JERUSALEM/RAMALLAH: Three in four of Jerusalem’s Arab children live in poverty, a civic rights group said yesterday, blaming Israeli “discrimination” aimed at securing a Jewish majority in the city.
A total of 74 percent of Arab children in Jerusalem live below the poverty line, as compared with 47.7 percent of Jewish children in the city, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel said.
It said 66.8 percent of families in predominantly Arab east Jerusalem live in poverty as compared with 23.3 percent of the city’s Jewish families, but that only 22 percent of the population receives welfare services.
In its “State of Human Rights in East Jerusalem” report, the group said residents of annexed east Jerusalem faced discrimination in planning and building, expropriation of lands, minimal investment in physical infrastructure, government and municipal services.
“These are concrete expressions of an Israeli policy designed to secure a Jewish majority in Jerusalem and push Palestinian residents outside the city’s borders,” it said.“Life in Jerusalem can be described as a continuing cycle of neglect, discrimination, poverty and shortages.
“These, compounded by construction of the separation barrier cutting Jerusalem off from the West Bank, have led to the social and economic collapse of this part of the city. “A large majority of east Jerusalem residents do not receive, and cannot afford to buy, the most basic services. The primary victims are the vulnerable populations, the aged, the disabled and children.” Since Israel occupied east Jerusalem in 1967, later annexing the city, it expropriated 6,000 acres (2,430 hectares), or over one third of the area, which was privately owned by Arabs, the group said.
By the end of 2007, a total 50,197 homes had been built for the Jewish population on the expropriated land and none for Palestinians, ACRI said. Bureaucratic red tape and costly fees — some charged only to Palestinians — make it almost impossible for Palestinians to obtain building permits in east Jerusalem, it said. So far this year, 23 homes and other structures in east Jerusalem were torn down and 1,052 demolition orders were issued for lacking the necessary permits, ACRI said. At the same time, the municipal government “is expediting the building permits and construction of new housing in the Jewish settlements of east Jerusalem,” ACRI said.
Meanwhile, the Jerusalem Institute of Israel Studies said that Jerusalem will lose its Jewish majority by 2035, when the number of Jews and Arabs in the controversial city will reach parity.
— With input from agencies
