Arab Jerusalem Rehabilitation Program

The Project

Ever since 1967, the Israeli government has encouraged Jews to settle in East Jerusalem by providing incentives such as favorable apartment purchase terms, subsidies, and exemption from municipal taxes in order to secure a long-term Jewish majority in the city. Palestinian Jerusalemites, meanwhile, have been subject to restrictive residency and housing policies, aiming at separating them from the Palestinians in the West Bank and driving them out of the city, and have witnessed the confiscation of their land for the construction or expansion of Israeli settlements.

These settlements form two rings around the city - the inner ring in East Jerusalem and the outer ring (‘Greater Jerusalem’) reaching far into the West Bank - isolating Arab East Jerusalem, cutting the West Bank in half, and imposing economic strangulation as the city is the natural center for all trade and movement routes in the Palestinian Territories. Today, six years after the signing of the first Oslo Accords, Arab Jerusalem is facing an increasingly critical situation and the prospects to recover it as the Palestinian future capital in more than just a symbolic sense are decreasing dramatically.

The overall goal and purpose of the project presented here was to examine ways and means to ensure and shape a viable future for Arab Jerusalem and to provide local communities with technical and organizational counsel in formulating and implementing local developmental strategies to this end. The project focused on an outline for the rehabilitation of Arab Jerusalem local communities and drew various scenarios of what can be done and what will happen if nothing will be done.

The following maps shall illustrate this in a simplified manner: the left map shows Jerusalem according to the current situation, the map in the center suggests an outline for the rehabilitation of Arab East Jerusalem focussing on the connection of the hinterland, and the map to the right shows the situation that will most likely result in the event of failing to deliver such an outline. It should be noted here that since PASSIA’s seeks to represent a viable option for the rehabilitation of Arab neighborhoods, it focuses on suggestions that do NOT prejudice the current urban prospects as imposed by Israel.

purple = Israeli West Jerusalem blue = Israeli settlement

red = Arab Jerusalem neighborhoods light orange = urban periphery (Bethlehem, Ramallah)

dark orange (middle map) = suggested outline for rehabilitation

The project’s crucial core was the establishment of a database on the socioeconomic situation and physical infrastructure from which vital information could be drawn to enable drafting and assessing urban development and regeneration policies. In order to explore the feasibility of such a comprehensive project PASSIA conducted a pilot project to evaluate methods and results for local community-involved planning. PASSIA commissioned Land Use Planning and Documentation Consultant Jan de Jong to undertake a baseline survey for a pilot area, comprising northeastern East Jerusalem (Anata, Hizma, Az-Za’im, ‘Isawiyya, and Shu’fat Refugee Camp), and to create a Developmental Constraint and Potential Inventory, using aerial photography, topo-cadastral maps, terrain exploration and statistics, for one local community (Anata).

The compilation of the database was not an easy task given the lack of reliable data and detailed up-to-date information on the Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem and a Palestinian local administration, which must operate without standardized guidelines for civil administration, including creating and keeping municipal records. There is, for instance, no full registry of local citizens – the backbone for whatever developmental planning -, there is none other than the simplest of cadastral registration (without a record of transactions); there are no records on the maintenance of public facilities, of public health, employment, household income, etc. What the PASSIA pilot project was able to collect only came after an extraordinary effort of project staff and local residents.

From its outset, the project promoted a citizen-oriented ‘bottom-up’ approach, involving representatives from the local community (i.e., Anata) in the various stages and tasks of the project, including fieldwork and data compilation. The designs of previous development initiatives are striking in their keeping a disturbing distance from the concerned population, whereas the approach here produced highly practical and applicable information and valuable feedback on various development options. At the same time, awareness among the residents was raised with regard to both the status quo (including Israeli future plans) and options how to deal with the given situation.

Out of the compiled information a profile of developmental needs and constraints was generated and visualized in the form of theme-maps, which allow for the exploration of the prospects and options for local community development both thematically and in detail. The set of maps outlines selected features such as housing and other socioeconomic conditions (e.g., household, members, household-set-up date, kind of residence/dwelling, rented or owned, full or shared land property, garden, sewage, electricity, household amenities); availability of services, infrastructure and public facilities (maintenance, sewerage, power supply, roads, greenery, water supply, schools, clinics, chambers of commerce, etc.), land issues (land use, resource and ownership, land zoning schemes, and land categories), development constraints and potentials, cultural-historical sites, and the impact of nearby Israeli settlements.

One option featured and illustrated is the so-called ‘null-option’, i.e., the likely situation in 15 years time, if no decisions are taken on the examined points and identified current trends (such as deterioration of living conditions, overcrowding, decrease of socioeconomic capacity, pauperization, environmental hazards, etc.).

The findings allow to answer questions such as what is the pressure on housing capacity, how much additional living space is needed, how much is enabled by the authorities, how much is really set aside? What pressures can be recognized on amenities such as green spaces, or on cultural-historical sites and characteristic traditional architecture? What communal private and public space is left accessible to citizens on account of official zoning plans? What access to socioeconomic resources is enabled on account of plans for neighboring communities or of adjacent land use schemes (nature reserves, combat training zones, Israeli settlements, etc.).

With providing such an elementary information tool that can be used and viewed by citizens, local councilors, institutions, etc., the project hopes to facilitate municipal-level decision taking and mobilize civil self-initiative in protecting and restoring Arab Jerusalemite neighborhoods. Furthermore, based on the findings of the pilot project, recommendations for development needs, possibilities and priorities can be made, which could become a yet unavailable but invaluable source for both the local population and potential funders.

The pilot project was kindly co-funded by the Canada Fund for Local Initiatives, Ramallah, and the British Consulate (Small Grants Scheme), Jerusalem.