Reply #42: Some more on demolitions and building restrictions... [View All]

[Violet_Crumble]

Jerusalem represents perhaps the most contentious issue in the negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. Palestinians hope to establish their capital in East Jerusalem, while Israel claims that it will not relinquish control over any part of what it considers its eternal, indivisible capital. The process of resolving these conflicting claims will be central to the negotiations on the permanent status of the occupied territories. In the meantime, in the five year interim period between the Declaration of Principles and the permanent status arrangement, both Israel and the PLO agree not to "initiate or take any step that will change the status of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip pending the outcome of the permanent status negotiations" (Article XXXI of the Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip).
Despite this agreement, Israel continues to construct Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem. In May, B'Tselem released A Policy of Discrimination: Land Expropriation, Planning and Building in East Jerusalem. This comprehensive report details the systematic and deliberate discrimination against the Palestinian population of East Jerusalem in all matters relating to land, development and housing construction.

A Policy of Discrimination: Land Expropriation, Planning and Building

Despite being a major city of international importance with an elected municipal council, the municipality seeks to conceal its planning policies, in so far as they affect East Jerusalem. Notwithstanding the legal requirement, there is no overall plan approved for the city and there never has been. Nor has a planning appraisal or policy statement for East Jerusalem ever been published. Nor has there ever been a published assessment of the housing needs of the annexed (Palestinian) population of the city. Nor have the criteria and priorities for conserving the visual setting of the Old City been published, although they are of crucial importance in deciding where development in East Jerusalem ought to be allowed.

The main policy (indeed, the only policy) on Palestinian development has been to restrict it - and thereby to minimise the Palestinian population. The means of doing this has been to operate a 'quota' for new Palestinian housing: this is the maximum number of new Palestinian houses to be permitted within East Jerusalem - a 'Palestinian house' in this context being any house to which the Jewish leasing requirement noted above does not apply. The amount of the quota has never been published. Nor was there any public knowledge of the quota until 1993 when its existence was inadvertently revealed at a meeting of the local planning commission.

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Zoning Restrictions. Whereas in the rest of the West Bank the Israeli authorities have cited ancient plans which give no opportunity for development, in East Jerusalem they have done the opposite. In 1974 the Israeli authorities cancelled the (Jordanian) development plan which had been approved in 1966 and which gave extensive opportunity for development. It was not until the late 1970s that work started on an outline plan for some Palestinian neighbourhoods. The first such plan was not approved until 1984 and at the present time four of the 18 neighbourhoods still have no approved plan 32 years after occupation. In contrast, the time scale for preparing plans for the Jewish settlements has been a matter of months.

Separate 'outline' plans are issued for Jewish settlements and for Palestinian 'neighbourhoods'. This allows different standards and procedures to be adopted for the parts of the city to be inhabited by the two ethnic groups. The plans for Palestinian neighbourhoods have three main deficiencies: They are geographically restrictive, they have insufficient capacity, and the procedures are unsatisfactory.

Demolition and dispossession: the destruction of Palestinian homes