Table of Contents

Introduction
Chapter 1: Evolution of Israeli Policy on Jerusalem
1.1 National Policies for Jerusalem
1.2 Municipal Government Policies in Jerusalem
Chapter 2: Geographic Integrity
2.1 Land Control
2.2 Land Confiscation
2.3 Blocking Palestinian Development
2.4 Settlement Construction
Chapter 3: Demographic Superiority
3.1 Encouraging Jewish Immigration
3.2 Attacks on Palestinian Residency Rights
Chapter 4: Legitimization of Sovereignty in Purpose and Practice
Conclusions

Introduction

Last September, Israel, under cover of darkness and armed guard, opened the second entrance to the Hasmonean tunnel. In doing so, they directly undermi-ned the sanctity of both Moslem (the Haram al Sharif) and Christian (the Via Dolorosa) holy sites in the city. When the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) and the international community appealed to the Likud govern-ment to reseal the tunnel's new entrance, the new right wing government flatly refused. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was reported to have compared the request to close the tunnel with a request to the American government to dismantle the Washington monument. Revealed in the Prime Minister's remarks is the underlying Israeli perception of Jerusalem as an ex-clusively Israeli-Jewish city. According to this percep-tion, Israeli sovereignty in the city and the sole right of Israel to make decisions about the city's future are be-yond question. Although the Prime Minister's remarks give the impression that this perceived right extends from time immemorial, Israel's current stranglehold over the holy city has been the result of a carefully planned and scrupulously enacted Israeli policy to secure exclu-sive control in Jerusalem.

Since 1967, Israel's objectives in Jerusalem have been to establish irreversible and exclusive control over the holy city. Policy decisions were made on the city's futu-re in the aftermath of the 1967 war which have been systematically pursued over the last twenty-nine years.

On the national and municipal level, Israeli policy ma-kers have consistently sought to implement strategies which would ensure Israel's physical domination of the city while minimizing dissent from within and from ab-road. Policies have been developed and implemented in order for Israel to create geographic integrity and demographic superiority in favor of a Jewish Jerusalem. Concomitant with their actions on the ground, Israel has run a pervasive public relations campaign design-ed to secure national and international legitimacy for both their practices in East Jerusalem and their sole so-vereignty over the whole of the city. They have succee-ded in altering the geographic and demographic lay-out of the city and made tremendous strides in promo- ting their actions as a legitimate part of the democratic governing of the city. The acceleration of Israeli actions since the signing of the Oslo accords, and particularly since the election of Benjamin Netanyahu demonstrate that the Israeli government considers the issue of Jeru-salem closed. Furthermore, the dearth of public protest and the ease with which the general public accepts the conversion of East Jerusalem into exclusively Jewish developments indicate that the Israeli government has been successful in legitimizing their actions, at least at home. If current Israel plans are brought to fruition, the final status of Jerusalem will have been settled long be-fore the Palestinians arrive at the negotiating table.

Chapter 1: Evolution of Israeli Policy on Jerusalem

In the 1996 Israeli elections, the party platforms of Me-retz, Labour, Yisrael b'Aliyah, Likud, the N.R.P. and Moledet all call for Jerusalem to remain a "united" city under Israeli sovereignty. All evidence suggests a broad consensus in Israel supports the dominant vision of Jeru-salem as the "eternal and undivided capital." All Israeli governments since Levy Eshkol have pursued policies which would ensure Israel's continued hold on all of Je-rusalem. While Labour and Likud have differing opinions on the overall philosophy of land for peace, both par-ties categorically regard Jerusalem, as defined by the 1967 boundaries, as an integral part of the Jewish state. Israeli policies on Jerusalem were clearly defined imme-diately preceding the 1967 war and have been careful-ly and consistently implemented by subsequent natio-nal and municipal governments ever since. Consistent with Zionist strategies in the pre-state period, as well as strategies in the in the rest of the Occupied Territories, Israeli policy in Jerusalem has evolved over the past 29 years out of a perceived need to establish irreversible facts which would cement their claim to the city.

The principle of a "unified" Jerusalem under exclusive Is-raeli control pre-dates the conquest of East Jerusalem in 1967. In the aftermath of the 1948 war, the Israeli go-vernment took immediate action to consolidate their hold on West Jerusalem and lay the foundations for the eventual conquest of the East. Speedy political maneu-vers were made to legitimize control of the West. A rapid series of resolutions and legislation ratified by the Knesset in 1949 and 1950 revealed Israeli intentions for the city. The Knesset rejected all calls for internationali-zation after the war and declared that "Arab aggres-sion" invalidated their obligation to implement the parti-tion plan. On 2 February 1949, Ben Gurion declared that Israeli-held Jerusalem was no longer occupied territory but an integral part of the state of Israel. However, in an important distinction, Ben Gurion expressed a willing-ness to establish the UN sanctioned corpus separatum over the Old City. The seemingly magnanimous gestu-re on Ben Gurion's part represented a clear desire to delegitimize Jordan's hold over the Old City while at the same time removing Israel's own territorial acquisitions from debate.

After insisting on the unrestricted exercise of exclusive sovereignty over West Jerusalem, Israel then accelera-ted the process of making Jerusalem its capital. In 1950, the Knesset formally declared Jerusalem to be the ca-pital of the Jewish state - retroactive to the date of the declaration of independence-, and began the hasty process of transferring all government ministries from Tel Aviv. By July of 1953, all government ministries, including the Foreign Ministry had been moved to Jerusalem. These early unilateral maneuvers on the part of the Isra-elis to preempt any discussion over their control over the Western part of the city, in retrospect, can be vie-wed as harbingers of Israel's treatment of East Jerusa-lem once captured in 1967.

The situation after the 1948 war was clearly viewed as temporary by many key figures in Israeli politics. In a 1949 address to the Knesset, Ben Gurion proclaimed that

"We cannot lend ourselves to take part in the en-forced separation of Jerusalem, which violates... the historic and natural rights of a people who dwells in Zion."

The awkward configuration of the cease-fire lines large-ly drawn by Moshe Dayan attest to the perceived im-permanence of Jerusalem's boundaries. Despite the construction of the Givat Ram campus of the Hebrew University, Israel went to great lengths to maintain their presence on Mount Scopus relying on bi-weekly UN convoys to re-staff and re-supply the Israeli enclave. In 1965, newly elected Jerusalem mayor Teddy Kollek shel-ved plans for the construction of a new city hall to be located far away from the cease-fire lines. Kollek de-fended his decision on the grounds that "by staying on the frontier, we [are] giving expression to our faith in the eventual unification of Jerusalem." On the eve of the 1967 war, Rabbi Kook declared in his annual sermon celebrating Israeli independence that leaving the holy sites of the Old City in the hands of the "goyim" to be a sin. Israel persists in perpetuating the popular percep-tion of the defensive nature of the 1967 war. However, the speed with which East Jerusalem was captured by war reflects the long standing desire to "reunify" the city under exclusive Irule. After the 1967 war, the thrust of both policy and rhetoric over Jerusalem shifted from "reclamation" of the city's Eastern half to preservation of the lands taken by force of arms.

One of the first acts undertaken by the Israeli govern-ment after the city's conquest was to redefine the muni-cipal boundaries of Jerusalem. The Jordanian municipal boundaries, comprising 6,5 square kilometers, were ex-panded to include an additional 70,000 dunums. The drawing of the new municipal boundaries - now 71 square kilometers, was a classic example of racial ger-rymandering. The purpose of this new configuration of municipal Jerusalem was to include the maximum con-tiguous territory with the minimum non-Jewish popula-tion into the city's boundaries. That same principle used in determining the boundaries for the city, has defined Israel's treatment of East Jerusalem since 1967. Israeli policy in Jerusalem was developed and enacted with one goal in mind: to prevent any possible re-partition of the city by ensuring territorial integrity and a Jewish de-mographic majority. In the minds of Israeli decision ma-kers, national policy in regards to Jerusalem has been remarkably consistent.Differences between Labour and Likud exist in regards to emphasis, attitude and overall strategy. Nevertheless, when in power, both parties have pursued the physical annexation of East Jerusa-lem. Any perceived difference between the Labour and Likud positions vis-à-vis Jerusalem are erroneous, as both parties have been equally aggressive in ensuring that Israel maintain exclusive sovereignty over the city. At the national level, settlement plans or 'land for pea-ce' formulae have always treated the territory in and around Jerusalem as a non-negotiable part of Israel.

1.1 National Policies for Jerusalem
It was the Labour government of Levi Eshkol which set the precedents for complete Israeli sovereignty over a "united" Jerusalem. In a flurry of legislative maneuvering similar to 1949, East Jerusalem was immediately accor-ded a status different than that of the rest of the Occu-pied Territories. On June 28, 1967 the Knesset amended the law of 1950, which proclaimed Jerusalem as Israel's capital, to reflect the newly defined municipal bounda-ries. This legislation officially extended Israeli law to the Eastern part of the city, an act which differentiates it from the rest of the West Bank. It was clear from the standpoint of the Labour policy makers that Israel did not consider itself an occupying power in East Jerusa-lem. In the eyes of the Eshkol government, the applica-tion of Israeli law to East Jerusalem was no different than the application of Israeli law to any of the territory in Israel which was not included in the 1947 United Nations partition plan. This legislation set the precedent for the difference between Labour and Likud in regards to the territories as a whole, but also marked the begin-ning of a clear stance on Jerusalem as an issue beyond negotiation.

The Allon plan outlines the Labour party's settlement strategy toward the occupied territories. Settlement ef-forts were to emphasize security, chiefly in the Jordan Valley and Greater Jerusalem. The Allon plan also cal-led for settlement of the highlands along the north-western portion of the West Bank which was deemed strategically desirable for settlement. Security and Jeru-salem were the two fundamental aspects of the plan. Israeli settlement activity in the period from 1967 to 1977 reflected the principles of the Allon plan, with the no-table exceptions of Elon Moreh and Kiryat Arba. These two exceptions, however, were more the result of politi-cal pressure on the part of Gush Emunim than overall government strategy. When Likud came to power in 1977, the settler population of the West Bank was a mere (by today's numbers) 5,000. The settler population of East Jerusalem, however, was already 150,000. The Allon plan demonstrates that Jerusalem, more specifi-cally, Greater Jerusalem, including the Etzion Bloc, is un-questionably part of Israel from the perspective of the Israeli Labour party. Settlement of Greater Jerusalem was an established national priority long before the as-cendance of the Greater Israel philosophy to the Israeli mainstream.

The focus of the Likud governments' overall settlement policy differed from Labour in regards to differing posi- tions of land for peace. While Labour's obsession lay in the preserving of a Jewish demographic majority in the territories already in Israeli hands, Likud's focus was on creating a demographic majority to hold more territory. The subtle difference between these two ideologies was clearly reflected in the differing settlement plans proffered by the two parties. As previously stated, Labour settlement plans were designed to "avoid swal-lowing to many Arabs", when acquiring territory. Likud, however, felt the creation of a Jewish majority a more viable solution than withdrawing from captured terri-tory. Likud's settlement effort expanded to include the whole of the "Land of Israel." The declared objective of Likud's settlement strategy was to facilitate the annexa-tion of the Territories into Israel by creating geographic and demographic facts which would prejudice the status-quo in favor of the Jewish state. Ariel Sharon, the chief architect of Likud era settlements, sought to fragment the continuity of Palestinian communities by settling hill-tops around all Palestinian population cen-ters in the West Bank. Jerusalem was, like Hebron, of special religious significance, but was in no means re-garded having a separate status from the rest of the Occupied Territories. Without question, there was signifi-cant building in Jerusalem under the Likud govern-ments. All available territory would be annexed into Greater Israel on the basis of a religious-historical impe-rative. Nevertheless, the majority of the Likud era set-tlement was confined to land expropriated in the early 1970s and in accordance with plans approved by La-bour governments. Jerusalem area settlements were no exception.

