Jerusalem: The jewel in the crown - opinion

SEPTEMBER 22, 2026 21:00Walking through Jerusalem’s busy Mahaneh Yehuda market on the eve of Yom Kippur, the thought struck me that probably no one in Israel would think of apologizing in prayer to east Jerusalemite Palestinians for what Israel has imposed on them since 1967. Nor, indeed, would most Israelis even be aware of the war crimes, or crimes against humanity, which its ethnic cleansing policies have been incurring since that time of conquest and annexation.To understand Israeli policies of forcible displacement, one must return to those blindly euphoric days of Israel’s 1967 victory. Set out in Chapter 3 of Separate and Unequal, Amir Cheshin, mayor Teddy Kollek’s adviser on Arab affairs, together with Bill Hutman and Avi Melamed, describe in detail the principle behind the zoning and planning of newly conquered east Jerusalem.The concept was “maximum land, minimum population,” denying the false public statements of unity, while sowing the dragons’ teeth today being harvested – especially by those Palestinians who have been “minimized.” So only 13% was zoned, of the 70 sq.km. newly configured as east Jerusalem, for Palestinian residential purposes: land already almost totally built up.Meaning that nearly all Palestinians in east Jerusalem live in “illegal” buildings, without building permits, on land they own and for which they pay arnona (city taxes), but which is zoned as a green area, or for Israeli settlements or frozen land reserves.Palestinian neighborhoods in JerusalemThis explains why there is a dire lack of affordable housing for Palestinians in their city, unless they move to the northern side of the wall (separation barrier to some, apartheid wall to others) where the high-rise slums of Kafr Akab or Shuafat Refugee Camp, housing some 150,000 people, threaten to come crashing down in the next major earthquake.Israeli peace NGO Ir Amim’s report “Planned Negligence” reveals that one-third of east Jerusalemites have been forced there, while Israel’s 2040 Strategic Plan has almost no plans for Palestinian neighborhoods. It “has essentially sentenced hundreds of thousands of Palestinian residents of Jerusalem to the ever-worsening planning chokehold.” This “will drastically exacerbate the crisis beyond the already-astronomical cost that planning discrimination currently exacts from east Jerusalem’s residents.”Arieh King recently told Sky TV that he wants to demolish all “illegal” buildings in east Jerusalem – the number estimated at 20,000. His vision for Jerusalem, expressed to BBC Panorama in A Walk in the Park, is a “Judaized” city, with “Jews all over! All over!”A settler, leading east Jerusalem’s Ma’aleh Hazeitim settlement on the Mount of Olives, he overlooks Silwan’s Al-Bustan neighborhood. During his recent term as deputy mayor, demolitions in Al-Bustan sped up, so that half the neighborhood – over 60 homes – is now a ghostly reminder of Gaza, referred to by 10 UN Special Rapporteurs as “de-Palestinization of Jerusalem.”The responsibility of the international communityThis issue of “Judaization” or “de-Palestinization” of Jerusalem (i.e., ethnic cleansing) is not addressed by the international community’s belated attempt to ensure the viability of a two-state solution nor referred to in the furor over E1 development.The core issue of ethnically displaced Jerusalemites, impacting a future, viable Palestinian state, is totally overlooked. Even if the construction of settler homes, hotels, and an industrial zone in the E1 area is by some miracle reversed, the two-state solution could not survive if Palestinians are removed from Jerusalem. The two issues are inseparable.E1 development is geared to prevent access from the West Bank into the city (north and south access are already efficiently blocked), with that eastern corridor estimated to be a lifeline valued at 35% of a future Palestinian economy due to tourism revenues.Massive E1 building would also facilitate an Israeli-only wedge from Tel Aviv to Jordan – hence Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s knee-jerk response in 2012 to Palestine’s UN observer state status: “We will develop E1!”But where is international outcry calling out Caterpillar or JCB bulldozers for their role in displacing Palestinian landowners? Why is international objection only focused on Gaza and the West Bank?And, despite welcome new moves from words to action by the UK and others, Palestine is still burning, homes in Al-Bustan are disappearing, state-sponsored settler terrorists roam viciously free, while the two-state solution is becoming a historical concept whose demise they enable.The UK and other countries must be guided by the mineshaft’s canaries – the humanitarian community, Israeli, Palestinian, and international human rights actors, and the world’s highest court in The Hague – pressing their third state responsibility to uphold international law and end the Israeli occupation and its racist control mechanisms. This must be done to safeguard Jerusalem, jewel in the crown of both nations, and save our options for peace.Those 10 UN Special Rapporteurs warn about the de-Palestinization of Jerusalem: “These acts must be understood in their totality: the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, by whatever means, whatever the cost, and whatever crimes it takes. This environment is coercing Palestinians to leave their homes and life in a city where their roots run deep.”The experts urge immediate international action, warning: “What is erased now – the richness of Jerusalem’s communities, heritage, and rights – will not be restored. Inaction is not neutrality; it is complicity.”The writer is an Anglo-Israeli peace activist; previously a radio interviewer for BBC arts “Meridian” and a West End actor, she immigrated in 1981 from Johannesburg where, as an anti-apartheid activist, she acted in Neighbours in Soweto.Follow us on Google