Since its occupation of Jerusalem in 1967, Israel has implemented a series of policies and strategies aimed at changing the demographic character of the city, expelling its native population and replacing them with settlers. These policies which across the years have evolved and assumed diverse shapes, have come to include all aspects of life in Jerusalem where both the human being and the territory are being targeted. Following October 7, these policies have become ever more explicit and clearer, occurring at a faster pace. This paper strives to review the most salient of these policies, focusing on the latest developments in the city in the period between October 2023 and August 2024, and through four contexts: expanding settlement, control over education, imposing taxes and arbitrary fines, and destruction of homes.
Expanding settlement in Jerusalem
Following October 7, the Israeli occupation regime escalated its settlement building activities throughout occupied Jerusalem. The British Guardian newspaper reported on April 17, 2024, that settlement projects in Jerusalem had greatly increased in recent months whereby, at a time when Israeli institutions had ceased or greatly limited their activities in the aftermath of October 7, the settlement plans grew apace and at an unprecedented speed. [Burke,2024]
Another report in Haaretz pointed to the fact that, two days after the October events, the local settlement council in Jerusalem approved expanding the settlement of Kidmat Zion built on Palestinian land in the Ras al-`Amud quarter, which involved building 384 settlement units in the first stage and on an area of 79 dunums, and capable of further expansion to reach 1200 units. [Hassun, 2023] Furthermore, the provincial council agreed on December 3, 2023, to build a new settlement quarter on the lands of the Palestinian town of Sur Bahir to be called the “lower canal” where 1792 new settlement units are to be built. For the first time, the Israel Land Authority is working to present and carry through this scheme.
In the south of the city, geographical continuity with Bethlehem has become impossible because of settlement schemes, where the authorities are working to expand the settlement of Har Homa, built on the lands of Mount Abu Ghunaim, and to build 540 new settlement units. Furthermore, 1275 new units are being built in the Givat Hamtuz settlement on the lands of the Palestinian town of Bayt Safafa. On September 5, 2022, the council agreed to build a new settlement to be called Givat Hatchakid (or “almond hill”) on the lands of Bayt Safafa and Sharafat on an area of 37 dunums, expropriated for that purpose in 1995. The settlement to be built will include 695 units. To be noted is the fact that this settlement abuts the 1949 ceasefire line which passes through part of the town of Bayt Safafa occupied in 1967.
The Jerusalem Human Rights Center has, during the period from October 7 and until the time of the present writing, documented 19 settlement schemes in Jerusalem, ten of which have been approved and nine tabled for discussion by various committees. New settlement units have reached 19,287 in number and on an area of 2607 dunums. The occupation regime strives thereby to isolate the Palestinian quarters in Jerusalem and prevent them from expanding, and to increase the number of settlers within the demographic war being waged on the city. Thus, the number of settlement units planned indicates that the number of settlers in coming years in East Jerusalem could rise to more than 96,000,[1] to reach a total of 347,000 settlers. It is also clear that the occupation regime seeks to separate the Palestinian quarters from their hinterland in the West Bank, thus killing any chance for Jerusalem to become the capital of a Palestinian state. All this is taking place in full view of the whole world and considered flagrant violations of international law which regards Jerusalem as an occupied Palestinian city.
Control over the educational system in Jerusalem
The occupation regime has laid out diverse plans to dominate the Palestinian educational system in Jerusalem which caters to 110,000 students of both genders. In 2017, the occupation formulated a five-year plan to gain total control of that system. In addition to already existing budgets, that regime allocated an additional budget to the tune of some 2.2 billion shekels, 900 million of which were devoted to controlling the Palestinian educational sector. [documents of the Israeli Ministry of Education]. Palestinian society in Jerusalem can now experience the effects of that plan and budget through the unprecedented expansion of the Israeli curriculum, the Bagrut, as well as derailing the Palestinian curriculum, printing new copies of school textbooks, and imposing their being taught in all municipal schools and all private schools that receive partial funding from the Education Ministry.
