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Jerusalem is the melting-pot of faiths and should be preserved, not destroyed

September 12, 2014 at 12:16 pm

A senior member of the PLO Executive Committee, Ahmed Qurei, received the Spanish consul general in Jerusalem in his office recently. The meeting coincided with the opening of the academic year. Qurei briefed the consul about Israeli attacks in Jerusalem, especially against Al-Aqsa Mosque, which is in danger of being divided along the lines of what has happened to the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron.

There is still a lot of anger among young Palestinians in Jerusalem about the heinous murder of Muhammad Abu Khudair. This rage swept the streets and neighbourhoods of the city, and led to several casualties and hundreds of people being detained by the Israeli security forces.

Today, in what is left of Jerusalem, life is back to its painful self under Israel’s creation of its own vision of “Jerusalem” which has been ongoing for decades. This “Judaisation” of the city is based on a comprehensive plan developed very carefully, with the participation of many Israeli professionals; it is intended to encompass the whole city, not just West Jerusalem. The plan aims to fragment the collective Palestinian Jerusalemite entity, making individuals linked to Israel’s essential public services and facilities as if they are gifts and not rights.

The creation of Israel’s “Jerusalem” began with the illegal annexation of East Jerusalem and the extension of its border so that today it is ten times larger than it used to be. Equally illegal settlements have been built all around the city so that once-exclusively Palestinian areas are now islands in a sea of settlers. Military checkpoints separate Jerusalem from its West Bank hinterland, so that Palestinians now need permits issued by the occupation authorities to enter their own city.

The apartheid wall has exacerbated the situation, to the extent that Jerusalem’s character and demography has been usurped and changed. The Arab and Western worlds, meanwhile, have sat back and watched all of this happen in an atmosphere of deceit and hypocrisy.

Israel not only took the land but has been obsessed with the eradication of any kind of coherent Palestinian national identity. Hence, it has targeted civil society and closed down, by order of the military occupation authorities, dozens of Palestinian institutions which provided advice, guidance and assistance to the citizens of Jerusalem.

The Israeli planners knew that by undermining pillars of Palestinian society they would tear a hole in the social fabric; that Palestinians would be forced to look to Israeli institutions as alternatives, which would in turn require them to meet certain conditions promoting personal or factional interests. Once Israel succeeded in closing Palestinian national institutions, notably the Orient House, with little or no resistance locally or nationally, it started to impose its hegemony over all aspects of Palestinian life: education, health, social development, social affairs, the economy, permits and licences all fell under Israeli control.

Each of these public sectors requires detailed studies to show, for example, how some Palestinian schools in Jerusalem started to become linked to Israeli money and how this can lead to Israeli control over the curriculum and syllabus content. Once schools, or medical facilities, rely on Israel economically, their staff are tied into a system that can offer conditions of service that no Palestinian organisation can match. Jerusalem’s Palestinian schools and hospitals are left gasping trying to catch up and maintain their increasingly endangered existence.

Jerusalem has been stolen from the Palestinians; its rich history is disgraced; the prayers of its people are robbed; and its remnants disappear as the Israelis work to erase their presence on the ground. Jerusalem is in danger, but the Arabs alone will not save it; they can’t, but in any case are not interested. The rules of the “Game of Nations” are based on and dictated by the interests of the rulers and those around them. As far as the Arabs are concerned, those interests are well away from Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa Mosque.

This lethal bleeding of the city should end. Jerusalem should be maintained as a multi-cultural and multi-religious world centre. It is just plain wrong to reduce it to an entity revolving around a single faith and ethnicity, no matter how sacred some people think that is. Jerusalem needs a national reference point under which all of its people can gather in dignity and independence.

Maybe Ahmed Qurei’s meeting with the Spanish diplomat was merely coincidental and part of a normal round of discussions, but it caught my eye, and I saw in it a confirmation of what Jerusalem needs. The city has always been, and should remain, bigger than any wall and more precious than domes, structures and markets; it is the melting-pot of world faiths and should be preserved, not destroyed for political expediency.

Translated from Al Quds Al Arabi, 4 September, 2014

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.