The Begin government did differ from Labour in its wil-lingness to run the risk of international criticism in bla-tantly pushing a united Jerusalem as the official capital of Israel. It was under Begin that many government offices were moved to areas in East Jerusalem. Most prominent among these was the National Police Head-quarters. This office was moved into a pre-existing buil-ding in Sheikh Jarrah which the Jordanian government had intended for a hospital. Furthermore, throughout the Camp David negotiations, Israel repeatedly reitera-ted its stance that Jerusalem was an integral part of the state. In July 1980, the Begin government ratified the Basic Law on Jerusalem, declaring Jerusalem "whole and united", and Israel's permanent capital, over which Israel exercised exclusive sovereignty. In addition to codifying the physical annexation of the lands conque-red in 1967, the Basic Law also obligates the national government to give the city preferential treatment in the allocation of resources and funds. These actions led to international protest, including UN Security Coun-cil Resolution 478 which declared the new Basic Law null and void. However, international censure at the di-plomatic level had little tangible effect in blocking set-tlement activity in Jerusalem under Likud alignment go-vernments.

Despite the great hopes proffered by the election of Labour in 1992 and the assumed promises implicit in the Declaration of Principles signed on 13 September 1993 between the PLO and Israel, settlement construction and land expropriations continued unchecked under the Rabin government. Jerusalem was a prime target of this policy. Even prior to the signing of the Oslo Accords, the Rabin government escalated the battle for Jerusa-lem. In March of 1993, Prime Minster Rabin imposed a general closure on the West Bank and Gaza Strip which has effectively required all Palestinians to obtain special permission to enter Jerusalem. The closure created a de facto border between the population of the West Bank and the population of Jerusalem. Oncethe Oslo ac-cords were ratified, particular energy was focused on ensuring the future of Jerusalem would be settled prior to the commencement of final status talks. Even though the city was, ostensibly, included as a final status issue and, therefore, negotiable, the Rabin government was always clear on Jerusalem. On 18 June 1993, Rabin told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committees that "Palestinian Autonomy will not include Jerusalem." Order 360 which supposedly called for a freeze on set-tlement construction conveniently excluded Jerusalem. In addition to supporting the construction of new settle-ments such as Har Homa (see Appendix IV) and sanc-tioning major expansions in Pisgat Ze'ev and the Grea-ter Jerusalem area, the Rabin government, in coordina-tion with the Jerusalem Municipal Planning Depart-ment, approved plans to construct two major roads around Jerusalem designed to sever Jerusalem from the Palestinian communities in the West Bank while si-multaneously linking up with the Greater Jerusalem sett-lements. The Rabin government's late construction poli- cies are proceeding in the spirit of the plans announ-ced in 1990 when Ariel Sharon was Housing Minister. During Rabin's tenure as Prime Minister, housing policy in Jerusalem was clearly based on eliminating the possibi-lity of a loss of Israeli sovereignty over the annexed part of the city during the final status negotiations.

The settlement strategy of the Rabin/Peres government, called the Sheeves plan, was designed to consolidate Israel's hold on select parts of the Occupied Territories and Jerusalem in line with the final status configurations provided for in the Allon Plan. By December of 1992, the Rabin/Peres government had formally approved the Sheeves plan which carefully re-packaged govern-ment sponsored settlements as national guidelines for public and private sector investment in Israel. The plan essentially takes Israel and the Occupied Territories as one unit and then classifies areas on the map in accor-dance with government priorities for development. This distinction allowed the Rabin/Peres government to claim they had cut off direct government benefits to the settlements, while channeling the money via grants to private development initiatives. This distinction was sufficient for the US government to reinstate the $10 bil-lion in loan guarantees. Areas of national privilege, or Zone A, have the highest priority and receive the lar-gest amount of national assistance. East Jerusalem and the settlement in the Greater Jerusalem area are all designated as Zone A according to the Sheeves plan.

In line with the tenets of the Sheeves plan, Labour Mini-ster of Housing and Construction Ben-Elizar described the settlement effort between 1992 and 1996 as the battle for the "destiny of Jerusalem." On May 4, 1995, Ben-Elizar announced that during the next five years Is-rael will construct 30,000 housing units in Jerusalem tar-geting mainly Shu'fat area, Airplane Hill and Har Homa (Jabel Abu Ghaneim). Ben-Elizar repeatedly recom-mended massive expropriations from Palestinian land owners in Beit Hanina, Wallaje, Beit Safafa, Beit Sahour, Um Tuba etc. in order to hasten the settlement process in advance of the final status negotiations. It was clear government policy to limit settlement activity "to the areas [the Israelis] were going to keep", chiefly Jerusa-lem and the Jordan Valley. It appeared that Labour viewed the inclusion of Jerusalem in the Oslo negotia-tions as more of a bargaining chip than an actual item for negotiation. Labour posture and settlement activity during the negotiations seem to imply that the more "generous" the territorial concessions in the West Bank, the more restrictive the solution on Jerusalem. It see-med that Labour was hoping to, in theory, trade East Jerusalem, possibly Greater Jerusalem, for more conti-guous concessions on the West Bank.

Shortly after the election of Netanyahu, the settler ma-gazine Nekuda, released the text of an interview with Ya'ir Hirschfeld, one of the original architects of the Oslo accords. In the interview, Hirschfeld detailed understan-dings that he had reached while negotiating a final sta-tus agreement with the knowledge and consent of the Labour government. The agreement detailed an arran-gement for Jerusalem where the Israelis would enjoy re-cognized sovereignty in West Jerusalem and de facto sovereignty over East Jerusalem and the Old City. The Palestinian capital, to be called Al-Quds, as opposed to Jerusalem, would be located outside of the municipal boundaries of Jerusalem in Abu Dis. While a Palestinian flag would fly over the Haram al-Sharif, and Palestinians in East Jerusalem would have limited autonomy, effecti-ve sovereignty over Jerusalem would remain in Israel's hands. In a related article published in the Jerusalem Post, Labour MK Yossi Beilin confirmed Hirschfeld's ac-count of the final status agreements as being "a blue-print for a peace agreement in the future." This version of a final settlement clearly demonstrates that the La-bour government never had any intentions of making any real concessions over Jerusalem at any time during the Oslo process. Quite the contrary, as their settlement strategies attest, they were determined to secure as maximalist an interpretation of Jerusalem as possible before the negotiations were closed. Little more proof is required beyond the fact that the settler population of East Jerusalem grew from 148,000 to 200,000 during the first two years of the Rabin government. With the re-turn to power of the right wing, it seems apparent that there will be little left to negotiate for when and if the subject of Jerusalem is brought to the negotiating table.

The guidelines of the Netanyahu government are very clear in regards to the final status of Jerusalem. Jerusa-lem is the undivided capital of Israel and will remain, forever, under sole Israeli sovereignty. In his victory speech on June 2, 1996, Netanyahu declared that:

"We will keep Jerusalem united under Israeli sove-reignty. I declare this here tonight in Jerusalem, the eternal capital of the Jewish people which will never be divided. The government will thwart any attempt to undermine the unity of Jerusalem and will prevent any action which is counter to Is-rael's exclusive sovereignty over the city. The go-vernment will allocate special resources to speed up building, improve municipal services and rein-force the social and economic status of the Jeru-salem metropolitan area."

The expansion of existing settlements and the establish-ment of new ones in the Jerusalem area are a fore-gone conclusion for the Netanyahu government. In ad-dition to the opening of the Hasmonean Tunnel along the Haram al-Sharif, Netanyahu has linked the promised withdrawal from Hebron with a the closure of all Pale-stinian institutions in Jerusalem. Furthermore, as the dramatic increase in the number of housing demolitions in recent months affirms, Jerusalem's right wing munici-pality feels empowered by the presence of the Netan-yahu government. In the absence of international pressure, which does not appear forthcoming, or a na-tional crisis on the Palestinian front, it is clear that Netan- yahu has the resources and the political capital to ce-ment exclusive Israeli rule over East Jerusalem and to make the extension of Israeli control over all of Greater Jerusalem a fait accompli.

1.2 Municipal Government Policies in Jerusalem
Strategies for ensuring Israel's objectives on Jerusalem have been, by in large, developed and enacted on the municipal level. While the national government of-fered unconditional support, the municipality is the engine driving the incorporation of East Jerusalem into Israel proper. Without question, the architect of the Isra-eli master plan for Jerusalem was former mayor Teddy Kollek. Using the principles of the early Labour govern-ment as a mandate, the Kollek municipality pursued planning policies intended to cut Greater Jerusalem off from the West Bank and facilitate its easy annexation into Israel proper. Official documents of the Jerusalem municipality and statements maby the city's policy makers show that Jerusalem's urban development was dictated by national considerations intended to streng-then Israeli control in all parts of the city. In a letter to former Mayor Kollek, written in 1975, Deputy Mayor Ye-shoshua Atza stated that the "political national conside-rations must be the cardinal one [in regards to plan-ning] and only then the urban consideration." In addition to controlling the land, demography became the cornerstone of planning in Jerusalem. They city's growth and the preservation of the demographic ba-lance among its ethnic groups was a matter decided by the government of Israel. As he would proclaim at a later date, Kollek saw his role very clearly. "I am see-ing to the Jewish majority... that is why we are here, to see to [the Jewish majority]." The impact of the poli-cies developed under his administration, detailed in the coming sections, will demonstrate his commitment to this goal. Kollek used his tenure in office to cement an exclusively Israeli vision over the pre-1967 geographic and demographic realities. It was his hand which draf-ted the settlement and demographic policies being strategically carried out until this day.

Former Mayor Kollek revealed his intentions for the futu-re of Jerusalem within days after the defeat of Jordan in 1967. On the very day of conquest, Kollek approached Moshe Dayan and promised that he would personally supervise the clearing of No Man's Land. The impetuous behind these immediate actions was to start the pro-cess of "creating facts" that would establish a perma-nent Jewish presence in the Holy City. On the night of Saturday, June 10, after the armistice had been signed, the 619 inhabitants of the Maghrebi Quarter were given three hours to evacuate their homes. The historic quar-ter adjacent to the Wailing Wall was demolished in or-der to create a huge plaza to accommodate the pre-sumed influx of Jewish pilgrims. In this first brutal act, former Mayor Kollek established a precedent for the re-mainder of his long tenure in office. Plans and policies were developed from the first years of the occupation designed to impose exclusively Jewish facts in occu-pied Jerusalem at the expense of the indigenous Pales-tinian population. Under the guise of protecting the city from the dangers of re-division, Kollek enacted a long series of policy initiatives designed to irreversibly integra-te East Jerusalem into one city united under Israeli sove-reignty.

