On the Future of Jerusalem
By David M. Weinberg
BESA Center Perspectives No. 510, June 27, 2017
https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/future-jerusalem/

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: A close look at the situation in eastern Jerusalem
reveals contradictory movements: radical Islamicization vs. closer
integration with Jewish Jerusalem. Both trends are on the rise
simultaneously. Despite the complicated circumstances, united Jerusalem
under exclusive Israeli sovereignty is the key, not an obstacle, to peace
and security in the city.

1. Islamicization in Jerusalem

The fireworks and fanfare of the Jerusalem liberation jubilee have shoved
under the radar the realities of an unruly situation in eastern Jerusalem.
Alarm bells should be ringing about the nefarious intensifying involvement
of Erdoğan’s Turkey and other radical Islamist groups in eastern Jerusalem
political and social affairs.

Details of these dark developments can be found in a recent expose published
by Dr. David Koren and Ben Avrahami, the advisors on eastern Jerusalem
affairs for the Municipality of Jerusalem. Their article, “Eastern Jerusalem
Arabs Between Erdogan and Israel,” published in the new Hebrew intellectual
journal Hashiloach (Vol. 4, May 2017), comes from intimate familiarity with
the thicket of contradictory interests, tensions, and disagreements that
inform daily life in Jerusalem.

According to Koren and Avrahami, there has been significant erosion in the
status of the veteran eastern Jerusalem mukhtars and the influence of Fatah
political infrastructures and Palestinian Authority leaders. Into the vacuum
have stepped elements identified with Hamas, with the northern faction of
the Islamic Movement in Israel, and with the Muslim Brotherhood in its wider
context.

Through a series of civic associations, nonprofits, and grassroots
organizations, sometimes at the neighborhood level and sometimes more
extensive, they are investing tens of millions of dollars per year in dawa
(missionary) activities, mainly charitable enterprises and educational
programs to attract the young to Islamic values.

There is a direct line, say the article authors, from civic dawa to
radicalization and active enlistment in the armed struggle against Israel.
This includes active social networking which glorifies terrorists, martyrs,
and prisoners, and explicitly calls for violent resistance to Israel. These
networks were also the source for the libel that al-Aqsa is endangered by
the Jews/Zionists, and for dissemination of an incredible volume of
disinformation related to Israeli actions on the Temple Mount.

The authors ask for particular attention to the mounting involvement of
Erdoğan’s Turkey, which is the worldwide Brotherhood’s main patron. Turkey
now enjoys unprecedented popularity among the residents of East Jerusalem,
the authors write. The Turks’ public support of the Palestinian cause and
adoption of the al-Aqsa issue, and their decision to inject millions of
dollars into East Jerusalem, have won them great sympathy and support.

The Turks fund a great part of the dawa activities in the city, with Sheikh
Ekrima Sa’id Sabri as the lead Turkish agent. (He is a former grand mufti of
Jerusalem appointed by the PA and today the most prominent representative of
the Muslim Brotherhood in the city). The Turkish consulate in Jerusalem, the
Turkish government assistance agency, and a string of Turkish organizations
that have local branches in Israel or the West Bank, are directly implicated
in this subversive activity too. As a result, Turkish flags today fly
everywhere in eastern Jerusalem and prominently on the Temple Mount as well.

The Turks also have injected significant sums to those who do their bidding
on the Temple Mount, for various activities such as Quran-recitation groups,
transportation of worshipers to and from the mosque, iftar feasts in
Ramadan, renovation and cleaning campaigns, and the like. In general, the
Islamist forces on the Temple Mount operate, intentionally or not, to Turkey’s
benefit and the detriment of Jordan. They may believe that the replacement
of the Jordanian presence by a Turkish presence would be a positive and
welcome development.

The main loser here is Jordan, which long enjoyed the status of Guardian of
the Holy Places and protector of the Arabs of Jerusalem. This also is the
context of the PA’s intensive activity in the international arena, and
especially at UNESCO, ostensibly intended to protect the Islamic holy places
against an Israeli takeover. This tactic allows the PA to convey to its
critics that it is the true defender of al-Aqsa and Jerusalem against the
threat of “Judaization,” while at the same time gnawing at Jordan’s historic
role as guardian of the Mount and seeking to counteract the emerging Turkish
dominance in Temple Mount affairs.

