Annexation Of East Jerusalem Research Articles

The Palestinian youth of East Jerusalem – between Palestinian and Israeli identity

Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem after the 1967 War, created a complicated reality – especially for the residents of East Jerusalem, a population of 70,000 people at the time of the annexation. There are approximately 120,000 Palestinian youth in Jerusalem between the ages of 15–29 who make up approximately 30 per cent of the Arab population living in Jerusalem. Carrying out a trend analysis among Palestinian youth who live in Jerusalem is extremely complex. The purpose of this research is to point out the complex circumstances of the lives of the Palestinian youth who are living relatively satisfactory economic lives under Israeli rule. They are between Palestinian and Israeli identity, which contradict each other. Are the Palestinian youth in Jerusalem a part of the Palestinian minority in Israel, or, perhaps, they are a part of the youth of the West Bank which is partially under the control of the Palestinian Authority (PA)? show

Disrupting movements, synchronising schedules

In East Jerusalem two seemingly antithetical temporal regimes are at work. On the one hand, access to the city is disrupted by time that expands and contracts arbitrarily. This impedes movement, makes even the immediate future difficult to predict, and disconnects many Palestinian residents, particularly those on the outskirts of the city beyond the Separation Wall, from Jerusalem in both the short and the long term. Read as a deliberate ‘deregulation’, temporality thus feeds into Israel’s demographic aims of excluding Palestinians from the city. On the other hand, increased speed, timeliness and synchronisation are used to formalise and normalise Palestinian mobilities, as I show using the case of the Ramallah-Jerusalem Bus Company. This furthers the fifty-year project of Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem by linking and incorporating Palestinian movements into the circulations of the Israeli city. The de/regulation of urban rhythms enabled by this infrastructure of control serves to advance Israeli policy aims in the city by modulating degrees of connection to the city. The article reads this dual regime as reflecting the ambivalent status of Jerusalem’s Palestinian residents, who nonetheless seek to resist and mitigate the effects of both exclusionary and incorporative temporality.

Fifty Years since the 1967 Annexation of East Jerusalem: Israel, the United States, and the First United Nations Denunciation

AbstractIsrael’s annexation of East Jerusalem was condemned for the first time by the un one week after it took place in unga Resolution 2253. The United States chose to abstain rather than join the denunciation of Israel’s application of its domestic law to East Jerusalem. The claim I wish to make is that the us abstention did not spring from indifference to the question of sovereignty over East Jerusalem, as has previously been contested. The us perceived the Israeli move as contrary to international law, and an obstacle to the possibility of achieving a peaceful resolution to the conflict. Thus, the us abstention was in disregard of a un member state’s responsibility to ‘take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace’, and contributed to the failure of the un peaceful conflict resolution mechanism to achieve a peaceful resolution to the dispute over East Jerusalem.

The challenge for Europe: making international law work for Middle East peace

ABSTRACTNo modern conflict has contributed so much to the development of international law as the Israeli–Palestinian conflict yet, paradoxically, no conflict has so undercut the efficacy of law by its political marginalization of a rights-based framework throughout the Oslo peace process. International law has a potentially redemptive role to play in securing a just and lasting peace in Israel/Palestine, but its absence in the formative agreements of the Oslo process – supported by the international mediating powers and the occupying power – has contributed mightily to the failures of the past quarter-century. Europe has played a muffled role during this process, advocating for the principles of international law – such as the illegality of the Israeli settlements and the annexation of East Jerusalem – yet unwilling to enforce these principles through the adoption of political measures against Israeli policy in the occupied Palestinian territory. As Israel's prolonged role as belligerent occupier crosses a bright red line into illegality, the importance of Europe taking an effective stand to end the occupation assumes an increasingly greater significance.

