Israel is using the current escalation to change Jerusalem’s demographics

Since the outbreak of the third intifada, the radical right-wing Israeli government has tried with all its might to stifle the clashes over which it no longer has control, as the fire has reached all Palestinian cities. Israel, which has been surprised by the new form and nature of the confrontations, seeks to calm the situation in the West Bank and occupied Jerusalem by intensifying its security measures and collective punishments imposed on the Palestinians. The government believes that this will act as a deterrent.

However, the variables and developments on the ground seem to be going against what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants. This has pushed him to threaten to revoke the blue identification cards carried by thousands of Jerusalemites residing in the holy city.

Israel’s Channel 2 revealed Netanyahu’s intention to form a team of experts to determine the “legal” measures necessary to revoke the ID cards in three neighbourhoods: Shuafat refugee camp, Kafr ‘Aqab and Al-Sawahra. The total population of these three areas is about 100,000 Palestinians. The team was put together during a ministerial meeting on security and political affairs two weeks ago.

In reality, Netanyahu’s words are an execution of the plan made by Israel, the implementation of which began over 12 years ago when it started to build a 46km-long wall to separate large Palestinian neighbourhoods and suburbs from the city centre. These areas included Al-Aizariyya in the east of the city and Al-Ram in the north. The occupation authorities are also planning to separate more neighbourhoods in the future.

According to at least one researcher in Jerusalem affairs, Alian Al-Hindi, Israel’s attempts to evacuate Jerusalemites from Jerusalem are a policy adopted as part of a plan that was established decades ago. This aims to transform the Palestinian majority within Jerusalem into a Jewish majority, with the target of 85 per cent of the population being Jews.

In an interview with Al-Resalah.net, Al-Hindi said that the Israeli government had started implementing this plan after it built the Apartheid Wall and isolated nearly 150,000 Palestinians outside the boundaries of Jerusalem. This is Israel’s move to confiscate the property of Palestinians in the West Bank. Israel affairs expert Alaa Khader agrees with Al-Hindi and explains that the occupation’s intentions are to divide the people of Jerusalem into two groups and to make the Jewish demographic much larger than the Palestinian population.

Khader explained that the Israeli government’s revocation of over 100,000 Jerusalemite identification cards will influence greatly the demographic reality in Jerusalem, and it is being viewed from a religious perspective. He told Al-Resalah.net that Israel is currently seeking to gain complete or partial control of Al-Aqsa Mosque; either temporal or spatial control. He also pointed out that US Secretary of State John Kerry’s last plan legitimises Israel’s presence in the mosque. The implementation of this will have a negative impact on Jerusalemites, who will be prohibited from entering Jerusalem, and it will change the city’s demographic, which will become predominately Jewish, Khader added.

Dr Ahmad Ouda disagrees with both Khader and Al-Hindi. The professor of political science at Al-Quds University believes that it is unlikely that Israel will resort to revoking thousands of Jerusalemite identification cards. Israel’s aim in making such statements, he said, is to put pressure on the Palestinians, especially those in Jerusalem, to calm the popular uprising that has been ignited across the occupied Palestinian territories of the West Bank and the holy city. He added that Israeli law does not allow Netanyahu to revoke the ID cards in such numbers, but that doesn’t stop the Israeli right-wing from using the prime minister’s words to threaten the Palestinians.

In Ouda’s opinion, any attempt to pass a law in the Knesset to revoke the ID cards would be a declaration of war and ethnic cleansing against the Palestinians. Such a move would have serious repercussions across the region and in the international arena, he concluded.

Translated from Alresalah, 29 October, 2015.

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