Casting their votes

East Jerusalemites are in favor of a Palestinian state, but it is unclear whether they want to be a part of it.

By SETH J. FRANTZMAN
Dome of the rock 521 (photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem)
Dome of the rock 521
(photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem)
On a side street near the East Jerusalem Central Post Office, some men gather outside a pet shop that sells small birds, a popular pet for Arabs. One of the men, Radwan, lived in Cleveland, Ohio, for several years.
“Do you speak English? I miss English!” he says to me. “A Palestinian state? Yeah, sure. Why not?” he responds to my query.
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In 1967 Israel conquered east Jerusalem from Jordan and annexed it, expanding the city’s boundaries to a total of 70 square kilometers. For years, a major issue in negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians has been the fate of east Jerusalem.
In 1988 the Palestinian Liberation Organization declared a state with Jerusalem as its capital. In the 1993 Declaration of Principles, also known as the Oslo Accords, the status of Jerusalem was left for future consultations between the two parties. As the Palestinian Authority prepares to bring its case for statehood before the UN, the question of what status Jerusalem will have in that state remains unresolved.
For the roughly 200,000 Arab residents, many of whom have Israeli residency, the future of Jerusalem is as unclear as ever.
In interviews with east Jerusalemites, it is evident that there is a degree of suspicion about why people want to know their feelings about Israel, the PA and Jerusalem.
Part of this suspicion may come from the fact that according to a recent survey, a large percentage of residents actually prefer living under Israeli rule but don’t want to discuss that publicly. A November 2010 survey conducted by Dr. Nabil Kukali of the Palestinian Center for Public Opinion and overseen by Dr. David Pollack found that 35 percent of east Jerusalem Arabs prefer Israeli citizenship to Palestinian citizenship. Another 35% declined to answer. The authors wrote that “despite the city’s crucial political and diplomatic importance,” relatively little research had been done on the city’s Arabs and their opinions.
In interviews I conducted, no one said they outrightly preferred Israel, but many mentioned that despite the discrimination in housing and other affairs, they acknowledged that they were used to the services they received from Israel and were particularly appreciative of the higher pay they received because of working in west Jerusalem or simply being in proximity to Israel.
“People here in east Jerusalem are less interested and less optimistic than in Ramallah and the West Bank [but in terms of the bigger picture], going for a state is the best thing Abu Mazen [PA President Mahmoud Abbas] could do for the Palestinians before he leaves office,” says Ayad Dajani, a member of the younger generation of one of Jerusalem’s oldest Muslim families, summing up well the attitudes of many Arabs in east Jerusalem.
From the market stalls of the Old City to Al-Zahraa Street near the Damascus Gate to the wide avenues of airy Beit Hanina, there is a collective shrugging of the shoulders about what will be a hot September.
Nassir Rahwi, 48, is one of those local Arabs who are active in politics primarily because of what is happening in his neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah. He is a large man with thick hands and a thicker black beard.
After walking with the protesters waving a Palestinian flag, he takes time to chat with two gaunt-looking men from the community, one of whom is his brother.
Rahwi says that he was removed from his house two years ago, and a court allowed Jews to move into the property. This galvanized him to join the Sheikh Jarrah protests.
Rahwi explains that while he isn’t overly excited about the Palestinian bid for statehood, he supports it. “We are involved in this struggle for two years [in Sheikh Jarrah]… I think that the movement of the Palestinians to the UN is the right of the Palestinian people to ask for their rights and end the occupation of east Jerusalem.” He sees the division of east and west Jerusalem as a fact of life that is much deeper than simply a question of politics.
“Even if Israel wants or doesn’t want, Jerusalem is divided between east and west in terms of traffic and public services. We are disconnected from the health services, water, electricity, sewage. We are not together.
So it isn’t surprising if east Jerusalem will be the capital city of Palestine because the state has already made it separate. Now we are disconnected. For it to be the capital will really end the occupation of 60 years. Today we are struggling just to breathe here… I want there to be a better situation after September.”