Between discrimination and stabilization

This paper discusses Israeli rule in East Jerusalem through the lens of urban colonial governmentality, with a focus on the control and management of urban systems, institutions and services. Although Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem appeared stable, at least up until the early years of the new millennium, Israel never fully controlled Palestinian urban institutions and services in the city; to a great extent, large parts of these institutions and services continued operating after annexation under the auspices of Jordan or the Palestinian National Authority, in adversarial autonomy to Israeli rule. In this paper I analyze these ambiguities of rule as forms of governmental exceptions to the State’s administrative and managerial norms; exceptions which constitute an essential component of Israel’s control over East Jerusalem. I will argue that while political and urban theory ascribe exception from law and administrative normative order to a state’s offensive and discriminatory policies towards marginalized individuals and groups, in East Jerusalem we find a different type of governmental exception. This is manifested in the State turning a blind eye to adversarial governmental arrangements in order to achieve the normalization and stabilization of rule. By analyzing patterns of governmental exceptions in East Jerusalem since 1967, the paper discusses the ways urban institutions and services in contested cities emerge as an arena of colliding flows of practices and rationales of governmentalities and counter-governmentalities, shaped by rival strategies of dominance and control over the regulation of urban everyday life and identity.

Israel's 1967 Governmental Debate about the Annexation of East Jerusalem: The Nascent Alliance with the United States, Overshadowed by “United Jerusalem”

“No Israeli, dove or hawk, will ever surrender any part of Jerusalem.”Arthur J. Goldberg, United States Ambassador to the United Nations 1965–68 The main position of modern international law prohibits the annexation of occupied territory. Israel, however, like Jordan two decades earlier, annexed East Jerusalem after its occupation in June 1967, and applied its national laws there. Although the legality of the Israeli move according to international law has been debated extensively ever since, the fact that in doing so Israel chose to act contrary to expressed American objections to this move has not been thoroughly examined, however. This research focuses on the Israeli governmental deliberations and eventual decision to annex East Jerusalem, against the backdrop of the early days of the emergence of a hesitant Israeli–American alliance following the 1967 War. Through an analysis of Israeli government meeting protocols, now released to the public, together with American and United Nations sources and existing scholarship, I aim to uncover what weight the United States objection to Israeli annexation of East Jerusalem held in the Israeli government's deliberations concerning whether or not to annex it.

The birth of the core issues: the West Bank and East Jerusalem under Israeli administration, 1967–76 (Part 2)

In the last two decades, the Israeli–Palestinian conflict has been highly identified with the dispute over the core issues: Israel's annexation of East Jerusalem, the establishment of settlements in the disputed territories, the final borders between the two parties and the Palestinian refugee problem. The first three issues were a result of the 1967 war, while the refugee problem was a corollary of the 1948 war. However, it was the Israeli administration from 1967 to 1976 that exposed refugee camps to the Israeli public and made some initial efforts to resolve the problem.

Zones of Transformation? Informal Construction and Independent Zoning Plans in East Jerusalem

Since the occupation and annexation of East Jerusalem in 1967, state-endorsed planning policies of restriction and demolition have had a profound oppressive effect on Palestinian urban development and political activity in the city. While the effects of this oppression have been widely discussed, this paper offers a closer look at ‘ground-level’ planning processes. The analysis of independent local zoning plans submitted by Palestinians to legalize and expand their houses reveals a wider range of activity, negotiations, and inconsistencies. I argue that the practice of the independent plans, as small-scale yet unmediated acts operating from within the institutional planning system, presents a form of encroachment on the bureaucratic apparatus. While the ‘spot-zoning’ amendment to the planning and building law originally resulted from pressures to promote free-market logic in urban planning practices, it unwittingly opened up the possibility for excluded and subordinated residents to pursue a new course of action. Thus, the concurrent tendencies of the Israeli planning system towards ethnonational goals, rational–comprehensive planning episteme, and the neoliberal logic have led to unexpected, at times contradictory, results. I claim that by dwelling on the inherent tensions between these tendencies, the independent plans work towards transforming the urban context into an arena for negotiating rights and positing demands that cannot be articulated in the political sphere.

