Only 7 per cent of building permits issued in Jerusalem go to Palestinian neighbourhoods where 40 percent of the city’s population lives, official data has revealed.
Over the past five years, according to a report in Ha’aretz, there have been 11,603 building permits issued, only 878 of which were for Palestinian communities (7.6 percent). In 2014 it was particularly low: 188 building permits from a total of 3,238 (5.8 percent).
During the past year, more-than two thirds of the total 158 building permits issued to Palestinian areas in East Jerusalem have been for just one neighbourhood (Beit Hanina).
Further data shows that over the past five years, an average of 200 permits have been issued for Palestinian neighbourhoods; before 2010, the average annual figure was some 400.
After occupying the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967, Israel soon moved to unilaterally expand Jerusalem’s municipal boundaries, illegally annexing Palestinian land from the West Bank to form what became known as East Jerusalem.
East Jerusalem is viewed by the international community as under military occupation, and the Israeli annexation of the land has never been recognised.
The Ha’aretz article expands on the city’s discriminatory building and planning policies:
In Jewish Jerusalem most construction is initiated by the government; either the Israel Lands Authority or the Construction and Housing Ministry prepare plans, invest money in environmental development and infrastructure, and publish tenders. The homes, mostly multi-unit high-rises, are built and sold by contractors supervised by the state.
Meanwhile,
In East Jerusalem, however, there are no government construction initiatives; all the construction is private and generally involves a small number of housing units built on family-owned land. In addition, in most cases, East Jerusalem residents cannot get mortgages because of problems with registering their properties in the Land Registry. Even if they can build their homes legally, they must pay very large sums in levies and taxes, sums that in Jewish Jerusalem are shared by the state, the contractor and the home buyer, who can also get a mortgage.
Speaking to the paper, Jerusalem City Councillor Laura Wharton stated: “Two cities have been created here, one for Israelis, in which there is investment, and one for Palestinians who are strangulated.”
Despite the claims made by Israeli politicians, including Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat, the data shows that the level of inequality in the city is profound and institutionalised. The vast majority of Palestinians in East Jerusalem are ‘residents’, not citizens. More than 1 in 4 of them live in neighbourhoods that are disconnected from the rest of the city by Israel’s Separation Wall.
75 percent of Palestinians live under the poverty line, and only 64 percent of households are properly connected to the city’s water network. Last year, 98 Palestinian structures were demolished, with more than 200 Palestinians displaced.
The discrimination impacts on every area of life: there is a shortage of 1,000 classrooms for Palestinians in the official municipal education system, while only 7 percent of the postal workers operating in Jerusalem provide services to the Palestinian neighbourhoods.