Since 2017 and until the present writing of this report, 12 additional inspectors have been appointed by the Israeli ministry to oversee Palestinian education in Jerusalem. The most salient result of that appointment has been inspections of textbooks, and threats to stop funds for private schools, as happened with al-Iman, al-Ibrahimiyya, al-Mutran and other schools over the past two years.
In addition, this policy was accompanied by closure of the Palestinian Directorate of Education in Jerusalem and an onslaught on schools in its remit. The occupation regime succeeded in reducing the number of students studying at Jerusalem schools attached to the Ministry of Religious Endowments (Awqaf) of the Palestinian government from 18% in 2015 to 10% in 2022, according to statistics issued by the Palestinian Ministry of Education.
According to a fact sheet published by the Jerusalem Human Rights Center in August 2023 about education in Jerusalem, around 110, 293 students (excluding kindergartens) study in 249 schools in East Jerusalem.
The more disquieting factor as regards schools in East Jerusalem is class capacity. This is so because the natural growth of the population in East Jerusalem is 2.5% annually, requiring instituting 80 new classes each year, yet current allocations hardly satisfy half that requirement. [Jerusalem HR Center, 2023]
Schools subject to the Palestinian Authority can absorb around 31,000 students and serve more than 45,500, which means that there is dire need for 560 additional new classes, in addition to 80 annual classes to meet the need of the coming five years. [Jerusalem HR Center 2023]
Irrespective of all other factors cited above, the occupation regime announced in 2019 its intention to suspend all licenses granted to UNRWA schools in East Jerusalem. It plans to replace these schools where about 1800 students study with schools run by the municipality of the occupation regime and with support from the Israeli Education Ministry.
Following October 7, 2023, and right up to the end of April 2024, the Israeli education ministry took some decisive and final measures as regards the schools of Jerusalem, especially towards approved but non-official schools, i.e. local and private schools, and specifically schools partially funded by the Israeli ministry. These measures had to do with the use of the Palestinian curriculum, and included sudden break-ins and inspections which took in all these schools, specifically in the period between November 2023 and March 2024. Inspectors broke violently into classes, searched school satchels and examined the textbooks used by teachers. Following these break-ins and searches of some schools and then discovering Palestinian textbooks, several measures were adopted. These included temporary suspension of the partial funding by the Israeli Ministry, interrogation of school principals and other school administrators, and sending these schools letters warning them that their licenses would be withdrawn. This led other schools to withdraw their Palestinian textbooks from students and teachers and replacing them with other heavily slanted books published by the Israeli Ministry to avoid continuous disruptions of their schooling. Among the schools that were subjected to such vicious sanctions were al-Iman, al-Ibrahimiyya, and al-Mutran [interviews with school principals, 2024].
The policy of imposing taxes, arbitrary fines, and other punitive measures
Since the start of Israel’s occupation of Jerusalem, the occupation regime, through its various arms and especially the so-called “Municipality of Urshalim al-Quds” has sought to impose exorbitant taxes on the Palestinian inhabitants of the city in general, and in the Old City in particular. Among these taxes the “Arnona” is first and foremost the one most common and of greatest effect on the Palestinian population. It is a tax imposed by law on owners of buildings and lands and the tax is determined according to estimates of the kind and area of a building. It is also determined according to the type of use. If commercial, the arnona rate is higher than it is if the building is residential.
The occupation regime has used this tax as an important measure to expel Palestinian inhabitants from Jerusalem, since the arnona rate is very high. For example, a citizen pays for each square meter of a residential apartment with a total area of no more than 118 meters around 60 shekels annually. Owners of apartments larger than 118 sq. meters pay 90 shekels annually. Although the Jews of Jerusalem also pay this tax, discrimination is obvious. Jewish quarters are treated differently where provision of services is concerned [data on arnona on the Municipality’s website].