Barriers to the access to health services in the occupied Palestinian territory: a cohort study

Background Access to health care is a fundamental human right and inadequate access can compromise health. Israel's military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip and annexation of East Jerusalem, occupied Palestinian territory (oPt), in contravention of international law restrict the movement of Palestinians within and between these regions. Patients' access to specialised health care is hindered by difficulties in obtaining the permits required by the Israeli authorities and by restrictions on the modes and routes of travel, with increased cost, time, and difficulty caused by the blockade of the Gaza Strip, presence of Israeli settlements in the oPt, and separation wall around Jerusalem. We assessed the extent and effect of these barriers for Palestinian patients needing health care and for Palestinian service providers who encounter difficulties in travelling to work. Methods We used quantitative and qualitative approaches to describe and analyse the experiences of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip who applied for permits from the Israeli authorities during 2011, either to access health care or for travel to work in Palestinian hospitals in East Jerusalem. Data for patient referrals were obtained from the Palestinian Ministry of Health; data for permit applications and responses were obtained from the Palestinian General Authority of Civil Affairs, West Bank and Gaza Strip, and hospitals in East Jerusalem. Permit data for the Gaza Strip were analysed by application response (classified as approved, denied, or delayed [appointment date]), age, sex, and residence; disaggregated data were not available for the West Bank. Data for ambulance access were obtained from the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, West Bank, and the Palestinian General Authority of Civil Affairs, Gaza Strip. Data for permit applications submitted between Jan 1 to March 31, 2012, at three district liaison offices, West Bank, with high denial rates were analysed to ascertain reasons for denial. We interviewed families of patients who died after applying for a permit but before they had access to health care. Data were limited by the absence of detailed information about patients on non-ministry referrals and permit applications, and the under-reporting of deaths and interviews of patients called for by the Israeli security authorities. Data were analysed with Microsoft Excel (versions 2007 and 2010). Verbal approval for use of data was obtained from the Palestinian Ministry of Health and General Authority of Civil Affairs. Patients and families gave verbal consent for interviews. We did not use patients' personal information. Findings In 2011, 33 285 patients (23 877 from West Bank and 9408 from Gaza Strip) referred by the Ministry of Health required Israeli permits for access to hospitals. Of these referrals, 24 168 (73%) were within the oPt, and 4764 (14%) to Israel and 4350 (13%) to Jordan. 175 228 patients and their companions in the West Bank applied for permits for health-care access in 2011; of these, 32 678 (19%; range 8–30% in 16 district offices) had their access permits denied or delayed. Data for the first quarter of 2012 from three district offices showed the most frequent reason given for denying patients was security (680 [42%] of 1622 denials). No criteria could be identified for denials on the basis of security. For the 1053 staff who needed permits to travel to work in hospitals in East Jerusalem, 986 staff received permits for 6 months, 46 for 3 months, and 21 were denied permits. All permits were restricted by mode and route of entrance to East Jerusalem. Only on 49 (5%) of 1074 occasions were ambulances permitted to enter East Jerusalem. In 2011, 1082 (10%) of 10 560 applicants in the Gaza Strip had their access permits denied or delayed, with no reason given, and 197 (2%) were called for security interview. Patients aged 18–40 years had the highest rate of denied or delayed permits. Tracer interviews with Gazan families of patients who had their permits denied or delayed showed that six patients died while waiting for the permits. Interpretation Our data provide quantification of the extent of restricted access to health care for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and show that procedures for obtaining permits required by the Israeli authorities cause substantial difficulties in the access to hospital care for patients. Further study is needed to ascertain how and to what extent these difficulties in access have an effect on the health status and wellbeing of the patients. Funding Swiss Development Cooperation.

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

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...

Jerusalem's Infrastructure: Is Annexation Irreversible?

Is the annexation of East Jerusalem and the adjacent areas of the West Bank by Israel in 1967 irreversible? The widely held view is that since the Israeli government has not and will not brook attempts to include East Jerusalem in the land-for-peace equation currently being negotiated, the question is closed. Moreover, even beyond Israel's insistence on Jerusalem as its eternal and undivided capital,' have not the western and eastern parts of the city over the past quarter-century simply grown too intermeshed to be redivided? This article seeks to explore whether, in fact, there are strong functional and technical imperatives which make the repartition of the city impossible. It reviews three areas in the service and utility base of the city-water provision, sewage disposal, and electric power generation and distributionwhich could determine the viability of repartition. This is not to underestimate or fail to give due priority to the political questions that have to be resolved first. Rather it is an attempt to see whether questions of functional