Permanent Palestinian Residents of Jerusalem are Entitled to Israeli Citizenship

What is the present status of Jerusalem? According to Israel, Jerusalem is a united city and will remain so. In 1980, Israel passed the "Jerusalem Law", stating that "Jerusalem, complete and united, is the capital of Israel", thereby formalizing its annexation of East Jerusalem.1 Surely this means that those born in Jerusalem are entitled to Israeli Citizenship by birth. There are many Palestinian permanent residents of East Jerusalem, who do not hold Israeli Citizenship and do not have equal rights to West Jerusalem Israelis even though they were born and lived there for generations.

In the 1967 census, the Israeli authorities registered 66,000 Palestinian residents (44,000 residing in the area known before the 1967 war as East Jerusalem; and 22,000, in the West Bank area annexed to Jerusalem after the war).2

These East Jerusalem Palestinians were born in East Jerusalem and have been living in Jerusalem for generations. They suffer from discrimination and are disenfranchised. Many live in poverty and the infrastructures in the areas where they live are poor. Their education facilities are not as good as in Israel proper. Jerusalem unity is totally artificial demographically and in practice. East Jerusalemites do have the vote in Municipal Elections

If one examines the East Jerusalem Facts and Figures 2017 published by The Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), this is clear.

It is an infringement of human rights when East Jerusalem Palestinians born in Jerusalem are denied Israeli Citizenship. They should have the option of applying for Israeli Citizenship. If East Jerusalem is part of Israel, as the government claims on the grounds that Jerusalem is united, then its citizens should have equal rights to those living in Israel proper. Internationally the status of East Jerusalem is controversial and when it suits Israel to view it as not part of United Jerusalem vis a vis its Palestinian permanent residents, something's not right.

Since the annexation of East Jerusalem in 1967, Israeli authorities have promoted the two-fold goal of expanding the city’s Jewish population and reducing its Palestinian population. Various steps have been adopted to achieve this objective, including the isolation of East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank, land appropriation, and discriminatory policies on planning and construction and budget allotment. Furthermore, although the annexation of East Jerusalem and its residents was a decision made by Israel and not by the people who live there, Israeli authorities treat East Jerusalem Palestinians as if they had made a voluntary decision to immigrate to Israel. Therefore, the authorities void Palestinians’ residency status and social benefits if they do not meet the restrictive criteria originally formulated for foreign residents.3

Daniel Seidemann, an Israeli lawyer specializing in issues related to Jerusalem and its residents, told Al-Monitor that the residency issue for Palestinians in East Jerusalem has been left vague by a collective Israeli decision-making process.4  

One cannot really have it both ways. Jerusalem is united when it comes to consideration of automatic citizenship for Jews living there according to the Law of Return, but not for Palestinian permanent residents born there. This is discrimination no matter how one views it. If there was an Arab East Jerusalem not part of the same Jerusalem Municipality and a separate entity, part of Palestine, then the eternal status of being a permanent resident of East Jerusalem would be justified

The cabinet this week approved a plan submitted by Education Minister Naftali Bennett and Jerusalem Affairs Minister Ze'ev Elkin to encourage schools in East Jerusalem to teach an Israeli curriculum as opposed to the Palestinian school curriculum.5 If this is the case, surely this strengthens the East Jerusalem Palestinians’ case for Israeli Citizenship if they so desire.

Integration of schools in Jerusalem with Jewish and Palestinian children studying together from a young age will contribute to true coexistence without any side compromising on their culture. By achieving this, both sides will learn to accommodate each other in friendship and understanding. Both sides will learn from each other about each other's’ culture and traditions.

There are reports a few years ago of a growing trend amongst East Jerusalem Permanent Residents applying for Israeli citizenship.

If Jerusalem does become the shared capital of a future Palestinian State and Israel if this will occur, which I doubt very strongly under the present circumstance, the East Jerusalemites would have a clear choice in that matter. Jewish neighborhoods built by the government on land annexed to Jerusalem in 1967, in which 190,000 Israelis presently live; These large settlements were originally built in order to prevent such a solution and to isolate East Jerusalem from the West Bank.6

What is clear at present is that the present status of East Jerusalemite Palestinians is unsatisfactory for the reasons mentioned earlier in this article.