The operating perception of the Kollek municipality when they began to plan for a "re-united" city remai-ned one of siege. From their perspective, the aftermath of the 1967 war left the Palestinians with the upper hand in both numbers and the area of land in their pos-session. "It is necessary" claims former municipal planner Yisrael Kimchi, "to point out who [was] occupying who." Using maps drawn in 1968, Kimchi indicates how the Palestinians had encircled Jewish Jerusalem. Demo-graphy was a key element in the perceived imbalance between Jewish and "non-Jewish" residents of the city. Former mayor Kollek continually enunciated his con-cern about the growth of the Palestinian population in and around Jerusalem. Making the city more condu-cive to Jewish settlement was seen as the appropriate remedy to the situation. As the western side of the city was without any room available for expansion it was deemed necessary to look across the green-line. The Kollek administration viewed the events of 1967 as ope-ning up new possibilities on what was termed as "com-pletely vacant land owned by Jews or Arabs from out-side [or] the [Jordanian] government." With the back-ing of the Knesset, Kollek era planners set to fill open spaces with Jewish facts. The fact that the majority of this vacant territory had Palestinian owners was not an overriding municipal consideration.

Kollek was also eager to stave off any potential criticism by marketing his actions in Jerusalem as both benevo-lent and democratic. At the beginning of his tenure, Kollek coined the philosophy that Jerusalem was a "mo-saic" united under a democratic Israeli rule. However, as former city planner Sara Kaminker points out, the "mosaic" terminology was "a beautiful marketing ploy for selling segregation". The Kollek administration ma-de a concerted effort to cloak the discriminatory me-thods employed in meeting these goals in easily diges-tible and justifiable terms. Actions taken by the munici-pality were promoted as having the best interests of the "Arab residents" in mind. For example, the lands expro-priated in East Jerusalem are consistently referred to as vacant or unused, even when private ownership is ad-mitted. The discriminatory policies of the Kollek govern-ment were advertised as providing badly needed hou-sing by expanding into vacant areas "without inflicting harm." There is an equal level of adamancy in insisting that the municipality did everything possible to ensure that West Jerusalem city planners took every measure to provide for the Palestinian residents. Israelis will conti-nual point out examples of population growth in the Pa-lestinian sector. Even in regards to housing, they will de-ny a shortage and, conversely, argue that they provi-ded as much housing as possible. In 1967, claims Yisrael Kimchi, there were only 5,130 housing units for Palesti-nians in East Jerusalem. Kimchi proudly credits the ef-forts of West Jerusalem city planners in providing an ad-ditional 5,700 units over the past 29 years. From the standpoint of the Kollek municipality, every possible measure was taken to provide for the Palestinian mino-rity who are residents of the "united city." The percep-tion persists that the critical element in the continued progress for Jerusalem is for Israel to retain control of the city.

Despite the careful packaging the objectives of the Kollek municipality remained to ensure geographic in-tegrity and demographic superiority. He focused his ef-forts within his domain, as established in 1967, even when it clashed with settlement plans at the national le-vel. Kollek made his vision of Jerusalem explicitly clear in a 1984 municipal council meeting when he expressed his objections to what he considered the premature establishment of Ma'aleh Adumim.

"I think it is a mistake to establish it before we have filled Jerusalem. In another five years, we will fill Jerusalem and then we will go there [to Ma'aleh Adumim]. In Jerusalem we took upon ourselves, as Jews, a very difficult urban task, in that we received distant neighborhoods, and we had to connect them; Ramot Neve Ya'akov, and Gilo, for example. It will take us years before we can swallow all that."

Municipal policies and strategies which were devised as early as 1968 created a framework for the gradual integration of East Jerusalem into Israel proper and its complete separation from the West Bank.

When Ehud Olmert won a surprise victory from Teddy Kollek in 1992, there was significant trepidation on be-half of the Palestinian population of the city and the Israeli left wing. Without question, Olmert and the Ultra-Orthodox deputies who govern with him, represent a distinct shift to the religious-nationalist right of Israeli po-litics. From the very beginning of his tenure as mayor, Olmert expressed his intentions to expand the city "to the East, not to the West", and to "make things happen on the ground to ensure the city will remain under Israeli sovereignty for eternity." However, it is important to re-cognize that Olmert's policies vis-à-vis settlements and the Palestinian population are an unabashed continua-tion of the plans conceived by his predecessor. For-mer municipal planners Yisrael Kimchi and Sara Kamin-ker are in agreement that there is "no tangible differen-ce between Kollek and Olmert" in terms of objectives in East Jerusalem, other than the perception that Olmert may be "smarter" in carrying out his plans. Already, there is a belief within the Palestinian community that Olmert is stepping up efforts to pacify Palestinian Jeru-salemites by providing improved services. Recent re-quests to the Ministry of Interior for more than NIS million in funding for the development of the city's "Arab areas" support this belief. Olmert's policies and strategies are widely viewed as being consistent with the strategies developed by Kollek.

Israeli policy in Jerusalem has been dominated by one overriding purpose: to secure and maintain exclusive Is-raeli sovereignty over all parts of the city. The conquest of the city in 1967 was viewed by the vast majority of Israelis as the culmination of the natural progression of Jewish history. Retaining Israeli control was viewed as a moral imperative. This nearly unanimous national con-sensus concerning Jerusalem assured policy makers that any action they took towards this end would not be criticized or questioned by the Israeli-Jewish public. Consistent with Zionism roots, where the moral claim to the land is justified through settlement, a broad series of policy initiatives were promulgated to create irreversi-ble facts on the ground. National governments, Labour and Likud alike, kept Jerusalem as a national imperati-ve and supplied the city with necessary resources and support to met the desired objective. This strong back-ing allowed the municipal government to force new geographic and demographic realities onto East Jeru-salem. Fueled by the Israeli paranoia that any weak-ness in their hold on Jerusalem will result in the city's division, the national and municipal governments are still building a geographic and demographic wall around East Jerusalem. The following sections will de-tail how the Israeli policy objectives of creating geogra-phic integrity and demographic superiority in Jerusalem has translated into new realities on the ground.

Chapter 2: Geographic Integrity

One of the first actions taken by the Israelis in the aftermath of the 1967 war was to redefine the muni-cipal boundaries of the city. Although a flagrant viola-tion of international law, these new boundaries beca-me the framework within which the Israeli government would alter the existing layout of the city and the sur-rounding villages in an attempt to physically secure their control over the city. Policies were developed and implemented, primarily through the municipal planning committees, to establish geographic integrity between West Jerusalem and the additional lands captured in 1967. From the first days of the occupation of East Jeru-salem, Israel set out to place facts on the ground in or-der to prevent the re-division of the city. Over the past 29 years, Israel has employed numerous strategies to control Palestinian lands in East Jerusalem. Through dis-criminatory zoning practices and complex planning sti-pulations, Israel has managed to block Palestinian de-velopment of available land leaving it vacant until it is expropriated for "public purpose." However, the key element in Israel's plan to completely integrate occu-pied East Jerusalem into pre-67 Israel has been the con-struction of more than 15 settlements in and around the boundaries illegally established in 1967. These settle-ments, constructed in four major phases, have created a chain of settlements separating East Jerusalem from the West Bank. The strategic placement of each new "neighborhood" on the map of East Jerusalem unques-tionably reflects a desire on the part of the municipal planners to met the national objective of manufactu-ring geographic integrity for the "undivided capital of the State of Israel."

2.1 Land Control
Securing control of the undeveloped lands in East Jeru-salem has been an essential element in Israel's race to create irreversible facts in the city. Israel has been able to bring about a near total reversal of the 1967 situa-tion. At this point, numerous sources indicate that only 9,400 dunums are available for Palestinian develop-ment. According to Palestinian cartographer Khalil Tufakji, the breakdown of land distribution in East Jeru-salem is as follows: 34% expropriated for "public" use, 40% Green Areas, 7% unzonned, 6% roads and infra-structure, 3% frozen and 10% for Palestinian use. Further-more, the remaining 10% is almost completely utilized. This almost complete subjugation of the Palestinians' ability to maintain control of their lands was achieved through a series of quasi-legal methods, enacted most-ly on the municipal level. Direct confiscation or expro-priation of land has been but one tool utilized by Israeli planners in dominating the landscape of East Jerusa-lem. Palestinian development has also been prevented through a series of discriminatory zoning policies. Plan-ning and permit requirements demanded by the Israeli municipality have made it nearly impossible for Palesti-nian owners to utilize their land. The municipal planners followed a strict policy of keeping Palestinian lands in East Jerusalem empty until they could be expropriated for the construction of housing and infrastructure for the exclusive use of Jewish-Israeli residents.

2.2 Land Confiscation
Land expropriation occurred in 5 main phases since 1967. The first phase occurred immediately after the city's conquest when the Israelis confiscated over 120 dunums of land in the Old City. More than 5,000 Pale-stinian residents of the Old City were evicted and lost their property. The second phase began in January of 1968, when 4,000 dunums of prime real estate were taken from the Palestinian neighborhoods and villages of Sheikh Jarrah, Shu'fat, Lifta and Issawiya. In the third phase, which took place in the early 1970s, 14,000 du-nums were taken from Malha, Sur Baher and Beit Jala, as well as additional territory from Lifta and Shu'fat. In March of 1980, the fourth phase began with the confis-cation of 4,500 dunums from Beit Hanina and Hizma. The fifth, and most recent phase, occurred in 1991 with the expropriation of an additional 2,000 dunums from Um Tuba, Sur Baher, Beit Sahour, Bethlehem, Beit Safafa and Beit Jala. To date, Israel expropriated a total of 24,000 dunums of Palestinian land in East Jerusalem for the construction of Jewish settlements. Once again, this figure amounts to 34% of the total available land in East Jerusalem. At this point, an additional 6,000 dunums, 8.5%, is slated for expropriation, primarily in the south of Jerusalem. This brings the total of land confiscated to 30,000 dunums. Thus, Israel has been able to obtain di-rect control of 42.5% of the land in East Jerusalem for settlements or road construction.

Israel achieved these dramatic results through employ-ing a series of quasi-legal methods to expropriate land from Palestinian land owners in East Jerusalem. Israel could have, conceivably, acquired all the available lands in Jerusalem by virtue of their military conquest in 1967. However, the desire to foster international legiti-macy for their claims prompted them to utilize what they defined as legal methods of transferring Arab lands to Jewish ownership. The legal strategies used to expropriate Palestinians land in Jerusalem are similar methods used by Israel to confiscate land taken in 1948, as well as in the West Bank as a whole. Appendix II offers a detailed list of the series of statutes and mili-tary orders Israel has employed to "legally" acquiring Palestinian land and negate obvious Palestinian owner-ship. The Jerusalem Master Plan of 1968, for example, plainly states that the lands needed for development in Jerusalem were privately held by Palestinian land-owners.

The majority of the municipal land reserves that are amenable to development are in private [Palestinians] hands. The effective development of the city will require the expropriation of sub-stantial areas.

In Jerusalem specifically, the "Land Ordinance; Acquisi-tion Public Purposes" of 1943 authorizes the Finance Mi-nister to issue expropriation orders for land that is priva-tely owned if a public purpose exists which justifies its expropriation. This ordinance defines a public purpose as "any purpose the Finance Minister approves as a public purpose." Since 1967, 23,500 dunums have been expropriated from Palestinians land owners in Jerusalem under this ordinance. These methods of transferring lands into the Jewish National Fund guaranteed, in the eyesof the Israeli state, that Jews will have an inalien-able right to the land in the future. While these me-thods have been employed throughout the Occupied Territories, the Palestinian land owners of Jerusalem have been particular targets of Israeli acquisition sche-mes.

