A fact that should be remembered in any discussion about Jerusalem: there is no resemblance between the Jerusalem of the Bible and the “Jerusalem” of the current Israeli map. The object of the yearning of the exiles who wept by the rivers of Babylon was the real Jerusalem — more or less within the boundaries of the Old City, whose center is the Temple Mount. One square kilometer, that’s all.
The redefined Municipality of Jerusalem after the 1967 annexation comprises a vast area, some 126 square kilometers, from Bethlehem in the south to Ramallah in the north. This area has been clothed with the name of “Jerusalem” in order to bestow a religious-national-historic aura to what was nothing but an act of land-grabbing and settlement.
Until the 1949 war, Jerusalem was indeed a mixed city. Jewish and Arab neighborhoods were interwoven.
The annexation of East Jerusalem created a dilemma. What to do with the Arab population? If the government had indeed intended to “unite” the city, they would have accompanied the annexation with some immediate measures, such as conferring automatic citizenship on all the Arab inhabitants and returning their “abandoned” properties in West Jerusalem. True, in theory an Arab Jerusalemite can apply for Israeli citizenship, but such an application is subject to the arbitrary decision of hostile bureaucrats.
The truth is that Jerusalem has never been united. “The city that was reunited, the capital of Israel for all eternity”, was and has remained a mantra that has no bearing on reality. For all practical purposes, East Jerusalem remains an occupied territory.
Even though the Arab inhabitants have the right to vote for the municipality, the municipality is a city government by Jews for Jews. It is not an exaggeration to say that the elected democratic mayor of West Jerusalem is also the military governor of East Jerusalem.
In Israel, people say that the Arab residents “enjoy the benefits of social insurance”. That is a mendacious argument: after all, the insurance is not a free meal — it is paid for by the insured. Arabs, like Jews, pay for it every month.
Arab residents have to pay all municipal taxes, but receive in return only a fraction of the municipal services, both in quality and in quantity. The Jewish public is not interested in all this. They don’t know — and don’t want to know — what is going on in the Arab neighborhoods, some hundreds of meters from their homes.
So they are surprised, surprised and shocked, by the ungratefulness of the Arab inhabitants. A young man from Sur Baher recently shot pupils of a religious seminary in West Jerusalem. A young man from Jabal Mukaber drove a bulldozer and ran over everything that crossed his path. This week, another youngster from Umm Touba repeated exactly the same act. All three of them were shot dead on the spot.
The attackers were ordinary young men, not particularly religious. It seems than none of them was a member of any organization. Apparently, a young man just gets up one fine morning and decides that he has enough. He then carries out an attack all by himself, with any instrument at hand — a pistol bought with his own money, in the first instance, or a bulldozer he drives at work, in the two others.
If this is indeed the case, a question presents itself: Why is this being done by Jerusalemites? First, because they have the opportunity.
This week’s attack is especially instructive. It is quite unclear what actually happened: Did Ghassan Abu-Tir plan the attack in advance? Or was this a spontaneous decision in a moment of excitement?
Was this an attack at all — or did the bulldozer driver run into a bus by accident and try, in a state of panic, to escape — running over his pursuers, becoming a target for a shooting spree by passersby and soldiers? In the atmosphere of suspicion and fear that pervades Jerusalem now, every road accident involving an Arab becomes an attack, and every Arab driver involved in an accident will in all probability be executed on the spot, without a trial. (It should be remembered that the first intifada broke out because of a road accident, in which a Jewish driver ran over some Arabs.)
And again there is the question: What is the solution to this complex problem, which arouses such strong emotions, feeds on deep-rooted myths and causes such moral dilemmas for millions around the world?
This week, a lot of proposals were presented, such as building a Berlin-style wall through the middle of Jerusalem (in addition to the one going around it). To punish whole families for the acts of their children, much like the Nazi “sippenhaft”.
To expel the families from the city or to cancel their resident status. To demolish their homes. To take away their social insurance benefits, even if they have paid for them. All these “solutions” have one thing in common — they have been tried in the past, here and in other places, and found wanting.
Except one, clear solution: To turn East Jerusalem into the capital of the State of Palestine, to enable its inhabitants to set up their own municipality, while keeping the whole city as an urban entity united under one supermunicipality in which the Arabs will be equal to the Jews. I am glad that during his visit with us this week, Barack Obama repeated almost word for word this plan, which Gush Shalom published some 10 years ago in cooperation with Feisal Husseini, the late leader of the Jerusalem Arab community.
The attacks are the result of despair, frustration, hatred and the sense that there is no way out. Only a solution that will remove these feelings can bring security to both parts of Jerusalem.