1. 28 May. 2017, http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2017/05/jerusalem-capital-israel-170524091310050.html. Accessed 16 Jun. 2017.
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Jerusalem. Accessed 18 Jun. 2017.
3. "East Jerusalem | B'Tselem." http://www.btselem.org/topic/jerusalem. Accessed 16 Jun. 2017.
4.  28 Mar. 2017, http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2017/03/israel-ruling-grant-jerusalem-palestinians-residency.html. Accessed 16 Jun. 2017.
5.  29 May. 2017, http://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/Israel-to-introduce-education-curriculum-in-east-Jerusalem-494235. Accessed 16 Jun. 2017.
6. https://settlementwatcheastjerusalem.wordpress.com/a-brief-history-of-east-jerusalem/. Accessed 18 Jun. 2017.

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Netanyahu in Vengeance Mode

The 15 members of the UN Security Council had voted. 14 countries voted for Resolution 2334 condemning the settlements and their expansion while the US abstained, allowing the resolution to be passed.

PM Netayahu in "vengeance mode"

The reaction of PM Benjamin Netanyahu was hysterical, vengeful, lacking in logic, and unnecessary. He is behaving like a spoilt child who did not get what he wanted - the US veto on the resolution.

Netanyahu and his team had lobbied the members of the Security Council, many of whom are close friends of Israel, not to support the resolution but failed. He is unable to come to terms with the fact that the world does not support the building of settlements in the occupied territories nor their expansion. THIS RESOLUTION IS NOT AGAINST ISRAEL as Netanyahu is trying to convey to the Israeli public in order to woo the extreme right into his camp from Naftali Bennett’s extreme right wing Bayit Hayehudi Party. Apart from that, building settlements contravenes International Law and the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Israel does not accept this.

Israel has built 145official settlements and about 100 unofficial settlement “outposts” and permitted 560,000 Jewish citizens to move to East Jerusalem and the West Bank (as of early 2013). [1]1

 Even the Israeli Supreme Court accepts that settlement building and expansion in occupied territory is illegal. This is the reason why the Amona settlement is destined to be disbanded by an Israeli Court decision.

Netanyahu is calling in ambassadors of the various countries for a reprimand. Jerusalem. (CNN) Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu summoned the US ambassador and launched a scathing attack Sunday on the Obama administration after its refusal to veto a UN Security Council resolution condemning Israel's settlements in the West Bank. [1] He is also threatening Senegal with sanctions. Poor Senegal! I guess paranoiac Bibi feels that Senegal is a threat to Israel’s existence. He behaves as if the world wants to destroy Israel and he is firing from every corner like a spoilt child who does not get what he wants.

East Jerusalem and with it all the holy sites including the holiest Jewish site - the Western Wall - is also considered occupied territory according to International Law. Ouch! This is a problem and a real hot potato. Perhaps East Jerusalem should have been given special status allowing free access to all faiths to pray at their respective holy sites unhindered under international control rather than Israeli control until such time as East Jerusalem’s final status is resolved by negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. Both the EU and the UN, even though they still refer to the Corpus Separatum Plan, speak about an Occupied East Jerusalem and envision a two-state-solution with East Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian State and West Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. [2]

Meanwhile Netanyahu’s paranoid, hysterical ranting and raving against the UN Security Council members will strengthen BDS as well as the Palestinian standpoint and this could also ignite more terrorist acts against Israel.

There is really nothing new in Resolution 2334. It has been the US standpoint for many years. In fact, this resolution has also condemned Palestinian violence and rhetoric against Israel as well as Palestinian terrorist activity. (See link to Resolution 2334 at the beginning of this post)

Under the present circumstances, there does not seem to be any light at the end of the long tunnel of intransigence as far as negotiations between the two parties are concerned. While there is a total stalemate between the two parties to negotiate a settlement in order to arrive at the Two State solution, the status quo will continue. While Israel faces constant terror attacks from the Palestinians, including lone wolf stabbing, car ramming and general suicide terror, there is no way that Israel will ever withdraw from the territories and leave a vacuum as the US did in Iraq in 2003 after the demise of Saddam Hussein. This resulted in ISIS terror all over the Middle East. If an highly unlikely unilateral withdrawal from the West Bank and the uprooting of illegal settlements occurs there would be chaos and bloodshed that Hamas and its Jihadist allies would initiate against Jews and non-Muslims. The scenario will be a nightmare!

There is nothing that could be an alternative to direct negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians to end the conflict as well as the occupation.

The vengeful mode of PM Netanyahu will not solve anything. His only hope to maintain this mode is to wait until President-Elect Donald Trump takes over from President Back Obama on 20th January 2017 in the hope that he and his team will propose a resolution cancelling Resolution 2334. The chance of this happening is very remote.