2.3 Blocking Palestinian Development
While a useful tool, land expropriations had to be con-sistent with municipal development plans. Other tools were needed to prevent the Palestinians from creating their own facts on the undeveloped lands in East Jeru-salem. In addition to expropriation, Israel managed to control major portions of the land in East Jerusalem through a series of discriminatory municipal ordinances designed to block Palestinian development. Upon clo-se examination, municipal planning and zoning restric-tions are carefully drafted to facilitate Jewish plans while thwarting Palestinian construction. Israel has relied upon zoning restrictions, Town Planning Schemes and tight control of building permits to keep Palestinian lands undeveloped until the time was "ripe" for the construction of a Jewish settlement. One of the most effective municipal strategies toward this end is the practice of zoning large tracts of Palestinian land in East Jerusalem as "Green Areas" where any development other than agriculture is strictly prohibited. Planning maps for the Jerusalem district are color coded to indi-cate different zoning designation. On these maps, large areas are colored green and labeled as setach nof patuch: unobstructed view. Areas with this designation are, in theory, to be planted and to serve as public open spaces. However, in reality this designation has been used to block Palestinian development of these key land reserves. Currently, a total 31,000 dunums in East Jerusalem are zoned as "Green Areas" meaning that all construction is prohibited, and 44% of East Jeru-salem is, effectively, off limits to the Palestinian owners.

While the "green" designation effectively prohibits Pale-stinian development, the situation changes if the land is needed for the expansion or creation of a Jewish settle-ment. In the event that the land in question is required for the construction of a Jewish settlement than the zoning restriction is simply lifted. In practice, "green areas" mean that those lands are slated for settlement construction and will be eventually confiscated. The building of Ramot in 1973 marked the first time a green area was rezoned to enable the construction of a Je-wish settlement. For example, 500 acres from Shu'fat village were designated as green area in 1968. The area was planted with cypress trees and left untou-ched for many years. The zoning was suddenly chan-ged in 1994 and the settlement of Reches Shufaat, comprising 2,500 units, was built as new neighborhood for religious Jews. Another, more immediate example is the case of Jabal Abu Ghaneim [sic] Har Homa, south of Jerusalem. Since 1968, these large tracts of land bet-ween Bethlehem and Jerusalem had been zoned as green areas, prohibiting all development activities by the rightful owners. In 1991, an area of nearly 2,000 du-nums were made available by the municipality for the construction of at least 6,500 units for exclusive Jewish use. These lands, which constitute the only available space for the natural expansion of Beit Sahur, Um Tuba and Sur Baher, unusable for over 20 years, were imme-diately expropriated. According to Yisrael Luberboim, an aide in the office of Interior Minister Eli Suissa, there is an national consensus on building this "new neighbor-hood" in order to alleviate the severe housing shortage [for Jewish residents] in the city. The Har Homa site is cri-tical as "there are no other large open spaces like this left for construction in Jerusalem". Mr. Luberboim's statement clearly shows that Israeli planners and politi-cians view the Green Areas in East Jerusalem not as nature reserves, but as land reserves for the develop-ment of Jewish settlements when the time is appro-priate.

It is important to note how the Israeli power structure has skillfully disguised and justified these policies as be-ing part of the city's democratic governance. Green Areas are portrayed as a necessary means of preser-ving the natural beauty of the city, not a mechanism to disenfranchise Palestinians. According to Yisrael Kimchi, it was the intention of the municipal government to maintain a green-belt around the city. This would preserve the classic image of Yerushalaim, saviv la harim: Jerusalem surrounded by hills. Kimchi is quick to indicate that Green Areas also exist on the western side of Jerusalem. However, the small number of public parks and valleys maintained as open spaces are pale in comparison to the broad swaths of green areas sur-rounding Palestinian communities. Mr. Kimchi attemp-ted to refute the classic statement attributed to former Mayor Kollek, where he publicly admits that the "green" designation is applied in order to prevent Palestinian construction as "a complete misrepresentation." Mr. Kollek, Kimchi affirmed, would have wanted all these areas to remain open. However, when "needs" change it is much easier to "eat" the open spaces than focus on already existing built-up areas. The propaganda tool of appropriate municipal planning has also been used to plant huge hurdles in the way of any independent Palestinian development initiative. The lengthy set muni-cipal requirements that must be met for any type of de-velopment and the near impossibility of obtaining the necessary building permits have effectively quashed any chance of Palestinians establishing counter facts in East Jerusalem.

One of the most effective municipal planning strategies utilized by the Jerusalem Municipality is the Town Plan-ning Scheme (TPS). The Israeli municipality will not issue the required building permits in Jerusalem without a complete and approved TPS. The TPS is an extensive and expensive 10-step process which requires a high le-vel of coordination and cooperation with the municipal authorities (see Appendix III for details of the process).

Under ordinary circumstances, the purpose of the TPS is to supervise the development of an area in accordan-ce with its zoning designation, expected population growth, housing needs and infrastructure requirements. TPS include provisions for the installation of water sup-ply, electricity, telephone services and allocate land for road ways and open spaces. The TPS will also allocate sites for public education, health care, recreation and religious observance. In short, a TPS will ensure ade-quate and efficient development of an area in line with the overall planning goals of the municipality. Unfortu-nately, in the case of East Jerusalem, TPS have been used as a means of restricting Palestinian development by minimizing the scope of TPS in Palestinian areas, de-laying their implementation or simply failing to draw up a TPS for the majority of Palestinian land in East Jerusa-lem.

In 1974, a planning order was issued which declared all of Jerusalem as one regional planning unit. This order obligated the municipality to complete a comprehen-sive TPS for the entire area by 1978. However, the "po-litical level [of the Jerusalem municipality] tended not to implement the planning procedures involved in pre-paring town planning schemes and specifications" for East Jerusalem. For the 13 new Israeli neighborhoods in East Jerusalem the TPS have been an efficient and successful exercise in urban planning, as the Israeli go-vernment shoulders the burden for the planning pro-cess. The state takes the responsibility for reparcelling the lands, allocating funds, as well as hiring the planners and architects necessary to put the TPS together. However, for development projects in Palestinian neigh-borhoods, all costs and resources needed to draw up a TPS fall on the Palestinians themselves. Furthermore, the policy of requiring a TPS exacerbates many of the internal obstacles to Palestinian development in East Jerusalem. For example, a TPS requires the written per-mission of all landholders whose property will be inclu-ded in theparcel of land slated for development. If one small portion of the parcel belongs to a landowner who refuses to give his permission or is absent, or if the ow-nership of the land cannot be proved to the satisfac-tion of the Israelis then the entire TPS is nullified. Given the traditional patterns of land ownership in Palestinian society and the enormous problem of absentee land-owners, this one requirement makes it nearly impossible for an independent Palestinian TPS to be eligible for mu-nicipal approval.

However, even when a local initiative was successful in submitting a complete TPS, the municipality has consis-tently dragged its heels in approving the plans. Since 1978, only 13 plans have been approved which have any bearing on Palestinian neighborhoods. The Local Committee of the municipality is obligated, by law, to approve or reject a TPS within 3 years. Nevertheless, ex-cessive delays have been the hallmark in regards to TPS approval for Palestinian neighborhoods. The Israeli mu-nicipality has invariably delayed and/or dramatically minimized TPS for Palestinian neighborhoods. For exam-ple, it took 13 years to approve a TPS for Shu'fat. When the plan was initially submitted, it called for 17,000 Pale- stinian housing units. While awaiting approval, the plan was pared down to 7,300 units. Now, under the direc-tive of Eli Suissa, only 500 units are included in the plan. Planning procedures which began in Beit Safafa in 1977 also took 13 years to reach approval in 1990. Final ap-proval for a plan in Abu Tor took 12 years and a plan submitted in 1987 for Ras al-Amud has not received fi-nal approval. Even when a TPS is approved, it is often not implemented. The Development Plan for the Arab Sector of 1986 directed the building of 13,523 units for Palestinians to be built between 1986 and 1991. In the end, fewer than 2,100 units were built within the target period. Israeli planners shrug off these discrepancies as "exaggerations." They point to the building that has been completed and speak of "tremendous growth" in Palestinian East Jerusalem since 1967.

However, many of the housing projects designed for Palestinians touted by the municipal government are actually aimed at re-settling Palestinians outside of the Jerusalem municipal boundaries. The Housing Ministry built a row of 56 dwellings outside of these boundaries for Arab families evacuated from the Maghrebi Quarter in 1967. The Kollek administration also attempted to thin out the great density in the Moslem Quarter on a num-ber of occasions, by offering public housing outside the city limits with very favorable terms. The most famous of these was the 1973 Kollek Administration initiative known as the "Build your own home in al Izzariyah." This plan especially targeted the residents of the Shu'fat re-fugee camp, an area of strategic importance to future Israeli settlement plans. The municipality enticed Pale-stinian residents out to al-Izzariyah by extending Natio-nal Insurance benefits to Palestinian Jerusalemites who live outside the city. By 1984, however, new restrictions were enacted which explicitly excluded those same Palestinian Jerusalemites who had taken advantage of the "Build Your Own House" scheme from the National Insurance.

The only tangible example of municipal planning and development of housing for Palestinians are the Nussei-beh buildings located on the Ramallah-Jerusalem road. While these units have provided a modicum of despe-rately needed housing in East Jerusalem, their construc-tion has been used in reinforcing the mythology of the benign nature of Israel actions in Jerusalem. Former city planner Yisrael Kimchi points to the Nusseibeh buildings as the exception which proves the rule of Israeli at-tempts to meet the housing needs of Palestinian Jerusa-lemites. Because the "Arab" refusal to coordinate with Israeli planners it was necessary to hide Israeli involve-ment, financial or otherwise, in the project. If the finan-cing had not been secret, the development would have been a failure. Thus, the Israelis are able to point to the Nusseibeh developments as evidence that they tried to meet the needs of Palestinians, yet failed due to Palestinian intransigence.

A review of the various TPS for the Palestinian neighbor-hoods in comparison with those for Jewish neighbor-hoods indicates a glaring discrepancy in density restric-tions. Jerusalem planning codes stipulate a variety of housing zones which range from low density zones of 15% to high density zones of 200%. The maximum allow-ance is made for high density housing in Jewish neigh-borhoods while the capacity is sharply curtailed in Pale-stinian neighborhoods. For example, an unapproved TPS for Um Tuba and Sur Baher limits the housing density to 0.6 for every dunum, yet the plans for Har Homa, a planned settlement for Ultra-Orthodox Jews in the same area, allow for a housing density of 3.5 per dunum. In a discussion held in February of 1993 by the Local Sub-committee which dealt with the TPS for Um Tuba and Sur Baher, city engineer Elinor Barazaki stated that:

"There is a government decision to maintain the proportion between the Arab and Jewish popu-lations in the city... The only way to cope with that ratio is through the housing potential. The growth potential is defined on this basis and the [housing] capacity is a function of that here as well."

