Arabs on the outside
Sherifa Shawara wants to get married. She wears fashionable skinny jeans and studies geography and history. The second-year college student doesn"t lack for suitors. The problem is where she lives.
One young man trying to visit her in Nuaman, a Palestinian village inside Jerusalem (al-Quds), was turned away by "Israeli" soldiers guarding the entrance to her community from the West Bank. Nonresidents cannot enter.
Another suitor backed off when he realized that making her his bride would banish him from Jerusalem (al-Quds), the city of his birth. Although Ms. Shawara lives within the "Israeli"-drawn boundaries of Jerusalem (al-Quds), she holds a West Bank ID and could be arrested if she"s caught inside the city but outside her village. She can"t travel, study, or work in Jerusalem.
Palestinian West Bankers can"t reach her. Palestinian Jerusalemites don"t want her. She is cut off from the city: a similar reality that one-quarter of the city"s Palestinian residents, a new report says, may soon face as "Israel"s" security barrier zigzags around the city, creating a new boundaries.
"I can"t move. I can"t go anywhere," says Shawara, locking her arms across her chest and gazing bitterly into the distance. "Last week, the soldiers told me my name wasn"t on the list and I couldn"t go home. Recently, we went shopping and bought a lot, and the soldier wouldn"t even let us enter the village in a taxi, so we had to carry it all on foot."
Her story is just one of numerous examples of how life in this city - which lies at the heart of the "Israeli"-Palestinian conflict - is fast becoming less penetrable and more gerrymandered. As the boundaries around Jerusalem harden, Palestinians are being shut off not only culturally but economically as well. Critics of the wall say these new burdens will only cultivate more anger toward "Israel".
Residents never got Jerusalem IDs
Nuaman is located on land considered by "Israeli" law to be part of the united city of Jerusalem. "Israel" annexed the Palestinian eastern part of the city, which had been under Jordanian rule, after the Six Day War of 1967. But residents of Nuaman were never issued al-Quds IDs.
Palestinian residents of the city are affected not just by the concrete barrier, portions of which were being added even as this reporter visited several sites over the course of two months, but by expanded checkpoints and restrictions.
For instance, "Israeli" authorities have stopped giving al-Quds ID cards for marriage or "family reunification." Even if Shawara married another Jerusalemite or an "Israeli" citizen, she wouldn"t be allowed to reside in the city legally.
In many places outside urban areas, "Israeli" officials point out that the barrier is actually an army-patrolled, electronically monitored fence. But here in Jerusalem, it is an almost 30-foot high wall, and parts that are now demarcated with fencing are scheduled to become a concrete wall.
It"s unclear why the people of Nuaman wound up living within Jerusalem (al-Quds) without "Israeli" identification. Almost all residents of East Jerusalem whose neighborhoods "Israel" annexed after the Six Day War were made permanent residents, but Nuaman somehow was left off the map. "Israel" refers to the area only as Mazmuriya, named for a Roman archeological site.
The "Israeli" army referred all questions about this issue to the Interior Ministry, which deals with matters of citizenship and residency. An Interior Ministry spokeswoman said all related questions now fall under the aegis of the Ministry of Defense (War), which not could be reached for comment.
Lt. Col. Shlomo Dror, the spokesman for the Coordinator of Activities in the Territories, an office which is assigned to be a liaison between the "Israeli" authorities and Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, says that Nuaman"s difficulties will eventually be smoothed out.
"We know about the people there. Some of them are not legally there, but we are not going to push anyone out," says Mr. Dror. "We"ll find a solution for this problem. Maybe, one day, the fence will be in another place, or maybe that part of East Jerusalem (al-Quds) will be part of the West Bank."
Security or demographics?
The somewhat amorphous limits of what "Israeli" politicians call the "Jerusalem (al-Quds) envelope" are making an impact on far more than just a few hundred residents of Nuaman, whose numbers are decreasing due to the squeeze. Rather, various nongovernmental organizations say the changes are part of ongoing plans to finish the wall in Jerusalem - and to leave some 50,000 Palestinians outside the city line.
