This Is How ‘Israel’ Works to Perpetuate Its Occupation of East Jerusalem Forever

The plans of Judaization and settlement deepening by the Israeli Occupation government in East Jerusalem go hand in hand with vast and unprecedented settlement plans in the rest of the cities of the West Bank.

Israeli media reports revealed that settler leaders presented a plan to increase the Israeli population in the northern West Bank, expand existing settlements into cities, and establish new settlements.

In addition, the Israeli government approved a new plan to transform Jerusalem (al-Quds) from Arab to Israeli, a decision that Benjamin Netanyahu said would change the face of the city.

On the other hand, activists called for the development of a systematic plan aimed at confronting the fascist settlement plan in occupied Jerusalem, stressing the need to strengthen support for Jerusalemites and strengthen their steadfastness to confront the plans of the Israeli Occupation.

The Palestinians insist that East Jerusalem is the capital of the future Palestinian state, and that it is an integral part of the occupied Palestinian territories, while “Israel” says that Jerusalem, with its eastern and western parts, is its capital.

 

New Settlement Plan

As part of the Israeli efforts aimed at tightening the security grip, controlling the occupied city of Jerusalem (al-Quds), and deepening the Jewish settlement in it, Benjamin Netanyahu’s government announced, on August 20, a racist plan worth NIS 3.2 billion ($843 million) under the guise of developing buildings and infrastructure in the Holy City, or what is known as the five-year plan.

The decision was proposed by the Minister of Jerusalem Affairs and Jewish Tradition, Meir Porush, in collaboration with the Ministry of Finance, the Jerusalem Municipality, and various governmental agencies.

Porush claimed that the plan aims to reduce the social and economic disparities between the two parts of the city, and described it as responding to about twenty issues that require urgent attention, especially with regard to education and infrastructure, according to the weekly report published by the National Office for Defending Land and Resisting Settlements on August 25.

The new plan came to replace a previous five-year plan that expires at the end of this year, and its budget was cut twice, from NIS 4 billion ($1.05 million) to NIS 2.1 billion ($553 million). One of its most prominent results was the deepening of the differences between East Jerusalem and West Jerusalem, rather than reducing it.

According to the report, the new Israeli five-year plan includes investments in various sectors, including the education sector for the Israelization and Judaization of educational curricula, the employment sector to integrate Palestinians into the Israeli labor market, and the infrastructure sector to enhance settlement encroachment between the two parts of the city.

In addition to the legal planning sector and the design of public buildings to complete the theft and looting of Palestinian lands and register them as absentee property or in the names of Jewish owners and settlement associations, and the resident services sector to expand societal control over the Jerusalemites, in addition to security control.

The report revealed that the Israeli government committed itself in the new plan to build 2,000 apartments for Palestinians in occupied Jerusalem annually, which is an old and false commitment by all standards, and what confirms this is the failure of the previous five-year plan and the continuation of the policy of demolishing Palestinian homes and facilities.

On his part, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said, “I am pleased to lead the largest five-year plan for East Jerusalem... As someone who believes in strengthening Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem as a whole, I see great importance in the five-year plan.”

In turn, the Israeli mayor of Jerusalem, Moshe Lion, said, according to the statement: “The decision that was taken today is a sovereign decision… We are here today to prove in practice that East Jerusalem is an integral part of Jerusalem.”

In turn, the Israeli National Security Minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, announced the allocation of NIS 120 million ($31.6 million) for what he called strengthening security sovereignty in East Jerusalem.

“Another and important step in our relentless struggle to restore personal security in our eternal capital, Jerusalem,” he said in a separate statement.

The Israeli Broadcasting Corporation said that the plan will include increasing the number of surveillance cameras and increasing the number of police personnel in the city.

It is noteworthy that the Israeli government had allocated a budget of NIS 500 million ($131.7 million) for the so-called Holy Basin project to promote settlement and accelerate Judaization in the Old City of Jerusalem.

 

Judaizing Jerusalem

On the other hand, the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs described the Israeli plan as colonial and racist, aiming to resolve the future of the Holy City unilaterally and by force.

The ministry said, in a statement, that the goal of the plan aims to deepen the Judaization of Jerusalem (al-Quds) and change its features in all fields, including limiting the natural population growth of Palestinian citizens, imposing Israeli curricula in schools, and strengthening settlement in and around Jerusalem.

On his part, Al-Aqsa Mosque preacher Sheikh Ekrima Sabri said, in a statement to Shehab News Agency, that the Netanyahu government’s approval of the so-called five-year plan for the development of East Jerusalem aims to Judaize the city and control it completely.

He added that “whoever walks around the west of the city of Jerusalem and then moves to the east of the city will notice the big and clear difference in the services,” pointing out that “the Israeli Occupation continues to prevent the people of Jerusalem from building apartments and places huge obstacles and costs to hinder them from doing so.”