It is clear that the capacity of Palestinian neighbor-hoods is determined on the basis of how it will impact Israel's ability to meet its policy objectives of a "unified" Jerusalem, and not on the future housing needs of the Palestinian residents. The Israeli Central Bureau of Sta-tistics estimates that there are currently 22,860 existing housing units for Palestinians in East Jerusalem. General consensus holds that an additional 21,000 units are nee-ded to alleviate the housing shortage plaguing the Pa-lestinian population. Israel controls all building in Jerusa-lem via a complicated system of building permits. On the average, the municipality grants the Palestinians only 150 building permits per year. As a result of zoning restrictions, recalcitrance on approval of TPS, and the sheer difficulty of the planning process required by the municipality, it is virtually impossible for a Palestinian landowner to obtain the necessary building permits to legally utilize their land for housing.

The Israelis have also taken harsh measures to prevent Palestinians from creating their own "facts on the ground." When a Palestinian landowner, driven by des-peration, decides to build on his land regardless of the "green" designation or lack of an appropriate permit, the structures are liable for demolition. Demolitions of Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem are carried out by municipal and Interior Ministry officials on the premise that the house was built on land not zoned for con-struction and without the required permits from the Isra-eli authorities. The Palestine Human Rights Information Centre (PHRIC) has documented over 210 Palestinian homes demolished by the Israeli authorities in East Jeru-salem since mid-1986 for permit violations. Demolitions in East Jerusalem have been carried out at an average rate of 50 per year in the last decade. The municipality claims that that hundreds of Palestinians homes have been built without licensees and could, therefore, be demolished at any time.

The number of housing demolitions has been on a con-sistent climb since the beginning of the Madrid Confe-rence. In 1992 and 1993, 49 houses were demolished in East Jerusalem for permit violations. An additional five homes were demolished during these years for undis-closed "security reasons." During the Rabin/Peres admi-nistration, a total 97 Palestinian homes were demolished regardless of the Oslo process. Since the election of Netanyahu, the number of housing demolitions has in-creased dramatically. In August, 12 homes in the Pale-stinian village of Sur Baher in southern Jerusalem recei-ved demolition orders. In September, Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert ordered the demolition of eight homes in Issawiya village in northern Jerusalem and oversaw the demof the second story of a home within the Ar-menian Quarter of the Old City. By the middle of Octo-ber, Issawiya had received 13 new demolition orders, five more notices went to homes in Shu'fat and Beit Ha-nina, and Ras al-Amud in Eastern Jerusalem received orders that three homes would be demolished after a 24-hour grace period. In a particularly provocative move, the municipality demolished the Old City facility of a non-governmental organization which provides services to the handicapped in late August. While char-ges were circulated that the NGO was demolished due to links to the Palestinian National Authority, the official justification given by the municipality was lack of the appropriate building permit. Housing demolitions re-present the most brutal incarnation of Israeli policies in Jerusalem. While often justified as necessary measures to ensure "appropriate municipal planning" in the city, there is little doubt of that housing demolitions are utili-zed to prevent the Palestinians from creating facts on lands desired for the settlement construction by the ci-ty's municipal authorities.

2.4 Settlement Construction
As mentioned in the previous section, the majority of the undeveloped land in East Jerusalem was expropria-ted for Jewish use by 1968. Land expropriation, how-ever, was only the first step in reaching Israel's objective of securing the geographic integrity of the city. Since the first days of the occupation, plans for development put forward by the municipal council have been based on the political criterion of safeguarding the city's "re-unification" after the 1967 war. Plans that were drafted as early as 1969 set out to capture strategic points around the city and settle them with Jewish neighbor-hoods. Since 1967, the municipality has planned and overseen the construction of 13 major Jewish settle-ments in East Jerusalem. These settlements or "neighbor-hoods" as Jerusalem city planners refer to them, have completely altered the landscape of East Jerusalem. If the additional settlements current on the municipalities agenda are built, East Jerusalem will be completely se-parated from the West Bank and completely integra-ted into Israel's vision of a unified city.

Like the land expropriation in East Jerusalem, settlement construction also occurred in a series of phases. The first occurred immediately after the 1967 war and targeted areas primarily in the Old City and the area surrounding the Mount Scopus campus of the Hebrew University. In the second phase, which began in the 1970s, the muni-cipality commenced the formation of a barrier bet-ween East Jerusalem and the West Bank. The following two phases planned the establishment of an outer ring of settlements further surrounding the city. The plans for the final phase, mostly revealed during the Rabin admi-nistration, will constitute a closing of gaps between the key settlements in the north and the south and thereby completing the chain of settlements around the Pale-stinian neighborhoods of the city. Concomitant to the East Jerusalem settlements, the establishment and ex-pansion of the Greater Jerusalem settlements further demonstrate the overall Israeli objectives for a Jewish Jerusalem whose metropolitan limitations would reach to Ramallah in the north and beyond Bethlehem in the south. Despite promises in the Oslo Accords that Israeli would not enact changes in the status quo of Jeru-salem, settlement construction in East Jerusalem has accelerated dramatically since the beginning of the peace process.

The very first phase of settlement activity in Jerusalem reflected an attitude of historical vindication on the part of the Israeli government. Actions taken to restore access to the Wailing Wall, rebuild the Jewish quarter and establish a settlement bridge from West Jerusalem to Mount Scopus were perceived by the Israeli public as an attempt to heal the rent in the urban fabric that had been created by the situation between 1948 and 1967. In addition to the destruction of the Maghrebi Quarter, 160 dunums were expropriated in April of 1968 in the area of the Old City that Western sources refer to as the Jewish Quarter. The expropriation was defended in a Supreme Court challenge on the basis of "public utility" in order to rebuild the Jewish Quarter. Under the premise of rectifying the Jordanians' destruction of the Quarter, the Israelis were able to gloss over the fact that Palestinians had also lived in this quarter. This drive for vindication also extended to the Mt. Scopus area. Immediately after 1967, there was a governmental push for the enlargement of the East Jerusalem campus of the Hebrew University. The first official new "neighbor-hoods", French Hill and Ramat Eshkol, were established in this period in order to secure a land bridge between the Mount Scopus campus and the Western part of the city. Within a year after the conquest of East Jerusa-lem, the Israelis set the precedent that the confiscation and settlement of private Palestinian land for the Jewish public was justifiable in order to prevent the revision of the city.

The second phase of settlement construction began in 1970 with the establishment of the Atarot settlement. The strategy of this phase of construction was to control the heights and begin the process of territorial consoli-dation. Consistent with this attitude, an analysis of mu-nicipal planning written in 1985 explains the beginning of the settlement process as follows:

Since 1967, two rings of new residential neighbor- hoods built around the city center have created new "ramparts" [emphasis original] designed pri-marily as a political barrier against any possible repatriation of the city.

During this phase, which lasted until 1975, four major settlements were established: Gilo in the south, East Talpiot and Neve Ya'akov in the north, and Ramot to the west (see Appendix I). The strategic placement of these four settlements formed the key links of the inner ring of settlements between East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

The perceived impetuous for the third phase was to consolidate control of the north eastern portion of the city and to link Neve Ya'akov with Kalandia Airport and the new West Bank/Greater Jerusalem settlement of Givat Ze'ev. In 1967, Israel seized land from Shu'fat, Beit Hanina, Hizma and Anata. Then, in 1985, the establish-ment of Pisgat Ze'ev on these same lands led to an unwieldy archipelago in the north of Jerusalem. The neighborhoods constructed in this phase were not in-tended to be bedroom communities like the earlier set-tlements, but rather self-supporting communities. Pisgat Ze'ev was planned with one side commercial and one side residential. Municipal plans in the 1980s also called for the introduction of hotels and offices in an attempt to stimulate commerce. Under the Labour govern-ment, Pisgat Ze'ev continued to grow at a rapid pace. Former Housing Minister Ben-Elizar authorized 1,100 ad-ditional units for Pisgat Ze'ev in 1995. According to one contractor, future plans for the settlement include ex-panding over the hillside to the south east and towards the north west. A technological garden is now slated for the valley extending into the village of Hizma. In accordance with the Jerusalem master plan, Construc-tion in Pisgat Ze'ev will eventually meet with Neve Ya'-akov to the north and Reches Shufaat in the south. This construction will complete the north-eastern wall bet-ween Jerusalem and the West Bank.

In 1991, the municipality began a fourth phase of settle-ment construction in Jerusalem which was clearly ai-med at completing the isolation of Palestinian Jerusa-lem from the West Bank. The plans approved in 1990 for Reches Shufaat, the Har Homa and Airplane Hill com-plex represent the fulfillment of Israel's desire to ensure geographic integrity for the borders they defined in 1967. The center pieces of this huge thrust in the settle-ment of Jerusalem were the planned construction of two entirely new Jewish "neighborhoods" in strategic locations in East Jerusalem. The first of these new settle-ments, Reches Shufaat, is well on the way to comple-tion. This settlemen, slated for upwards of 2,300 units and constructed on land confiscated from the Palesti-nian village of Shu'fat, will, ultimately, close the gap between Ramot, West Jerusalem proper and Ramat Eshkol. These new settlements also marked a significant departure from previous strategy of building in discon-nected areas without ever revealing the overall plans. It is as if the Israeli government has reached a point of confidence in regards to the irreversibility of the unifica-tion of the city. Future settlement plans can be pursued openly and aggressively with little concern over its im-pact on public opinion in Israel, the Occupied Territories or beyond.

The second major settlement provided for in the 1990 plan will close the remaining green spaces in the south of the city. The Har Homa settlement will entail the con- struction of 6,500 housing units on 1,851 dunums of land confiscated from the Palestinian communities of Um Tuba, Sur Baher and Beit Sahour. Ultimately, it is expec-ted that this settlement will house 30,000-40,000 Ultra-Orthodox Jewish settlers. The strategic nature of the placement of this settlement is obvious. The construc-tion of Har Homa drives a wedge between the West Bank Palestinian town of Beit Sahour and the East Jeru-salem village of Um Tuba, which is already blocked to the north by the settlement of East Talpiot that was established in the early 1970s. Furthermore, the Har Ho-ma development completely precludes any possibility of Palestinians creating any contiguous settlement of their own.

On its own, Har Homa represents the last of the key an-chor settlements in the Israeli archipelago around East Jerusalem. However, Israeli geographic strategy is com-pletely evident when three other components are in-cluded in the equation. First, there is the proposed con-struction of 2,000 units on Airplane Hill, west of Har Ho-ma and East of Gilo. Second, there is stage II of Har Ho-ma which would extend further East onto Kiryat Mazmo-ryah. Finally there is recently cut Bethlehem "Patrol Road", which runs from Beit Sahour to Beit Jala and ef-fectively demarcates the southern limits of the Israeli-defined municipal boundaries in asphalt. These smal-ler scale projects would effectively form a chain of sett-lements from the Malha mall, through Gilo, east to Har Homa and northeast to East Talpiot. The patrol road will provide the necessary traffic artery to connect these settlements and their commercial infrastructure with each other and with the rest of Jerusalem.

There is further information which suggests that the Isra- elis plan to use a portion of the confiscated land near Bethlehem as part of an integrated tourism complex in the vicinity of the Har Homa settlement. This tourism complex would include hotel services and would be used to provide Israeli owned services to the thousands of Christian tourists who visit the holy sites in Palestinian Bethlehem. If these "neighborhoods" are completed along the approved timetable, the southern boundary of Jerusalem will have been completely settled in ad-vance of any negotiated solution. In order to prevent the construction of this critical settlement, the Palesti-nian and Jewish landowners have been involved in a protracted legal battle which has succeeded in stalling the settlement for six years. However, given recent po-litical developments, the construction of this "neighbor-hood, appears imminent as well.

