Israeli report warns of Palestinian majority in Jerusalem in 20 years

An Israeli report published this week warned that Palestinians will make up the majority of the Jerusalem’s population within 20 years despite the Occupation policies in the city which seek to ensure a Jewish majority by all means to prevent any future partition of the city. The report also pointed out that demolition and confiscation strategies are the devices used to achieving that.
 
Issued by the Israeli Macro Centre for Political Economics in partnership with the Washington-based Friedrich Ebert Foundation, the report that was presented to the Knesset (parliament) for discussion found that: “In spite of the Israeli activities and policies that aim at preventing the Palestinians from becoming a majority in the city, with their continuing natural growth, if nothing is done about it, Jerusalem would become a bi-national city.”

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It added that “despite the policy of land annexation since the year 1967, the Arab population in Jerusalem is on the raise and it would become the majority after 20 years especially that it has grown to 35% of the city’s population in comparison with 25% 43 years ago.”
 
According to the report, the fundamental mean which was available for the Israeli authorities was the confiscation of land, and that was mostly applied on privately owned land, but there are doubts about achieving the goal to create a Jewish predominant population in the city despite persistent attempts by the Israeli governments over the past years.
 
The report states that since capturing East Jerusalem in 1967, the Israeli authorities annexed more than 24,000 Dunams (35% of Jerusalem’s total size). It noted, “While 50,000 housing units were built for the Jewish population, the Government granted aid to less than 600 Palestinian units, the last of which was built about thirty years ago.”