The arnona has also been employed as an important instrument and means of the occupation to determine a Palestinian’s residence in the city. In all dealings by the occupation, and specially by the Ministry of the Interior, a Palestinian is required to produce arnona slips to show that he/she is a Jerusalem resident, failing which the residence permit is revoked. [Nasir al-Din-Tabaji, 2024]. Hence, we see how the occupation regime has employed taxation, and especially the arnona, as a means to expel the Palestinian population of Jerusalem.
But since October 7, 2023, and until the present writing, the taxes and fines have assumed a punitive and revengeful nature and course. Numerous fines have been imposed on citizens for the flimsiest of reasons that cannot be considered justified or reasonable, such as the presence of cigarette stubs outside house doors or even of tree leaves. These measures were applied more strictly against those accused of resistance or political activism. [The Iron Fist, 2023]
One example is what happened to the family of the martyr K.M. from the quarter of Bayt Hanina in Jerusalem where the occupation regime ordered the closure of the family apartment located in a building which included 9 other apartments. The order was carried out in April 2024. Concurrently, the occupation municipality issued a writ of infringement against the entire building in November 2023, claiming in warnings issued to all its residents that the building was constructed in 1997 without obtaining a construction license which meant that the municipality intended to order the demolition of the entire building. On top of all this, and when occupation forces assaulted the martyr’s house, accompanied by inspectors from the municipality, these inspectors found an old washing machine at the building’s entrance (not on the main street or the pavement) as well as cigarette stubs and tree leaves in the building’s yard, and presented the martyr’s father with two separate fines.
The same occurred when Israeli forces broke into the house of the family of the martyr K.A. in the Shiyah Quarter in Jerusalem where these inspectors imposed fines on the residents of the building after having found pigeon droppings on the roof.
During December 2023, the occupation troops and the municipality broke into the house of an activist, N.H., in the Sawwana quarter in Jerusalem and a fine was imposed on the owner of the building where N.H. rents an apartment because the jasmine tree at the wall of the garden had extended its branches outwards, and also because they found an old and abandoned car parked inside the yard of that building because it had no license, and despite the fact that it was not in working order or being used.
Tens of such examples exist which demonstrate that the occupation regime in Jerusalem strives, in the wake of October 7, to implement a policy of collective punishment against Palestinian society in general and Jerusalem society in particular.
The policy of revoking residence permits and citizenship of the Palestinian population of Jerusalem
As soon as Israel occupied East Jerusalem in 1967, it began to implement laws and policies broadly aimed at Judaizing the city of Jerusalem, undermining the Palestinian presence in it to the greatest possible extent, and turning the Palestinian population into a minority living amongst a Jewish majority.
Following that occupation, the Israeli government exerted its efforts to survey and register the Palestinian population of East Jerusalem[2] in order to keep a close tab on the population and control the demography of the region. It imposed a flimsy legal status on the city’s population represented by right of residence, a legal status which is short of citizenship and places its holder under the constant threat of being deprived of that status at any time. Furthermore, the occupation regime deprived any Jerusalemite not found in the city when the census was taken from his/her right to live in the city. This was part of an Israeli strategy to entrench Israeli sovereignty and dominance over East Jerusalem following its occupation, leaving behind a great impact on the political, social and economic life of the city. [Nasir al-Din -Tabaji, 2024 and the attorney Fatima, interview 2024].