The Olmert Municipality won the approval from the Mi-nistries of Housing and Finance for what has become known as the Eastern Gate scheme in the spring of 1993. Like Reches Shufaat and Har Homa, this new string of settlements is also designed to connect existing settlements and form a physical barrier between Jeru-salem and the West Bank. The proposed plan, will swal-low up vast tracts of lands of Shu'fat Village in the areas of Ras Shehadeh and Ras Khamis. The immediate intent of the plan is to link the settlement on French Hill with Pisgat Ze'ev on the northern side. Some 2000 settlers are expected to be brought into the area to create a con-tinuous Jewish residential area north of the eastern flank of the city. Commercial interests, Jewish-only housing and parks would be constructed, thereby isolating Shu'fat entirely from its neighboring villages in the West Bank, and creating nearly a solid wall of settlements from Jerusalem north to Ramallah. Furthermore, this settlement will become the "Eastern Gate" to Jerusalem when it is connected to route #45, or the proposed ring road which will link this area with the Gush Adumim bloc before connecting with the southern side of the city at Har Homa. On November 19, 1996, city officials revealed that 800,000 NIS had been allocated for the first stages of the Eastern Gate plan.

Once the plans on these three settlements are com-plete, East Jerusalem will be completely surrounded by a vast wall of settlements. The new ring road will allow Israelis free movement between Tel Aviv, the settle-ments encircling Jerusalem and the Greater Jerusalem settlements to the east and south. This ring road, which would have been an infrastructure asset in peace time, will only serve as the "way out" for Palestinians of East Jerusalem. It is only a matter of years, before all of the remaining green areas in Palestinian East Jerusalem are filled with Israeli settlements and by-pass roads.

In the period since the signing of the Oslo agreements Israel has also begun targeting plots of land for settle-ments within the Palestinian neighborhoods of East Je-rusalem. This represents a strategic shift from the pre-vious settlement patterns which focused on encircle-ment. Furthermore, many of the buildings slated for construction in these areas are commercial rather than residential. Many of the approved projects are planned as tourists facilities designed to further facilitate Israel's ability to host western, Christian tourists who are ex-pected to flock to Jerusalem in the year 2000. In Silwan, the municipality has plans for constructing a tourist park with the Silwan Spring as a centerpiece. The plan is to extend from the spring to the Garden of Gethsemane on land owned by the Muslim Waqf and private Palesti-nian owners. In addition, groups of radical settlers have tried to forcefully occupy several homes within Sil-wan under the pretense of prior purchase. There is a huge tourist complex planned for 40 dunums expropria- ted from al-Izzariyah which will provide accommoda-tions for up to 2,500 tourists. There are also three hotels planned for the area of the Mandlebaum Gate, inclu-ding a park adjacent to the American Colony Hotel in Sheikh Jarrah. Most recently, the Ateret Cohanim group occupied a building opposite the American Consulate in East Jerusalem. Ateret Cohanim acquired the building via an illegal land purchase utilizing a hol-ding company based in the British Virgin Islands. Natio-nal Infrastructure Minister Ariel Sharon personally issued the eviction notices to the Palestinian families who ow-ned the building. Palestinian geographer Khalil Tufakji refers to this policy as "transfer without media." These measures can be interpreted as a shift in municipal stra-tegy towards the demographic situation in Jerusalem and acceleration of moves to drive Palestinians out of the city. The pace of new construction in and around the Palestinian neighborhoods in Jerusalem has omi-nous implications for the future potential of these areas.

Chapter 3: Demographic Superiority

The 1973 Interministerial Committee to Examine the Rate of Development in Jerusalem, commissioned by Golda Meir, determined that it was vital to the future of Jerusalem to ensure "the relative proportion of Jews and Arabs [in Jerusalem] as it was at the end of 1972." At that point in time, the population figures indicated a Jewish majority of 73.5% and a Palestinian minority of 26.5%. The subtext of the this decision was a desire on the part of the municipal government to implement strategies for combating the higher rate of natural growth among the Palestinian population and ensure a Jewish majority in the city. In 1992 the Kubersky , commissioned by the Ministry of the Interior, re-stated the needs of the government to take measures to ensure a Jewish majority in Jerusalem. While the mu-nicipal governments have planned and built the Jeru-salem area settlements, the national governments have made every effort to facilitate their settlement with Je-wish Israelis. In hand with increasing the Jewish popula-tion of the city, the Israeli government has actively sought to limit the number of Palestinians living in the ci-ty. In addition to the serious restrictions on housing and development facing Palestinian Jerusalemites, Israel enacted a series of restrictive policies regarding resi-dency rights in the city. These policies serve a two-fold purpose; first, of separating Palestinian Jerusalemites from the Palestinians in the West Bank, and second, providing means of preventing Palestinians from "legal-ly" residing in the city. Israeli strategies for "preserving" the 1967 demographic ratio have fostered a series of discriminatory housing and residency policies designed to actively curtail the growth of the Palestinian popu-lation.

3.1 Encouraging Jewish Immigration
The massive construction of settlements in East Jerusa-lem has done more than alter the geographic layout of the city. Since 1967, Israel has managed to completely reverse the demographic realities in East Jerusalem. In July of 1993, an official Jewish majority was declared in East Jerusalem; at that time, the official figures reported 154,000 Palestinian residents and 168,000 Israel residents in East Jerusalem. Two years later, the number of Israeli settlers had grown by more than 30,000 bringing the total to 200,000. At the current date, sources estimate the Jewish population of East Jerusalem to be 240,000. Furthermore, the national blueprint of the Interior Mini-stry has made ambitious projections, calling for a Jewish majority of 77% for the Jerusalem region by the year 2020. This dramatic change in the demographic reali-ties of Palestinian East Jerusalem was the result of a concerted effort on the part of the Jerusalem munici-pality, with the support of the Knesset, to encourage Is-raeli Jews and new immigrants to populate Jerusalem's new "neighborhoods." Policies were developed to pro-vide substantial economic incentives to prospective re-sidents. New "neighborhoods" were aggressively marke-ted as affordable alternatives to the crowded condi-tions in the urban centers that offer a tremendous im-provement in the quality of life. In addition, steps were taken to promote the growth of industry in several of the larger settlements in East Jerusalem in hopes provi-ding further impetuous for new Jewish immigrants to set-tle permanently in Jerusalem. While some aspects of these policies were less effective than others, the over-whelming result has been a massive influx of Jewish sett-lers who largely view themselves as residing comfortab-ly in convenient, affordable suburbs of Jerusalem.

Knesset law-makers have consistently made funds and resources available to the settlement efforts in and around Jerusalem. Since 1981, 83% of all government investment in the Occupied Territories has been direc-ted to the bedroom communities in and around Jerusa-lem and Tel Aviv. Over the years, the Israeli govern-ment has provided subsidized housing for more than 70,000 Jewish families in East Jerusalem. When Pisgat Ze'ev was settled in the late 1980s, the national govern-ment provided favorable apartment purchase terms in order to make rapid occupancy possible. In the fall of 1990, plans were adopted by the Ministerial Immigra-tion Committee to provide housing for the influx of im-migrants from the Soviet Union in Jerusalem. The plans, released under the headline of "On the Way to a Je-wish Majority in Jerusalem", offered a 100% government guarantee against losses to contractors willing to work on the project. The Jerusalem municipality also contri-butes to the massive subsidies for Israeli settlers in the form of tax breaks. For example, new Jewish settlers are exempted from the arnona, municipal tax, for a period of 5 years, after which they are charged at a reduced rate. Under the Sheeves plan, the Rabin government continued to subsidize construction in Jerusalem in spite of the Oslo accords. Pisgat Ze'ev, the key settlement anchor in northern Jerusalem, received development loans in excess of $33,000 in order to encourage the faster purchase of homes. These subsidies have great-ly facilitated the settlement of an enormous number of Jewish Israelis in the Jerusalem area settlements.

In addition to tax-breaks and subsidies, the Jerusalem area settlements have been aggressively marketed. The municipality invested tremendous effort in marke-ting the settlements as Jewish bedroom communities which offer a high quality of life. These settlements were promoted by the municipality as being equipped with a modern infrastructure; electricity, water, sewage, te-lephones and parking. New immigrants, young couples and veterans were specifically targeted in the various advertising schemes. Advertisements offer "quality", "luxury" and "affordably" as the main reasons to invest in settlements such as Gilo or Pisgat Ze'ev. Real estate agents promote the settlements in terms of their "close proximity to downtown" and their community environ-ment. Zionist ideology is simply not a factor needed to sell apartments in the Jerusalem area settlements. They are promoted as integral suburbs of Jerusalem and of-fer prospective residents no reason to question their choice. As former Housing Minister Ben-Elizar was fond of pointing out, "half of Meretz lives in Givat Ze'ev." In a recent field exercise conducted by a group of Ameri-can students in Givat Ze'ev, the vast majority of settlers interviewed in street surveys identified themselves as re-sidents of Jerusalem. They sited affordability and quality of life as the main reasons for their choice of residence. The self-perception of these settlers attest to the over-whelming success of the aggressive marketing cam-paigns put forth in order to fill the Jerusalem area settle-ments with thousands of Israeli settlers.

These measures clearly demonstrate how the settle-ment of Jewish-Israelis in East Jerusalem is a key compo-nent in Israel's battle to ensure demographic superiority. Current foreign policy advisor to Benjamin Netanyahu, Dore Gold, elucidated the demographic aspect of the settlement policy as follows:

"This situation [Palestinian majority in Jerusalem] can only be avoided if Israeli governments plan on strengthening Jerusalem's periphery to offset the continued growth of the Palestinian Arab po-pulation. In the past, the Israeli government focu- sed on municipal Jerusalem itself. It maintained the approximate ratio of Jews and Arabs through extensive, state-sponsored housing initiatives, and with the benefits of an infusion of Russian Jewish Aliyah."

However, immigration was never regarded as the only solution. There is a great fear among national policy makers and municipal planners that settlement would be insufficient to ensure the demographic superiority of Jews in Jerusalem. There is a fear that once the avail-able land for Israeli population growth has been exploi-ted, the growth of the Israeli population can be expec-ted to decline. As a result, Israeli policy makers have sought other avenues for maintaining a Jewish majority in Jerusalem.

3.2 Attacks on Palestinian Residency Rights
Israel municipal policy-makers were aware early on that measures would have to be taken to prevent the rapidly growing Palestinian population from taking root in East Jerusalem. In 1994, the growth rate of the "non-Jewish" [Palestinian] population of Jerusalem was 3.4% while the growth rate of the Jewish population reached only 1.3%. Despite huge Jewish immigration and the numerous discriminatory housing policies which have created a massive Palestinian housing shortage in East Jerusalem, the natural growth of Palestinian Jerusalemi-tes still outstrips the growth of the Jewish population. In order to maintain the desired demographic ratio in the city, Israhas relied upon a series of discriminatory bu-reaucratic methods to deprive Palestinian Jerusalemites of their "rights" to live in the city. These policies stem from the two-tiered system of ID cards imposed upon Palestinians after the 1967 war. The blue ID cards deno-ting Jerusalem residency, were originally imposed upon Palestinian Jerusalemites as a means of separating them from Palestinians in the West Bank and integrating them into Israel proper. In addition to serving this end, the issuance of ID cards also gave the Israeli Ministry of Interior de facto control over who had the "right" to reside in the city. The system of laws concerning resi-dency of Palestinians in East Jerusalem has been con-verted into a key mechanism for restricting the number of Palestinians living in the city.