1.                 

                   1.        http://www.cnn.com/2016/12/25/politics/israel-un-settlements-netanyahu-ambassadors/. Accessed 27 Dec. 2016.

3.                 

                          2   http://www.kas.de/palaestinensische-gebiete/en/pages/11509/. Accessed 27 Dec. 2016

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Is it Moral to Oppose the Occupation?

A military checkpoint along the route of the forthcoming West Bank Barrier (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Is it moral to oppose the occupation? Yes! Is it practical? No!

The morality of ending the occupation is an unanimous “yes” which echoes from the world community. The raising of eyebrows on saying “no” to the practicality of ending the occupation is almost like a two-edged sword aiming at Israel’s heart.

Occupation of another people by a nation for the purpose of land grabs does not deserve support and is morally indefensible. It is colonizing another nation that have a right to be independent and elect the government they wish by democratic and transparent elections. Of course reasonable democrats agree with this and rightly so.

Does this apply to Israel? Of course it does, but there is one massive problem that prevents this from being achieved. I have written many articles on Israel’s establishment in 1948 not being recognized by its Arab neighbors. Israel’s establishment had been legalized by the UN on 29 November 1947 after the majority of member states had voted for partition. Within days of Israel’s establishment on 14 May 1948, wars were waged against Israel for the purpose of annihilating her.

There was never any desire by the Arab States to make peace with Israel and this of course includes the Palestinians. This was 20 years prior to the June 1967 War which Israel had won, resulting in occupying the West Bank including East Jerusalem, Gaza and the Golan Heights. Prior to that there were no “occupied territories” and there were still attempts to declare war on Israel for the sole purpose of its annhilation, and “driving the Jews into the sea”. It is obvious to any objective observer that it is not the occupation that is the problem but Israel’s existence. The occupation of territory is a result of a war foisted onto Israel by Egypt in June !967 in order to destroy her. The capture of territory was a result of that war that Israel did not initiate or want. In this case the occupation may be viewed as fait accompli  because of that war. If Israel had lost there would have been mass genocide and “ethnic cleansing” of Jews living in Israel.

Israel’s greatest error was establishing settlements in the territories occupied, and populating it with many right wing, religious zealots amongst a hostile Palestinian population, rather than declaring the territories a closed military zone with a status still to be negotiated in a peace settlement that would guarantee its return to the Palestinians prior to the war. This in itself created tremendous friction between Israelis and Palestinians and complicated the situation even further.The expansion of existing settlements in the West Bank at the expense of expropriating Palestinian lands for that purpose is also not justified morally and weakens Israel's case.

Today we have players that are far more extremist on both sides not readily amenable to realistic negotiations.

On the Palestinian side, there is the Palestinian Authority under Mahmoud Abbas, who is weak and ineffectual as well as lacking support from the Palestinian People. Hamas has far more support than Abbas and plays a very important role as it has more support in the West Bank than the PA. Hamas will never allow Abbas to sign a peace treaty with Israel, which would be the first step in ending the occupation of land since June 1967.

Hamas will never agree with any form of negotiations with Israel on a Two State Solution and an end to the occupation. It is dead set on Israel’s total destruction and a Palestinian State replacing Israel. The rhetoric of glee coming from the Palestinian leadership – Hamas, and the Palestinian Authority - after every terror attack, is further proof of the irreversible hate against Israelis and closes the door of any form of rapprochement.

B’tzelem executive director of the human rights group,Hagai El-Ad, addressed the UN on 14th October 2016 condemning the Israeli occupation He wrote an article in Haaretz Oct 16, 2016 stating his reason for addressing the UN:

“There is no chance Israeli society, of its own volition and without any help, will end the nightmare. Too many mechanisms insulate the violence we conduct in order to control the Palestinians.

I spoke at the United Nations against the occupation because I am striving to be a human being. And human beings, when they take responsibility for an injustice against other human beings, have a moral obligation to take action.

I spoke at the United Nations against the occupation because I am an Israeli. I have no other country. I have no other citizenship and no other future. I grew up here and will be buried here. I care about the fate of this place, the fate of its people and its political fate, which is my fate, too. And in light of all these ties, the occupation is a disaster.

I spoke at the United Nations against the occupation because my colleagues at B’Tselem and I, after so many years of work, have reached several conclusions. Here’s one: The reality will not change if the world does not intervene. I suspect that our arrogant government also knows this, so it’s busy fear mongering against such an intervention.

