Why is Israel funding Jerusalemites' addiction?

The Jerusalemite’s human shield around the city of Jerusalem is quite a marvellous human shield indeed. If it were not for the rather substantial presence of the Palestinian Hebronites in the city, it would have been exposed to extreme danger. It is enough that we see hundreds of thousands of worshippers line up daily in prayer in all Al-Aqsa willing to sacrifice their life and their blood to protect the city.

Israel is concentrating all of its efforts on dividing the people of Jerusalem into individual factions and they have a plan to target each of these factions in an individual way. Israel’s plan of attack is being implemented slowly so that it can permanently phase out the Palestinian presence in the city, little by little and gradually in a frantic war over the city.

Among the groups of Jerusalemites created by Israel is the group that fears for the very essence of its existence as they worry that they will lose their Israeli residency permits, which allow them to live in Jerusalem. There are also groups of people who are being targeted with high taxes, a group forced into labour in the construction and expansion of Israeli settlements, a group of people avoiding everyday murder attempts and finally, a group of people that is simply preoccupied with the complexities of everyday life.

In addition to all this, a number of strange reports have been leaked on the reality of the problems that are currently facing Palestinian Jerusalemites and this includes unfortunate stories of the city’s youth who have allowed themselves to become the new recruits of Israeli gangs that specialise in automobile thefts among other crimes. One cannot forget to mention the unusual emergence of drug rings in Jerusalem, which have taken over the city in quite an unusual way.

The facts that have been presented on the ground indicate that the presence of drugs in the Jerusalem area is quite a catastrophic development which will have many dangerous consequences on the city’s inhabitants. Perhaps the most significant consequence of all is the decreasing presence of the city’ inhabitants around the holy sites and the fact that their addiction and dependence on drugs ensures that they remain financially drained and without any definite sense of security.

The spread of drugs within Jerusalem’s Arab circles indicates that the occupation has infiltrated the city on many levels and that the end goal behind these destructive policies is ultimately to destroy the city’s popular infrastructure via many different means such as, drugs, high taxes, increasing debt and the increasing threat of imprisonment etc.

Moreover, there are no Arab institutions present that could counter or balance these racist policies against Jerusalemites. Thus, the challenge of standing up to Israel’s policies remains the sole responsibility of the city’s Palestinians; that it is an individual struggle that each Jerusalemite has to ultimately face on his or her own.

Despite all of these unfortunate circumstances, one cannot generalise or label Palestinian Jerusalemites as one particular type of people. We must remember that they are human beings that are being forced to act and respond to unfortunate circumstances on a superhuman level. One cannot deny that there are thousands of Jerusalemites who are willing to sacrifice their lives and their safety to protect Al-Aqsa and the Dome of the Rock Mosques in the face of its many confrontations.

One must recognise that the occupation aims to turn Jerusalemites into two different types of people, ones that are forced into cheap labour that aids the occupation’s expansion and others who become the victims of drugs, debt and suffocating taxes. The goal of all this is to break the human shield that the Palestinians have created to protect Jerusalem.

Israel has used all of its power to take over Jerusalem and we have aided this process by allowing Israel to do whatever it wants. The biggest proof of how we are all culpable is that none of us have asked Jerusalemites what they truly need. We merely throw them into the jaws of the crocodiles and ask them from afar: why do you not rise up in anger?

Translated from Addustour newspaper, 5 January, 2015

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