Sabri pointed out that the Israeli settlements are now swallowing up the lands of the city of Jerusalem while the city is under a severe siege aimed at killing it commercially, economically, and scientifically.

Sheikh Sabri noted that millions of dollars are spent on settlement projects in Jerusalem by the global Zionist lobby, and in return, there is no budget for the people of Jerusalem, adding that several institutions have stopped working because there is not enough budget.

In light of this overt Israeli threat to the city of Jerusalem, Palestinians in the city suffer from a lack of funding, services, and legal protection and feel that they face threats of deportation or the withdrawal of their identities.

While analysts believe that this discrepancy reflects a clear difference in priorities, while “Israel” gives the issue of Jerusalem a priority, the Palestinian Authority’s limited capabilities appear to support Jerusalemites in light of the financial blockade imposed by “Israel.”

According to the Jerusalem Institute for Policy Research, which specializes in study and research related to the city of Jerusalem, the population of East Jerusalem in 2020 was approximately 367,000 people, constituting about 39% of the total population in Jerusalem, of whom approximately 74,000 live in Arab neighborhoods outside the apartheid wall.

The poverty rate of Palestinians in East Jerusalem is estimated at about 61%, compared to 32% in West Jerusalem.

The participation rate of Palestinians in East Jerusalem in the labor market in 2021 was about 47%, compared to about 76% among the Jewish population in West Jerusalem.

In turn, Mohamad Halasa, a writer and researcher on Israeli affairs, explained in a statement to Al-Estiklal that there have been continuous attempts for many years to impose an Israeli reality on the city of Jerusalem, especially with regard to its Palestinian residents and everything related to them.

“The new plan comes as a continuation of the previous plans announced by successive Israeli governments, stressing that the Judaization project has not stopped since the first day of the occupation of the city of Jerusalem,” he added.

The researcher also pointed out that the objectives of the Israeli Occupation in this plan are clear, no matter how much they try to camouflage them under the pretext of developing the east of the city. His plan aims to seize more lands in East Jerusalem in order to achieve full control and push the Jerusalemites (Maqdisis) to forcibly emigrate from there.

Mr. Halasa explained that “there are future implications for the new five-year plan, which is to impose the Israeli narrative by forcing educational institutions in East Jerusalem to teach the Israeli curriculum, which makes Israel acceptable and a natural part of the region.”

 

Funding Annexation

In a related context, the Jerusalem Post reported in a report on August 23 that settler leaders presented an ambitious plan to increase the Israeli population in the northern West Bank from about 170,000 people to one million by 2050.

The report stated that the head of the settlement council in the northern West Bank, Yossi Dagan, was the one who initiated the preparation of the plan, as it represents a solution to the problem of the housing shortage in “Israel.”

“The plan includes expanding existing settlements into cities, in addition to establishing new cities, with train lines linking the West Bank to central and northern Israel,” it added.

The publication of this plan comes in light of tension between the Netanyahu government and the U.S. administration over the expansion of settlements and the transfer of the powers of Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who also became responsible for settlement affairs within the Ministry of Security.

The Biden administration had protested against the cancellation of the disengagement law from Gaza and the northern West Bank, which was approved by the Knesset, and the legalization of Homesh settlement, in addition to the legalization of dozens of settlement outposts throughout the West Bank.

It should be noted that since the Netanyahu government assumed power at the beginning of this year, there has been a noticeable increase in the number of settlement decisions in the West Bank, according to the Israeli left-wing Peace Now movement.

The settlers view the current far-right government headed by Benjamin Netanyahu as an irreplaceable opportunity for massive settlement expansion.

During the first half of this year, the Israeli government approved the construction of 12,855 settlement units in the West Bank, according to Peace Now movement data.

The same data indicated that the Israeli government also published tenders for the construction of 1,289 settlement units, which raises the total number of settlement units to more than 14,000.

The Israeli Ir Amim organization, which specializes in Jerusalem (al-Quds) issues, said that the Israeli authorities are discussing plans to establish 7,082 settlement units in East Jerusalem.

On August 18, the Peace Now movement revealed that the Netanyahu government is financing the annexation of lands in the occupied West Bank through an additional budget of $190 million allocated for settlement in 2023–2024.

“Instead of investing in Israel’s future, the Israeli government is pouring money into settlements, perpetuating the occupation, and fueling the conflict and confrontation with the Palestinians,” the movement said.

Over 725,000 settlers are distributed in 176 large settlements and 186 random outposts in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, according to data from the Settlement Affairs Authority of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

In its August 18 report, The Times of Israel revealed Smotrich’s plan to legalize 155 outposts in the occupied West Bank.

It quoted the Israeli Channel 12 as saying that Smotrich recently started with 14 illegal outposts to legalize them.