Intervention by the world against the occupation is just as legitimate as any human-rights issue. It’s all the more so when it involves an issue like our ruling over another people. This is no internal Israeli matter. It is blatantly an international matter.

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Here’s another conclusion: There is no chance Israeli society, of its own volition and without any help, will end the nightmare. Too many mechanisms insulate the violence we conduct in order to take control of them. Too many excuses have accumulated. There have been too many fears and too much anger – on both sides – over the past 50 years. In the end, I’m sure, Israelis and Palestinians will end the occupation, but we won’t do it without the world’s help.

The United Nations is many things. Many of them are problematic; some of them are really foolish. I don’t agree with them. But the United Nations is also the organization that gave us a state in 1947, and that decision is the basis of the international legitimacy of our country, the one where I’m a citizen. And with every day of occupation, we not only chew away at Palestine with delight, we also destroy our country’s legitimacy.

I don’t understand what the government wants the Palestinians to do. We have ruled their lives for nearly 50 years, we have shredded their land to bits. We wield military and bureaucratic power with enormous success and get along just fine with ourselves and the world.

What are the Palestinians supposed to do? If they dare demonstrate, it’s popular terror. If they call for sanctions, it’s economic terror. If they pursue legal means, it’s judicial terror. If they turn to the United Nations, it’s diplomatic terror.

It turns out that anything a Palestinian does besides getting up in the morning and saying “Thank you, Rais” – "Thank you, master" – is terror. What does the government want, a letter of surrender or for the Palestinians to disappear? They won’t disappear.

We won’t disappear either, nor will we be silent. We must repeat it everywhere: The occupation is not the result of a democratic vote. Our decision to control their lives, as much as it suits us, is an expression of violence, not democracy. Israel has no legitimate option to continue this way. And the world has no option to continue treating us as it has so far – all talk and no action.

I spoke at the UN Security Council against the occupation because I am optimistic, because I am an Israeli, because I was born in Haifa and live in Jerusalem, and because I am no longer a young man and every day of my life has accompanied our control of them. And because it is impossible to carry on like this.

We must not carry on like this. I spoke at the UN Security Council against the occupation because I am striving to be a human being”.

After reading what he said in his address, I got the impression that he was morally correct but at the same time altruistic and unrealistic. Also his address was very naive and played into the hands of Israel’s enemies in the UN. However, from a practical point of view he was not correct. If there were no Palestinian terror attacks on innocent people, irrespective of their creed, Hagai El-Ad’s speech would be justified. By his speech, he has placed B’tzelem in the camp of Israel’s haters who are not human rights oriented, nor do they care about human dignity. Their collective silence on Jihadi movements in the Middle East, including their indifference to the widespread massacres in Syria is conspicuous by their silence. They are vociferous in supporting UN resolutions against Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, while at the same time they do not condemn the vilest Palestinian terrorist murders of innocent people.

The sickening double-standard, hypocritical justification of terror is viewed as a “legitimate fight by the Palestinian victims of the occupation against the cruel occupier - Israel”. They do not view Islamist or Palestinian terror as evil but rather as heroic deeds of bravery. B’tzelem, whose purpose is to monitor human rights abuses by the IDF in Israeli occupied territories, is a just and moral cause. However, fighting to end the occupation without any peace agreement that is watertight in ensuring Israel’s security and right to exist, is not a moral cause and deserves condemnation. Hagai El-Ad is playing into the hands of Hamas that also opposes Israel’s occupation which is synonymous to supporting Israel’s destruction and total replacement of Israel with a Palestinian state. Differentiation between the occupation and Israel’s total destruction is not on the Hamas agenda. Hamas is a factor that cannot be overlooked as it has more support than the PA by far.

The mantra of “ending the occupation” really means ending Israel’s existence. If this mindset is dominant then “ending the occupation” is no option. Mahmoud Abbas knows that he does not have the power or support of Hamas to sign a peace treaty with Israel to end the occupation and establish an independent Palestinian State alongside Israel. If he does, his life will be endangered. This is a fact and negotiations with Abbas to end the occupation are an exercise in futility while Hamas has the strength and final say. As it is, Abbas is viewed as a traitor by the majority of Palestinians as well as an ally of Israel and the US. This also explains why no general elections have been held for many years.

If we look at the bigger picture, it is obvious that ending the occupation, despite the question of morality, is not an option when the “partner” is not prepared to negotiate or recognize Israel’s right to exist.