For him the fact that he has an Israeli ID and receives rights in Israel are meaningless because he views those services and rights as substandard.
Rahwi’s attitude is similar to that of a lot of the people in east Jerusalem. They support the idea of a Palestinian state; they see the city as being divided in terms of services, but they don’t expect much to change after this September.
Dajani agrees. “I pay NIS 100 a month for health care and NIS 400 for national insurance. It isn’t like it is free for us. [What do I get from an Israeli ID?] I can go to the beach, but what use is it for Palestinians to go to the beach and enjoy it with Israelis if there is no peace?” he asks.
“Palestinians want to rule east Jerusalem because Israel’s policy is a dictator policy. The settlers win cases in Israeli courts and take over Palestinian land in Jerusalem.”
Dajani was once involved with Seeds of Peace and studied at the Hebrew University. For a time he ran an Internet café in the Old City. “I wanted to learn computer security, but since I’m an Arab from east Jerusalem, Israeli universities wouldn’t teach me. I had a friend who was a computer expert, and he couldn’t even get a job as a teller at Bank Leumi.” For him, this is evidence that the Arabs in east Jerusalem gain little from having an Israeli ID and would be better off under Palestinian control.
“If we had Palestinian rule, we could get jobs in banks and we wouldn’t subsist on working in cleaning jobs [the kind of low-paying jobs] Israel wants most Arabs to be in.”
ONE OF the problems that east Jerusalem Arabs face is lack of political representation. They have a right to vote in Israeli municipal elections and elections for the Palestinian authority. According to a July 2010 survey by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, only 8% of Arabs in east Jerusalem participated in municipal elections, and only 22% said they have voted in Palestinian elections.
When asked if they would participate in the next PA elections, 39% said they would. If the PA were to ask them to vote in Israeli municipal elections, only 22% would vote. Basically, the findings show that the majority of east Jerusalem Arabs would currently not vote under any circumstances.
This finding of depolitization was the subject of The Rise and Fall of Arab Jerusalem: Palestinian Politics and the City since 1967, published in English by Hebrew University scholar Hillel Cohen.
“In my book I wrote about the depolitization of the Palestinians in east Jerusalem. There are many ways that this happened. Some of this is fear, fear of the response of the Israeli establishment, they fear their houses being demolished, they fear that if they are arrested they will be treated harshly. Another important reason is that they are not sure what they want more: an end to occupation or to live in a relatively stable environment. In addition, they feel neglected and disconnected from the main body of the Palestinians in the territories, partly due to Israeli policies, partly due to Palestinian moves, and this strengthened their unique Jerusalemite-Palestinian identity,” says Cohen.
Another issue facing Jerusalem Arabs is lack of political leadership. Although they live in a political noman’s- land between Israel and the PA, as a group they have often not had political leaders who have articulated their demands. The last leader that many east Jerusalem Arabs remember is Faisal Husseini. Born in 1940 in Baghdad where his Jerusalemite family was in exile from the British, he was the son of Abdel Kader Husseini, a fighter in 1948, and was related to the mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin el-Husseini. Such a pedigree ensured a political career, but he didn’t rise to prominence until the 1980s. A delegate to the Madrid Peace Conference, he was a minister for Jerusalem affairs for the Palestinian Authority until his death in 2001.
Cohen explains that after the death of Husseini, “Fatah [the main political movement in the PLO and the one led by Arafat] saw their politics fragmented and in Jerusalem it was even more so… there was the division among Fatah leaders who returned with Arafat from Tunisia and elsewhere, and local Fatah leaders in the West Bank and Gaza. There was also the division between the supporters of the suicide attacks during the Aksa intifada and those who opposed them. Fatah Jerusalem, in general, was against suicide attacks, but 13 suicide attacks in the city (40% of the total number) were carried out by Fatah members, but none of the by Fatah [members from] Jerusalem… I think one reason for the rejection of suicide attacks by Fatah in Jerusalem was the tradition of the joint struggle with Jews, and the tradition of Faisal Husseini’s [outreach to Jews],” he says.