Attention should be devoted also to another mounting force in Jerusalem, the
Islamic Liberation Party, or Hizb ut-Tahrir, which has several thousand
supporters in the city. This Salafist group, like ISIS, seeks to proclaim a
global Islamic caliphate from al-Aqsa. It has acquired growing influence on
college campuses throughout the West Bank, including al-Quds University near
Jerusalem. Sheikh Issam Amira of the al-Rahman Mosque in Beit Safafa is the
group’s most conspicuous preacher, and he enjoys freedom of activity and
speech on the Temple Mount.

While the Liberation Party does not advocate violent jihad, some party
members could “advance” from a Salafi mindset to a Salafi-jihadist outlook
and join the ranks of ISIS. This may explain, say Koren and Avrahami, the
presence of ISIS cells and ISIS operatives in Jerusalem, such as Fadi
al-Qunbar, who carried out the terrorist truck-ramming attack in East
Talpiot in early 2017, and the ISIS cell that was apprehended in the Shuafat
refugee camp several months earlier.

In short, the disintegration of Palestinian secular nationalist
organizations and institutions in eastern Jerusalem, alongside Israeli
torpor, has facilitated the rise of Islamist factions and hostile foreign
actors.

The enlarged foreign presence in the heart of Israel’s capital touches the
deepest chords of the issue of Israeli sovereignty in the eastern part of
the city; and this presence cannot be easily eliminated.

My conclusion from this is that Israel must move vigorously to “recapture”
eastern Jerusalem. While significant security action and determined
diplomatic maneuver are clearly mandated, Israel also will have to assume
full responsibility for the services that eastern Jerusalem Arab residents
need, with major budgetary repercussions.

2. Encouraging Integration in Jerusalem

Koren and Avrahami also present a more optimistic side of the situation. As
opposed to the Islamicization described above, they describe a
countervailing trend that is gaining steam among eastern Jerusalemite Arabs.
Many Arabs, they say, are moving towards greater integration with Israeli
society.

To understand this, one must know the numbers and the legal situation.

There are some 320,000 Arab residents in Jerusalem (plus 50,000 residents of
Judea and Samaria who reside in the city illegally or by virtue of family
reunification). They constitute about 37% of the Jerusalem population and
20% of the Arabs within Israel’s overall borders. About 100,000 of Jerusalem’s
Arabs live in chaotic neighborhoods that lie within the municipal boundaries
of Jerusalem but are on the other side of the security fence.

The Arabs of Jerusalem are relatively young and impoverished. According to
the National Insurance Institute, 83% of the children in East Jerusalem are
below the poverty line, as against 56% of Israeli Arab children and 39% of
Israeli Jewish children in western Jerusalem.

Residents of eastern Jerusalem have the legal status of permanent residents,
which in practice is the same as that of foreign nationals who want to live
in Israel for a protracted period. This status grants them the right to live
and work in Israel without the need for special permits (unlike Palestinians
in Judea and Samaria). It also entitles them to benefits under the National
Insurance Law and the National Health Insurance Law. As permanent residents,
they are eligible to vote in municipal but not in national elections.

Obviously, these social and health benefits rank high among the reasons for
which Palestinians prefer to live within the municipal boundaries of
Jerusalem, even though they could obtain cheaper and better housing
elsewhere.

Eastern Jerusalem Arabs “are entangled in a thicket of contradictions,”
write Koren and Avrahami. “They assert their Palestinian national identity
alongside an unprecedented demand for Israeli citizenship; throw stones at
the light rail while using it; harass visitors to Hadassah Hospital on Mount
Scopus but value the care that Arabs receive in its clinics and wards;
protest the enforcement of planning and building laws in Arab neighborhoods
while calling for an increased police presence there to maintain public
order; campaign against any manifestation of normalization with Israel in
tandem with a tremendous interest in learning Hebrew and an increasing
preference for the Israeli rather than the Palestinian matriculation
certificate…”

Koren and Avrahami believe that more and more residents of eastern Jerusalem
understand that there is no alternative to Israeli control of the city on
the horizon, and that they will always be better off under Israeli
administration. In fact, the last Washington Institute survey in eastern
Jerusalem, conducted in June 2015, found that 52% of Arab residents would
prefer to become citizens of Israel, whereas only 42% would want to be
citizens of the Palestinian state, even after a peace accord.