The Israeli population census conducted in 1967 recor-ded 66,000 Palestinians living in East Jerusalem. 44,000 of those were living in Jerusalem as per the Jordanian municipal boundaries and 22,000 were living in the areas Israel annexed into Jerusalem. These 66,000 were classified as "permanent residents of Israel" according to the Law of Entry to Israel (1952). While Palestinian Jerusalemites were offered Israeli citizenship, few have chosen that option recognizing that accepting citizen-ship is tantamount to a recognizing Israeli sovereignty in the city. Nevertheless, Israeli policy towards the Palesti-nians in East Jerusalem has been built on the assump-tion that they would sooner or later accept their inte-gration into the Jewish state. This distinct designation for Palestinian Jerusalemites served the Israeli objectives on Jerusalem in two ways. First, the smart package of privileges and benefits which accompany Jerusalem residency are a distinct means of separating Palestinian Jerusalemites from Palestinians in the West Bank.

Second, the fine print behind the 1974 Entry to Israel Re-gulations, grants the Ministry of Interior a long series of bureaucratic methods to deprive Palestinians of their right to live in their home town. Under the Law of Entry to Israel, residence in Israel is a privilege subject to numerous qualifications and restrictions.When Israeli law was applied to annexed Jerusalem, Palestinian resi-dents of the city became subject the tenets of this law. The practical implication of this law is that the Ministry of the Interior has legal authority in determining who recei-ves and is allowed to maintain Jerusalem residency rights. For example, all Palestinian Jerusalemites wishing to travel abroad must obtain an Israeli re-entry visa. Fai-lure to do so forfeits the Palestinians right of return. In addition, Jerusalem residents who live abroad for more than 7 years automatically lose their residency right. Fur-thermore, Palestinian residency, unlike citizenship, does not automatically extend to the resident's family. Pale-stinian Jerusalemites marrying spouses from the rest of the Occupied Territories must apply for Family Reunifi-cation in order to legally reside together in Jerusalem. In 1994, 109 out of 136 documented applications for Family Reunification submitted to the Ministry of Interior were flatly rejected. Furthermore, the Law of Entry into Israel does not oblige the authorities to give any justifi-cation or reason when an application is turned down. Finally, the Interior Ministry will only register children as Jerusalem residents if the father holds a valid Jerusalem ID card. Children born to families where only the mo-ther holds Jerusalem residency will be considered resi-dents of the Occupied Territories and excluded from the benefits incumbent on Jerusalem residency such as access to public health services and the right to enroll in a Jerusalem public school. These restrictions have allowed Israel to maintain strict control on the numbers of Palestinians who legally reside in the city. These bu-reaucratic mechanisms are all part of Israel's desire to maintain demographic superiority in Jerusalem.

Since the beginning of the Oslo process, the Ministry of Interior has been part of a dramatic attack on Palesti-nian residency rights in Jerusalem. This new rise in the re-vocation of Jerusalem residency rights can only be vie-wed as a means of lowering the number of Palestinian residents in advance of the final status talks. Despite as-sertions that they have not changed their policies, the Ministry of Interior has begun to require that Palestinian Jerusalemites prove that their "center of life" is within the municipal boundaries of the city. Over the course of the current year, hundreds of Palestinians have had their Jerusalem residency rights revoked. This restric-tion has been stringently applied to Palestinians who hold a foreign passport in addition to Jerusalem resi-dency. Prominent Palestinian Journalist Daoud Kuttab was recently informed by the Ministry of the Interior that he had a "choice" between his American passport and his Jerusalem ID card. Furthermore, Palestinian Jerusa-lemites who have been forced to seek housing outside of the municipal boundaries have also had their resi-dency rights revoked under the "center of life" require-ment, even though Israel does not explicitly recognize the West Bank as a foreign country. This stipulation on residency rights has serious implications for Palestinian Jerusalemites, particularly considering that more than 12,000 Palestinians now live outside of the municipal boundaries as a result of the housing shortage also re-sulting from discriminatory Israeli policies.

In response to a substantial internal and international protest to the increase in the number of Palestinians ha-ving their residency rights revoked, the Israeli Foreign Ministry issued the following response to its consulates and embassies:

Palestinian residents of Jerusalem, who subse-quently take up residence elsewhere, forfeit their right to residency in Jerusalem. Citizens may resi-de wherever they wish; residents can only reside in one place at one time. One can be a citizen of Israel and reside in France or be a French citizen and reside in Israel; but one cannot be a resident of Israel and reside elsewhere...

Despite the fact that the final status of Jerusalem is yet to have been negotiated, despite the fact that the ma-jority of the world, including the United States, does not recognize Israel's annexation of East Jerusalem, and de-spite the fact that the Fourth Geneva Convention expli-citly prohibits the individual or mass transfer of residents from occupied territories, Israel has launched an all out assault on the Palestinian population of Jerusalem. In a particular display of arrogance, Israel places the blame for the loss of residency rights squarely on the Palesti-nians. As Yossi Beilin put it in a recent interview on CNN, "Those Palestinians who refused citizenship and left the country have a problem with their residence in the Sta-te of Israel." In blind determination to enforce its exclu-sive rule in Jerusalem, Israel has waged an extensive and effective demographic war in Jerusalem.

Chapter 4: Legitimization of Sovereignty in Purpose and Practice

The quest for legitimization of Jewish claims to reside in the holy land has been a key component of Zio-nist strategies since before the founding of the Jewish State. Israel's self-perception as a democratic beacon in the authoritarian Middle East has become an essen-tial part of garnering legitimacy for its practices. Further-more, the image of Israel as a benevolent democracy has become a core founding myth among Israeli Jews. Public relations strategies which cloak discriminatory Is-rael practices have become a key element in the batt-le for Jerusalem. Historical and legal justifications are the major components of Israel's mission to legitimize the Judaization of the city. Israeli propaganda has con-sistently portrayed the capture of East Jerusalem as the obvious redressing of past wrongs and the natural evo-lution of holy the city. Furthermore, Israel has been frigh-teningly successful in disguising its policies of disenfran-chising the Palestinians both legal and part of their be-nevolent, democratic governanof the city.

In March of 1995, Mayor Olmert revealed the plans for a 16-month and $11-million celebration marking the 3,000 anniversary of Jerusalem as "the Undivided Capi-tal of Israel." This celebration, which included an enor-mous fireworks display immediately after Netanyahu's election, is perhaps the most ostentatious example of Is-rael's need to justify the continued occupation of East Jerusalem in religious and historical terms. The Israeli propaganda machine has expended considerable ef-fort in providing copious amounts of evidence and in-formation attesting to the exclusive Jewish character of Jerusalem's history and spirituality. The genuine centrali-ty of Jerusalem to the Jewish faith is cynically used for political legitimization. Countless hours of rhetoric have been spent reciting biblical quotations and segments of Jewish prayer as a preface to why Israel cannot loosen its grip on the city. Contained in the emphasis on the in-herent Jewishness of Jerusalem is a blatant negation of the city's importance to the other monotheistic religions who regard the city as holy. The Government Press Offi-ce describes the religious importance of Jerusalem as follows:

The observation that "Jerusalem is holy to three reli-gions" tends to mislead, since Jerusalem is holy to Jews, Muslims and Christians in fundamentally diffe-rent ways. Jerusalem contains sites holy to Muslims and Christians, and is one of many locations of reli-gious significance to them. To Jews, however, it is the city itself which is uniquely holy, only Jews have a religious prescription to live there.

The tacit assertion is that because Jerusalem is uniquely holy to Jews and because only Jews, by their assess-ment, have been religiously commanded to live there, then only Jews have a legitimate religious right to live in the city.

Information packets put forward by various Zionist lobby groups and the Israeli Government Press Office always start the history of Jerusalem with King David, ignoring the fact that Jerusalem was a Jebusite capital whose settlement pre-dated David by roughly 2000 years.

Continuity of Jewish residence in Jerusalem since Da-vid "except for very few periods, when they were forci- bly barred from the city by foreign conquerors", is used to cement modern Jewish claims to exclusive sovereig-nty in the city. Zionist propaganda and Israeli sources also point to the existence of a Jewish majority during the Ottoman period as further evidence that Jerusalem was always a Jewish city. Most Israeli sources point to 1844 as the date when the Jewish majority "returned" to Jerusalem. However, the one source which provided actual figures, carefully separated the Moslem popula- tion from the Christian population in order to demon-strate the Jewish majority. The long periods of the city's history when Jerusalem was ruled by other peoples are consistently referred to as periods of conquest by fo-reigners whose presence in the city was both detrimen-tal and temporary aberrations. For example:

Despite numerous conquests and reconquests over the centuries - by Byzantines, Persians, Arabs, Crusa-ders, Turks and others - and the persecution that ac-companied these events, the Jews tenaciously maintained their existence in Jerusalem. But al-though Jerusalem has always been the heart and soul of Judaism and the Jewish nation, the city's nu-merous foreign conquers generally treated it as nothing more than a provincial backwater.

Once again, the history of Jerusalem is recounted in ex-clusively Jewish terms. Furthermore, this metaphor of temporary "foreign" control is directly applied to Jorda-nian rule in the city and the possible threat of any other "Arab" regime.

Perhaps the greatest gift given to the writers of Israeli propaganda on Jerusalem was the desecration of Je-wish holy sites in the Old City. Zionist publications and hi- story texts as well as Israeli tour guides constantly ham-mer the number of synagogues and Jewish gravesto-nes destroyed by the Jordanians. Israeli sources descri-be Jordanian rule of the city as "medieval". Jordanian Jerusalem is described as a neglected backwater, la-cking in services or resources in a perpetual state of un-derdevelopment. This selective portrayal of Jerusalem's condition under Jordan fails to indicate that the Israeli side of Jerusalem was in an equal state of neglect and disrepair. While tourism flourished on the Jordanian side and brought in large amounts of investment and fo-reign currency, the economy on the Israeli side was lar-gely stagnant. The neighborhoods on the cease-fire lines, most notably Musrara, were filled with impoveri-shed Jewish immigrants from Middle Eastern countries and were widely regarded by more affluent Israelis as slums. Nevertheless, Jordanian rule of the city is habitu-ally vilified and held up as an example of how Jerusa-lem would fare under Palestinian rule. Israeli policy ma-kers suggest that any hint of territorial compromise on Jerusalem would ultimate result in a return to the pre-1967 situation in Jerusalem, where Jews were banished from the city by, yet another, foreign occupier.

A key element in Israel's self-legitimization is the promo-tion of Israeli democracy. The image of Israel as a de-mocracy in tandem with Israel's reliance on quasi-legal methods of disenfranchising the Palestinians, allows Isra-el to continually exculpate itself from blame. In Jerusa-lem, the argument of democratic governance is used as a double edge sword against the Palestinians. First, Israel's municipal authorities to justify discriminatory poli-cies such as zoning restrictions and permit requirements, as standard municipal practice. Second, it allows Israel to blame the Palestinians for their own situation for not taking advantage of the democratic process offered them by Israel. Finally, municipal authorities continually attempt to demonstrate how their democratic rule of the city has benefited the Palestinian population. By fo-cusing on few small examples of urban development in East Jerusalem, such as the previously mentioned Nus-seibeh buildings, Israeli municipal leaders seek to prove that they did their best to develop East Jerusalem in the face of deep seeded "Arab" intransigence.

