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Brief Encounter: Moshe Amirav, ex-Likud city councilor, turned leftist advisor to Barak
Hannan Sher
Israel�s democratic mainstream has one last chance to save Jerusalem from a de facto non-Zionist coalition of Palestinians and ultra-Orthodox Jews, says Moshe Amirav, an ex-Likud activist and city councilor turned leftist.
Though he now says he has quit politics, Amirav last year helped then-prime minister Ehud Barak formulate his position on the final status of Jerusalem in a permanent accord with the Palestinians.
To stop the demographic shift, Amirav proposes a different three-point plan: cede Arab neighborhoods like Shuafat and Beit Haninah, annexed by Israel into Jerusalem in 1967, to the Palestinian Authority; annex secular Jewish bedroom communities like Me-vasseret Yerushalayim and Ma�aleh Adumim to the capital; and introduce a �Marshall Plan� to attract industry and business to Je-rusalem and stop the annual exodus of 10,000 secular Israelis.
�If this doesn�t happen, within the next decade we�ll find Jerusalem as two cities, both dominated by fundamentalism � the Palestinian Al-Quds, and the ultra-Orthodox Holy City,� declares Amirav, who notes that since Israel unified Jerusalem in 1967, the percentage of Palestinians in the city has risen from 18 to 33 percent, while the ultra-Orthodox constituency has risen from 15 to 30 percent.
The Jerusalem Report: What�s changed in Jerusalem�s demography?
Moshe Amirav: It�s not just demography, it�s in the character of the city. Culturally, Jerusalem is becoming a holy city, both from the point of view of Palestinians and the ultra-Orthodox. Both publics are becoming more fundamentalist.
Why has the city become more Palestinian?
Israel made a mistake after 1967. We sought to Israelize the city, and expected that the Palestinians of East Jeru-salem, whom we annexed to Israel, would become more Israeli. Some people even thought that the late Faisal al-Husseini would run for Israeli office, like Israeli Arab Knesset Member Azmi Bishara.
Israel wanted a multi-ethnic city like New York, but got a binational one. The Palestinians aren�t like the Jews or the Italians of New York.
And this state of affairs is largely due to Israel�s policy of building new neighborhoods to Judaize Jerusalem, instead of bringing in industry. All that construction created jobs that attracted Palestinians; 70 percent of all the building that was done in the 1970s, for example, was carried out by Arab workers, many of whom came to live in the city.
But the migration has slowed now.
Yes, but their birthrate is 3.5 percent, about a percent higher than the Jews. And at this rate, the Palestinians will be 40 percent or more of Jerusalem within 20 years.
Are the ultra-Orthodox really taking control of the city administration?
Certainly, they are now the dominant force in municipal elections [which the Palestinians boycott]. Over 80 percent of them vote, while the secular turnout is barely half. They have learned how to take advantage of the democratic process. Just look at the results of the last elections, in 1998. The central Zionist parties got five seats, together � three for the Likud, two for Labor�s One Jerusalem. And the religious parties? Fifteen seats. Nobody has noticed it, but the heads of the major city departments are all ultra-Orthodox.
And they know what�s happening. When I was at City Hall Meir Porush, the Agudat Yisrael leader, once talked to me about closing streets in Orthodox neighborhoods on Shabbat. �Don�t worry,� he told me, �in a few years we�ll also be closing the streets in secular neighborhoods on Shabbat.�
But Mayor Ehud Olmert, of the Likud, is secular himself.
The ultra-Orthodox control Olmert, and he knows it. Seventy percent of those who voted for him are ultra-Orthodox.
And how does this affect secular Jerusalemites?
They�re leaving the city at a rate of about 10,000 a year. Since most of them are middle-class, Jerusalem is becoming poorer. A couple of years ago, it became Israel�s poorest city � when Bnei Brak gave up that honor.
Are these two parallel trends, of increasing Palestinian and ultra-Orthodox domination, irreversible?
Not quite. There�s still time, barely, to make some important changes in the demography, by changing the borders so that Palestinian neighborhoods, with 220,000 people, are no longer part of the city, by annexing predominantly secular bedroom towns to redress the Jewish balance away from ultra-Orthodox dominance, and by doing something about the city�s economic development, creating jobs so that secular people stop running away. What�s the alternative? Unless things change, Jerusalem will become a holy city of slums. Hardly a place that�s hospitable to our national institutions like the Knesset or the Hebrew University.
(December 3, 2001)
Israel
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