These laws granted the Minister of the Interior very wide powers to revoke residence permits of Palestinians for all sorts of pretexts, such as a Jerusalemite obtaining a residence permit or nationality of another country, or having lived for seven years outside the municipal boundaries of the city of Jerusalem. In that regard, anyone who lived in the Jerusalem suburbs or in an area adjacent to the separation wall or an area designated to fall outside the maps of the Jerusalem municipality, or someone who left the country temporarily, can have his/her residence permit revoked by the Interior Ministry. This is not to speak of cases where permits are revoked for specific allegations to do with such things as “loyalty” or “acts of public disturbance.” [`Ubaidat, the attorney Malik, interview, 2024]
Moreover, Israeli policy with regards to family reunions explicitly forbids a Palestinian from rejoining his/her family if husband or spouse was from the West Bank or Gaza. The laws states clearly that its object is to maintain demographic preponderance for the Jews in the country. Accordingly, these policies and laws are part of an overall Israeli strategy in East Jerusalem and one which has severely impacted the life, legal rights, and freedoms of the Palestinians. As regards family reunions, the occupation regime has pursued a complex policy, which also has to do with birth registration. Before October 7, and during “normal” circumstances, family reunion was a very lengthy process that sometimes lasted three years and marred by bureaucratic complications and proofs of residence in Jerusalem. Therefore, the current situation would indicate that pursuing such cases would hereafter require even more lengthy time periods. [Nasir al-Din -Tabaji, 2024]
Perhaps the greatest nightmare for Jerusalemites is the policy and laws practiced by the Interior Ministry to do with establishing a residence center and national insurance. This stipulates that a Jerusalemite is absent until he/she proves his/her presence and the center of his/her life to be in Jerusalem. Jerusalemites are required to do so by presenting irrefutable proofs derived from various aspects of life, whether it be their place of rest and family, consumption of water and electricity, place of work of spouses, places of study, and so on for other family members. Proof is also required for places where they receive medical care, transact financial dealings and even human relations with family members or acquaintances abroad. All these things Jerusalemites are obliged to reveal and authenticate before the government in order to prove where their lives are centered and thus may be permitted to remain in Jerusalem.
Lawyers at the Jerusalem Human Rights Center have pointed out that the Israeli Interior Ministry’s dealings in occupied Jerusalem have become increasingly worse and more complex since October 7. They noted a distinct change in the manner in which that Ministry deals with Jerusalemites especially as regards proving the city as the “center of their lives”, family reunions and birth registration. In the lawyers’ experience the unannounced policy of that Ministry is moving in the direction of doubting the authenticity of the documents presented to it with the object of revoking residence permits[3] or else of denying reunions and birth registrations, alleging trivial reasons.[4]
Accordingly, permit revocations have gathered pace, and the “soft” eviction of Palestinians continues to mount. From 1967 until 2021 14,727 Jerusalemites have had their residence permits revoked. This policy is the most racist in character and strives to evict the native inhabitants and replace them with settlers as happened in South Africa during the apartheid regime.
The policy of house demolitions and denying construction permits
Data issued by the the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) indicate that the demolitions carried out in the first quarter of 2024 affected 96 buildings in the Jerusalem province of which 44 were homes inhabited by 151 people of whom 59 were children. The `Isawiyya quarter and the Jabal al-Mukabbir area suffered the greater portion of these demolitions, 14 in the former and 13 in the latter.
From these data one may conclude that the occupation regime has laid down a clear policy, illegal on the international and humanitarian levels, which forbids construction by Palestinians inside the walls of the Old City and severely restricts such construction outside it, and has made it impossibly difficult to obtain construction permits, whereas Jews are permitted to construct settlements with the greatest of ease.
Hence, many Palestinians have resorted to construction even without permits as a prime motive for remaining in place and to prepare their homes to cater for the natural increase in family size. To counter this, the occupation regime and its instrument of repression, the Jerusalem municipality, have instituted a number of measures that force the Jerusalemites to demolish their homes with their own hands in addition to other punitive measures such as payment of exorbitant fines and, sometimes, imprisonment.
A fact sheet published in September 2022 by the Jerusalem HR Center entitled “Self-demolition in Jerusalem: Between the hammer and the anvil” indicates a clear rise in self demolitions of homes ordered to be demolished. Figures show that of 98 constructions demolished in the first nine months of 2022, 41 were demolished by their owners.[Jerusalem Center 2022]
Conclusion
In Jerusalem, the occupation regime seeks to impose total control over the city through a series of systematic strategies designed to undermine the Palestinian presence in the city and entrench the occupation in a manner that cannot be reversed.