For other Palestinian Jerusalemites, like the 30,000 residents of Shuafat Ridge, the wall means they are being pushed to the periphery. They are card-carrying Jerusalemites but are being left on the wrong side of the wall.
The "Israeli" group Ir Amim ("City of Peoples"), which focuses on bringing local and international attention to the implications of current policy on the prospects of an equitable, sustainable "Israeli"-Palestinian peace solution that includes Jerusalem (al-Quds), is about to release a report that shows the proportion of the Palestinian population that will soon be excluded from city"s population count.
"One of the lesser discussed aspects of the barrier, but one with tremendous bearing on the future of the conflict, is its separation of some 55,000 Palestinians - close to one-quarter of the Palestinian population of the city - from Jerusalem (al-Quds)," reads the report, an advance copy of which was provided to the Monitor. "This exclusion drastically reduces residents" quality of life, separates them from their city, and reorients them, by default, to the West Bank."
The report, due to be released later this month, indicates that the barrier will "de facto add 164 square kilometers (63 square miles) of West Bank territory to metropolitan Jerusalem," land that is currently outside Jerusalem"s municipal line. "On the other hand," the report continues, "it cuts inside the city line in a number of places, thereby excising Palestinian residents from the city."
Ir Amim"s report, based on statistics and maps from "Israeli", Palestinian, and UN officials, shows how significantly these changes could tilt the demographic balance here, in which the Jewish majority has been slipping for decades. When "Israel" occupied and then annexed East Jerusalem (al-Quds), the demographic ratio between Jews and Palestinians was 74 percent to 26 percent, the report notes. By 2004, it had shifted to 66 percent to 34 percent.
The report directly calls into question "Israeli" proponents" arguments in favor of the wall: that it is an antiterrorism measure and not a land grab. The Ir Amim study, which tracks the impact of the changes on Palestinian Jerusalemites in several areas, is the first indication that the wall is apparently being drawn with the explicit goal of improving "Israel"s" demographic hand. (For "Israel"s" reaction to claims within the report, see below)
History of the wall
None of the changes can be properly viewed outside the complicated continuum of the "Israeli"-Palestinian conflict.
Following the outbreak of the second intifada in September 2000, "Israel" sought construction of the wall with its announced claim of needing to protect its settlers from self-sacrifice bombers.
"Israel" clamped down on travel inside the West Bank and on access routes into "Israel", particularly via Jerusalem (al-Quds).
But the long view of the rising ramparts around the city indicates a steady continuation of the unilateralist agenda forged by former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who began construction of the wall. Mr. Sharon led the country in the unprecedented step of pulling soldiers and settlers out of Gaza in September 2005. The theoretical underpinning for that move was also based on crunching population numbers: Had "Israel" not left Gaza, it would have been a few years away from losing its Jewish majority in the total territory under its control.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is drawing the same conclusions - and similar lines.
"Olmert must give Kadima some substance and distinguish himself. Otherwise, this party will simply fall apart," says Shlomo Aronson, a political scientist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. "Sharon, and, later on, Olmert, had a certain agenda: unilateral disengagement, including from parts of the West Bank, and the completion of the separation fence is part of that."
"The terms of Jerusalem (al-Quds) have been altered radically, and it doesn"t bode well for future negotiations," says Yanai, an American-"Israeli" lawyer.
"It"s such a starkly unilateral act - to the Palestinian street, but also on a policy level. This is a huge shift in the status quo, and that has a major impact on "my negotiating power" versus "your negotiating power,"" she explains.
"I think it"s possible to say there"s also a shift in anger and frustration and despair.... And if you start to make people"s lives miserable and impact their economic stability, you start to perhaps undermine the stake people have in maintaining that relatively stable security situation."
As for Shawara, she is still hoping for a marriage ticket out of Nuaman.
But leaving, her mother says, is a mistake: it would mean abandoning their land to "Israel", and that, she says, is what "Israel" wants. At the same time, there isn"t much left here for them: "Life was a little better a year ago," says Fatma Shawara. "Now, it"s unbearable."
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