As mentioned, there is a vast increase in the numbers of eastern
Jerusalemites filing applications for Israeli citizenship; more than 1,000
in 2016. Other indicators of belonging are the many programs to learn Hebrew
that have been established in eastern Jerusalem in recent years; the
mounting preference to send children to schools that lead to Israeli high
school matriculation; and the soaring demand in eastern Jerusalem for
pre-university preparatory programs subsidized by the Israeli government.

Arab Jerusalemites also have responded enthusiastically to the municipality’s
opening in eastern Jerusalem of employment centers, community councils at
the neighborhood level, and a high-tech incubator.

In addition, notice has been taken of the Jerusalem municipality’s major
effort to reduce the disparities and improve the level of services and
infrastructure in Arab neighborhoods, with an emphasis on roads (more than
NIS 50 million a year) and classrooms (NIS 500 million over the coming
decade).

“In our eyes,” write the municipality Arab affairs advisors, “even the
protest demonstrations by eastern Jerusalemites in Safra Square, in front of
City Hall, are not nuisances, but rather a welcome phenomenon that expresses
a de facto recognition that the municipality is the appropriate address for
solving their problems. This is the fruit of normalization.”

“We believe that, despite their Palestinian national identity, broad sectors
of the eastern Jerusalem Arab population have come around to a pragmatic
attitude about Israeli authorities. Increasingly, they see Israel not only
as a culprit to be blamed for their difficulties but as the only possible
source for solving their problems and turning their lives around.”

“There are many Palestinians in eastern Jerusalem who have reached the
instrumental level of exploiting the advantages offered by the western half
of the city and would now like to participate in Israeli society at a deeper
level – learning from it, mingling with it, and even joining it. An
expression of this is the growing number of eastern Jerusalem teenagers who
are doing civil service after high school.”

Koren and Avrahami argue that Israel must invest in these propitious trends,
for they have strategic implications both for the unity of the city and its
security situation. “In another decade or two, the teenagers who today
engage more deeply with Israeli society will be the pragmatists who moderate
Palestinian society.”

During recent rounds of violence, they note, teachers and principals went
out into the streets to get their pupils to curb their emotions and avoid
attacking innocent persons, both Arabs and Jews. “In another decade, perhaps
these teachers will be joined by businesspeople, community activists and
cultural figures who endeavor to introduce mutual respect and sensitivity to
the turbulent reality of Jerusalem.”

3. Why Jerusalem Can’t Be Divided

Proposals for political division of the Jerusalem are legion and
bandied-about internationally with little connection to reality. These plans
were developed with an eye towards allowing slices of the city to become the
capital of a Palestinian state; and for some Israelis, such plans also are
meant to rid Israel of problematic parts of the eastern sector.

A thorough consideration of these proposals leads to the conclusion that
they are unworkable, unwise, and most of all – unjustified.

The worst plan is that of former MK Haim Ramon (of the Labor and Kadima
parties) for unilateral Israeli withdrawal from 28 predominantly Arab
neighborhoods in eastern Jerusalem. Ramon would have Israel callously cut
200,000 Arabs out of Israeli Jerusalem and build a very big and impermeable
wall between the two parts of the city.

This will save Israel some three billion Israeli shekels ($850 million) in
services to the cut-off Arabs, Ramon argues, and reduce the percentage of
Arabs in Jewish Jerusalem from 40 to 20 percent.

Ramon’s proposal for unilateral, brutal division of the city is jarringly
reminiscent of the disastrous Gaza disengagement, with the addition perhaps
of alligators in a Jerusalem moat and Berlin-style kill zones on either side
of the border.

The ugly idea undoubtedly would lead to a worst-possible security situation.
The belligerent cleaving of Jerusalem into Arab and Jewish sovereignties
would plunge the city into battle. Jerusalem would become the bull’s eye of
radical Islamic fantasies; a city that would make Belfast at its worst look
like paradise.