This paper has attempted to highlight some of these strategies: expanding settlement in East Jerusalem in order to change its demographic character; sundering Palestinian quarters; forbidding any Palestinian expansion; severely restricting construction by Palestinians, and creating extremely difficult living conditions which tighten the noose around them. This is clearly shown in tightening construction permits for Palestinians while easing them considerably for settlement projects, forcing the Palestinians to live in overcrowded conditions or to look for homes outside the city and behind the separation wall like Kafar `Aqab and the Shu`fat refugee camp region. A fact sheet published by the Jerusalem HR Center reveals that one third of Jerusalem’s society[5] resides in regions behind the separation wall and on an area less than 5% of the total area of East Jerusalem.[6] Furthermore, the occupation regime is striving to dominate the educational sector and twist the curricula to suit its political agenda by pressuring schools to adopt curricula that obscure or hide the Palestinian narrative, thus threatening the cultural identity of future generations.
Following October 7 2023, all these measures visibly grew in intensity. Jerusalem has been witnessing a spike in arrests, house demolitions and further restrictions on movement through checkpoints. To this should be added other policies and measures such as revocation of residence permits and disallowing family reunions and birth registration. These are instruments employed by the occupation to decrease the Palestinian demographic presence in Jerusalem and undermine the legal and social status of the Palestinians in the city.
All these measures are designed to create a new demographic and geographical reality which places obstacles before the Palestinians as regards their basic rights in Jerusalem and to prevent Jerusalem from becoming the capital of a future Palestinian state. They further reflect the determination of the occupation regime to impose total control irrespective of the legal, humanitarian, and political consequences, considered flagrant violations of international laws and conventions.
[1] باعتبار أن معدل عدد أفراد الأسرة 5 أشخاص، وأن هناك 19,287 وحدة استيطانية جديدة.
[2] عند احتلال الجزء الشرقي من القدس عام 1967، أجرت سلطات الاحتلال إحصاءً للسكان الفلسطينيين في المدينة ضمن الحدود التي رسمها الاحتلال للقدس، وتم منح السكان الفلسطينيين الذين يسكنون ضمن الحدود الهوية الزرقاء بصفة مقيم، وبالتالي حُرم آلاف الفلسطينيين الذين كانوا جزءاً من محافظة القدس حسب الحدود الرسمية من حق الإقامة في القدس، وسكان قرى شمال غرب القدس، مثل بدو بيت أكسا، والنبي صموئيل، وبيت حنينا البلد، وعناتا، وحزما.
[3] أي التشكيك في أن مركز حياة المواطن هو مدينة القدس.
[4] خلال الفترة الأخيرة، تعامل مركز القدس مع عشرات الحالات التي رفضت فيها وزارة الداخلية إثبات "مركز الحياة" (أي أن مكان السكن ليس في القدس) لأسباب غير منطقية. ونتيجة لذلك، يتعين على المواطن المقدسي مقدّم الطلب أن يثبت عكس "استنتاجات" وزارة الداخلية من خلال تقديم استئناف على قرار الوزارة. من الأمثلة الغريبة التي واجهها مركز القدس، رفض طلب لمّ شمل مواطن/ة فلسطيني/ة مع الزوج/ة بحجة أن فاتورة الكهرباء للشقة في أحد الأشهر كانت أقل من معدل الاستهلاك في السنوات السابقة، ما اضطر المواطن إلى تبرير هذا الأمر أمام وزارة الداخلية.
[5] تشير الإحصاءات المختلفة إلى أن التعداد السكاني الفلسطيني المقدسي (والذين يحملون بطاقات الهوية الإسرائيلية) يصل إلى 362,000 نسمة. في المقابل، هناك مؤشرات إلى أن عدد المقد`سيين الذين يقطنون خلف الجدار 121,000 نسمة (59,400 نسمة في منطقة كفر عقب، و61,500 نسمة في منطقة مخيم شعفاط وراس حميس وراس شحادة).
[6] تُقدّر مساحة القدس الشرقية بـ 75 كيلومتراً مربعاً. في المقابل، تبلغ مساحة المناطق خلف الجدار 3.1 كم2 فقط أي 4.1% فقط.