As demonstrated in previous chapters, Israel relies hea-vily on quasi-legal methods to implement its policy ob-jectives. In the case of Jerusalem, permit restriction, green zoning and land expropriations are justified as part of a legitimate, democratic, process of meeting the needs of the city's public. As former municipal plan-ner Yisrael Kimchi asserts, because the "Arab sector" lacked the necessary wherewithal to carry out directed planning initiatives for development of East Jerusalem, it was necessary for the Israeli sector to take respon-sibility. Without question, elements of city planning are legitimate tools used by a government to most effecti-vely allocate the available resources to the community. However, democratic municipal planning pre-supposes that resources will be distributed under principles of equality and that the entire citizenry will benefit, either directly or by being part of the collective good. Thus, when the municipal government collects taxes or expropriates lands as part of its responsibility to provide for the city's public, the assumption is that the public, as a whole, will benefit from the city's actions. Unfortuna-tely, in the case of Jerusalem, this is simply not the case. For example, in all democratic societies, citizens pay a certain proportion of taxes and expect an equal pro-portion of services in return. In Jerusalem, however, Pa-lestinian Jerusalemites contribute 26% to the city's ope-rating budget while only 5% of the same budget is spent on services in East Jerusalem.

The definition of "public" in terms of resource redistribu-tion in Jerusalem is inherently two-tiered. In all cases of land expropriation in East Jerusalem, Palestinians are in-cluded in the definition of public. More often than not, Palestinians are the only segment of the public repre-sented when land is to be expropriated for public use. However, when the public is defined recipients of the housing or infrastructure planned for the expropria-ted areas it is almost always exclusively Jewish. A per-fect example of this is the case of the planned settle-ment of Har Homa south of Jerusalem. Lands were ex-propriated from the Palestinian communities of Um Tu-ba, Sur Baher and Beit Sahour, as well as from a private Israeli company called Micor, for the construction of a settlement that would eventually provide housing for as many as 40,000 Ultra-Orthodox Jews. Counter plans submitted by the Micor company and the Palestinian landowners for joint Israeli-Palestinian development of the area in question were flatly rejected. In response to numerous letters of protest concerning the construction of this settlement, the office of then Prime Minister Shi-mon Peres, confirmed the racist definition of public in terms of who receives the resources "re-allocated" by the municipality and the state.

Jerusalem, as a thriving dynamic city, continues to grow and it is the responsibility of the municipal and state authorities to provide housing and infrastructu-re to its residents (Letter's full text in Appendix V).

Without question, the residents referred to by Mr. Peres are Jewish residents alone. Former Mayor Kollek was perhaps more blatant in revealing how public was defi-ned in terms of the receipt of municipal services. At a January 1988 meeting of the Jerusalem Municipal Council, Kollek exclaimed: "I am seeing to the Jewish majority... that is why we are here."

The perception of democratic governance is further used to place the blame for the disparity between the Jewish and Palestinian sectors squarely on the Palestini-ans. Time and time again, the assertion is made that if the Palestinians would only take advantage of the rights bestowed upon them by Israeli democracy than their situation would be dramatically different. Whereas the operating assumption is that unification of Jerusa-lem is beyond question, it is the fault of the Palestinians for not maximizing their rights within the municipal sys-tem. The following quote by former Mayor Teddy Kollek illustrates the skillful use of the Palestinian absence in the Municipal Council as a further means of justifying discriminatory policies:

"I deeply regret that there are no Arabs on the City Council. [Even though] under Israeli law, citizens of other countries residing in Israel have the right to vote in municipal elections. This sorry situation means that either I or a colleague in my One Jerusalem coalition must represent the Arab population and look after its interests. My argument is that the Arabs are tax payers. But we are a poor city with very limi-ted resources, and each faction on the Council tries to obtain a maximum of the resources for its con-stituents. Arab councilors, vociferously stating their demands, would paradoxically help return the pea-ce and quiet we need and make it easier to obtain resources for the Arab sector, including new housing."

First, Kollek reaffirms that Palestinian residents of Jerusa-lem are, from his perspective, residing in Israel, thus im-plying a unified city under Israeli sovereignty. Then he indicates Israeli magnanimity in allowing these "citizens of other countries" the right to vote in Israeli municipal elections. Finally, he offers conclusive proof that the dis-parity in housing and services is not the fault of discrimi-natory policies, but a regrettable side effect in the fai-lure of the Palestinians to exploit their given rights.

Members of the Israeli right and left alike continually call for Palestinians to "take advantage" of their right to serve in the municipal council. From their perspective, the Palestinians could use the bi-weekly Council mee-tings as a platform to protest the occupation and de-nounce the city's discriminatory policies. Without que-stion, the Palestinians could have used the City Council to achieve modest gains for the Palestinian population of Jerusalem. The fear is that any move to enter into the municipality would result in one or two seats on the Council and no real power in terms of affecting munici- pal policy. The municipality would, however, be able to use the presence of these few Palestinian councilmen as a legitimization of Israeli sovereignty over the city as defined in 1967. Given the success Israel has had with using the participation of Israeli-Arabs in the Knesset as proof of their true democratic intent, the risk of entering the Municipal Council is great.

Israeli municipal authorities push the democratic argu-ment one step further by repeated claiming that the Palestinians have ultimately benefited from Israeli rule. Despite purported intransigence on the Palestinian side, Israeli authorities claim that they make every effort to develop the Palestinian community in East Jerusalem. Kollek has gone on record on countless occasions to attest to all of his efforts to improve the quality of life for Palestinian Jerusalemites. According to his accounts, the municipality has provided East Jerusalem with pro-per sewage facilities, running water, health clinics and libraries. When tax moneys were insufficient, Kollek as-serts that he sought private funding for projects dedica-ted to the "Arab" sector. However, in a famous state-ment made in the aftermath of the 1990 massacre on the Haram al-Sharif, Kollek candidly admits the reality behind all of his "efforts" to provide the Palestinians equal services:

"Idiocy,fairy tales! I did nothing over the last 20 years. For Jewish Jerusalem I have done things. For East Je-rusalem? Nothing? Stop babbling about sidewalks, cultural centers. Nothing! Absolutely nothing! Actu-ally, we did build the sewage system and improved the water system. And do you know why? I'm sure you think we did it for their benefit. No way! We did it because we heard about cholera cases, and the Jews feared the spread of an epidemic."

Nevertheless, the current municipality relies upon the same faulty arguments to explain the disparity between the Palestinian and Israeli sectors of the city. The follow-ing quotation by Deputy Mayor Lupalanski again de-monstrates the standard contention that the municipa-lity has done everything it can to meet the needs of the Palestinian population:

[In the Palestinian sector] there is a problem of menta-lity that we cannot change. They are used to being in a family house and are not used to living in a modern context. Therefore, when we prepare plans and pre-sent to the housing committee a plan to solve the hou-sing problem for 3,000 families, they will not take ad-vantage of the plan."

Lack of adequate housing in the Palestinian neighbor-hoods is simply not the fault of the municipality. Quite the contrary, the municipality contends it has done everything possible to meet the needs of the Palestinian population. The figures, however, speak for themselves. Since 1967, an excess of 64,000 houses have been built for Israeli-Jews in Jerusalem. In that same time span, only 8,800 houses have been built for Palestinian Jerusa- lemites. Furthermore, of the city's 900 sanitation workers, only 14 are assigned to Palestinian neighborhoods. Is-raeli claims of benevolent democratic rule in Jerusalem are only a thin veil used to justify their ultimate objec-tives of securing exclusive Israeli sovereignty over the city.

Conclusions

Since 1967, successive Israeli governments have set out "with conviction, with motivation, with determi-nation, with stamina..." to eradicate all other visions of the Holy City that conflict with the vision of Jerusalem as the 'eternal, undivided capital of the Jewish State'. The question then persists, why, if the Israelis are so determi-ned to make no concessions on Jerusalem and have expended so much energy and resources in establi-shing Jewish superiority in the city, did the government agree to settle its final status during the Oslo process? Given the Israeli preoccupation with the rule of law and their need for international legitimization the answer is fairly obvious. By negotiating the final status of Jerusa-lem in the context of a peace process sponsored by the international communityIsrael can finally secure un-questionable legitimacy for its exclusive rule over the holy city. The frenetic pace of settlement activity since the beginning of the peace process attest to Israel's quest to implement as many irreversible geographic and demographic facts on Jerusalem's soil in advance of the nego+tiations. If Israeli policies for Jerusalem conti-nue to be implemented at the current pace, there will be little left for the negotiators to decide upon. Without question, Israel views the final status of Jerusalem as an issue that has already been settled.

However, the fundamental fact remains that without a just and equitable solution to the question of Jerusalem there will never be a lasting peace in this region. As the clashes in late September clearly demonstrated, conti-nued Israeli aggression in Jerusalem will only result in fur-ther bloodshed. At a peaceful demonstration outside the Israeli Interior Ministry, Faisal Husseini indicated that it would be foolish to discount the Palestinians' anger over the dual standards that currently govern the Oslo process, especially in regards to Jerusalem. "The Israelis", argues Mr. Husseini, " say we must be creative about the 400 Jewish settlers in Hebron. We want the same creativity for the 160,000 Palestinians who live in East Je-rusalem." Regardless of the dramatic success of Israel's Jerusalem policy in altering the geographic and demo-graphic realities of Jerusalem, the basic rights of the Pa-lestinian residents cannot be ignored. Any political sett-lement over the future of Jerusalem must incorporate both the basic rights and the national aspirations of the Palestinian people.

Hope, as always, may come from unexpected places. As demonstrated in this paper, much of the success Israeli governments, in particular the Jerusalem munici-pality, have enjoyed in pursuing their discriminatory po-licies in the city, have stemmed from the broad, Israeli consensus concerning the city's future. However, there are serious chinks in the Israeli consensus that can be opened to give Palestinian Jerusalemites a chance to pursue their aims. While the vast majority of Israelis would say it is an absolute must that Jerusalem remain united, few can define exactly what that means. Field research conducted in the fall of 1995 showed that less than 50% of Israeli Jerusalemites surveyed could correc-tly define the municipal boundaries. Furthermore, only 6% of the Israeli-Jerusalemites could name more than 9 of the Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem. Fi-nally, 53% of those surveyed had no objections to the idea of an independent Palestinian municipality. A re-cent survey scheduled to be published in the Israeli dai-ly Ma'ariv shows that a slight majority of Israelis favor moving the capital to Tel Aviv. While Israel clearly has the upper hands in terms of physical power, there is no reason it must continue to win the public relations war. At this critical juncture, Palestinians must be vigilant in making their legitimate rights to the city widely known and respected, not only in the international community, but in Israel as well.

Where there is a political will, there is a way to reach a negotiated solution for Jerusalem. However, Israeli sett-lement construction and attempts at forcing a Jewish majority in all parts of the city have prejudiced and will continue to prejudice the outcome. The onus is current-ly on Palestinian Jerusalemites to present a united front with concrete development plans to ensure their aspi-rations for Jerusalem will be met in a satisfactory man-ner.