were sown. The detailed historical background is important. It gives the reader a vivid picture of many factors often neglected in contemporary debates. For example, in 1947, only a third of the city's land was in Jewish hands, and Palestinian Arabs were living in many neighborhoods now considered part of (the exclusively Jewish) West Jerusalem. As Dumper reports, Israel's and Jordan's 1948 conquests, respectively, of West and East (an area designated as an internationally administered zone under the UN partition plan) had uneven consequences: 60,000 Palestinians fled or were driven out of their homes, as opposed to only around 3,000 Jews. Jews, who constituted some 60 percent of the population, took control of 84 percent of the city's area (but without the all important Old City). The book's main focus is on the post-1967 continuous Israeli policies to expand Jewish control over the reshaped conquered city. Here the author repeats the familiar details of Jewish settlement, land confiscation, and ethnocentric urban policies. These are accompanied by useful maps and tables, which also help illustrate the many levels at which the conflict should be examined, including the neighborhood, city, metropolitan, regional and national levels. It is particularly satisfying that Dumper pays ample attention to dimensions of the Jerusalem problem rarely addressed by other authors, namely the nitty-gritty aspects of development, planning, servicing and infrastructure. Chapter Four is thus aptly titled: Planning and Housing Policy: Conquest by Architectural Means. In it Dumper gives a blow-by-blow account of Israel's use of planning and policies to deepen its control over contested areas. The use of planning language (such as housing needs, or development for the benefit of all residents) softens and conceals the genuinely expansionist aim of the Israeli regime. Still, despite the wealth of data, the book is deficient in some important aspects. First, it is almost entirely descriptive, without attempting to explain the unfolding events. There is little or no discussion of the emergence of ethno-nationalism in the Middle East during the early decades of the century. By the middle of the century, this process transformed from a multi-communal and relatively tolerant city into a bi-national conflict-ridden locality. …