JOINT POLITICAL activism by Jews, east Jerusalem Arabs and Europeans against Jewish settlers in east Jerusalem has been on the rise in the last few years, particularly in response to Jews moving into Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan. According to Cohen, who recently authored an academic study on this subject, the seeds of this joint political activism began as far back as the 1970s and continued through organizations such as the Alternative Information Center and Peace Now.
Sameh Aweadah and his friend Eitan Grossman are representative of this small minority of Jews and Arabs who protest together in east Jerusalem.
Aweadah was born in 1984 in Jerusalem and lived briefly in the Gulf, where his family was working.
They moved back to Jerusalem in 1992. Today he lives in the neighborhood of Shuafat and studies at the Hebrew University.
Grossman, who was born in 1974, lives in Kiryat Hayovel with his wife and two children. A former combat soldier, he decided several years ago, after seeing the wars in Lebanon and Gaza, that he wanted to be active in the radical Left.
Aweadah explains that while it appears that east Jerusalem Arabs are not politically active, this is not entirely the case. “You have a lot of opinions among people. Some want an end to Israeli rule, some have come to prefer the services they receive from Israel. I personally believe in a binational state for both peoples.
The people in places like Silwan and Sheikh Jarrah, where there are Jewish settlers, are more political; and I think in these neighborhoods you will find more excitement about the Palestinian Declaration of Independence. But in other places, like Beit Hanina, you will see less. If there is going to be any sort of violence or problems after the declaration of a Palestinian state, it will come from Israeli settlers. In all the demonstrations I’ve been to, we have never been violent,” he says.
Grossman has a slightly different perspective. “My impression when I talk to everyday people is that it is rare that they express a desire to have east Jerusalem as a capital of a Palestinian state. Some of that is a feeling of alienation from the PA, and they are afraid of having the capital divided. You can imagine a situation where Jerusalem remains united and functions as a capital of both a Palestinian and an Israeli state.”
AROUND 250,000 Jews live in areas annexed by Israel after 1967 in east Jerusalem. A small number live in Arab neighborhoods.
Arieh King, one of the leaders of Israeli settlers living in predominantly Arab neighborhoods in east Jerusalem, estimates that “We have about 450 families in east Jerusalem [in Beit Safafa, Beit Hanina, the Mount of Olives, Sheikh Jarrah, Silwan, the Muslim Quarter of the Old City]…” King believes that the lack of services in east Jerusalem and the discrimination that its Arab residents face are part of a government plan to make the eastern part of the city so unsightly that the Jews and the Arabs will both want it to be part of the PA.
King argues that today Jewish organizations such as the Jewish National Fund and the Hebrew University are busy allowing their land in east Jerusalem to be occupied by Arabs. He says that wealthy Arab countries are also investing in purchasing land in east Jerusalem and Israel.
“I think this is something that the Jews in the Diaspora need to see. This is not just something that matters for us but also for them. If there is a Palestinian state in Jerusalem, people will not be safe in the Old City or the King David [Hotel]. What my family [who live on Kibbutz Alumim near the Gaza border] suffers near Gaza, the same will be the case [in the Jewish areas of Jerusalem].”
He is not afraid that the Palestinians going to the UN will bring violence. “The only concern I have about the coming weeks is about Bibi [Netanyahu] and [Jerusalem mayor] Nir Barkat. They are the ones that are doing problematic things.”
Back in the Arab community, people are going about their business.
The cacophony of car horns and people hawking food on the street is everywhere on Salah a-Din Street.
Farther away, a woman named Hala who is driving near the American Colony Hotel and works in E-Ram thinks that no one really cares about this issue. “Sure, everyone loves Palestine and we support the state, but people aren’t very interested. It’s my birthday in a few days, and I have to plan a big party in Ramallah. The question is whether I should wear fur and where I can buy fireworks and get a nice cake, maybe at English Cake.
Ramallah is where you should be looking for the real stories about the new Palestine. That is where everything is happening.
Everyone in Jerusalem who wants to have a good life is going to Ramallah, to the restaurants like SnowBar, even me. I wish I could rent an apartment there just to be around all the buzz.”