The main reason for this is that any section of Jerusalem under Arab rule
without an Israeli security presence will immediately become Ground Zero for
the fierce wars being waged within the Arab world over Islamic lifestyle,
ideology and legitimacy.

Each of these forces will seek to prove its supremacy and bolster its
legitimacy by gaining control and then attacking western Jerusalem. What
better way to prove loyalty to the Islamic cause than to attack the rump
Israeli presence in the city (including the Old City) from a base of
operations flush up against Ramon’s brilliant barrier?

Ramon’s plan also ignores the strategic argument that full Israeli control
over greater Jerusalem envelope is the linchpin for the country’s grand
security posture.

As Major General (res.) Gershon Hacohen and Professor Efraim Inbar of the
BESA center have written, Jerusalem anchors the critical west-east axis that
runs from the coastal plain to the Jordan river.

Israel’s long-term hold of the strategic arc from Jaffa to Jericho, they
assert, necessitates Israeli dominance in and around Jerusalem. This should
be buttressed by settlement in E-1, the expansion of Maale Adumim eastwards,
and the reinforcement of Israel’s military and civilian presence maintaining
a defensible border in the Jordan Valley.

Another plan, which enjoys the support of various Palestinian political
elements, would redistrict the city into independent boroughs with separate
Palestinian and Israeli municipalities.

No physical barrier would divide the two parts of the city, and a joint
agency would coordinate between the two city halls. Somehow, overall
security would remain in Israeli hands.

Koren and Avrahami believe that the strongest opposition to this proposal
will be voiced by Jerusalemite Arabs themselves – who see the Palestinian
Authority as a corrupt and failed regime that has no commitment to provide
services to citizens.

They suspect that Jerusalemite Arabs would flee from the eastern to the
western half of the city in such a situation, in order to maintain their
Israeli health, education and social security benefits, and to enjoy Israeli
cultural and political freedoms.

They argue that the “two municipalities” plan also won’t work because it
ignores the shared routine of daily life has developed in united Jerusalem
in domains such as transportation, employment, healthcare and shopping. This
makes municipal division unwieldy and unfair, if not impossible.

“A look at the map of the city makes plain that Arab and Jewish
neighborhoods are interlocked and sometimes only a few meters apart, and
they live off the same municipal infrastructure. The Jerusalem light rail
system, which occasionally has been subjected to a hail of stones by
Palestinian rioters precisely because it is a symbol of the utility of a
united city, is a good example of this reality.”

Taking all this into account, it is astonishing that many international
observers still assume that splitting Jerusalem will lead to prosperity for
the city and to peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

More likely, the opposite is true: A partitioned Jerusalem will die, and
lead to violence that will suck the lifeblood from the city in every way –
culturally, religiously, economically and more.

Consequently, Israel unabashedly should be reminding everybody that for past
50 years it has managed the complicated city with sophistication and
sensitivity. It has sagaciously developed the city from a backwater town to
a truly radiant international capital city sparkling with energy and
creativity – open to all.

Israel should, perhaps, be even blunter, and state core truths such as this:
Israel has developed Jerusalem as an attractive city because it cares;
because Jerusalem is the historic centerpiece of Jewish peoplehood and of
the modern State of Israel.

The Arabs and Palestinians, however, don’t really care about Jerusalem; they
never have. In fact, they would consider it a triumph if Jerusalem were so
wracked by conflict and poverty that it was ruined for 1,000 years – just as
long as it would be lost to the Jews.

In short, a united Jerusalem under exclusive Israeli sovereignty is the key,
not an obstacle, to peace and security in the city. The violent bisection of
Jerusalem would be patently unwise, exceedingly unfair to Jewish history,
and an undue insult to Israel’s fine stewardship of the city.


David M. Weinberg is director of public affairs at the Begin-Sadat Center
for Strategic Studies and a diplomatic columnist for The Jerusalem Post and
Israel Hayom newspapers, in which portions of this article were first
published.

BESA Center Perspectives Papers are published through the generosity of the
Greg Rosshandler Family