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Palestinian Affairs: In Limbo
Khaled Abu Toameh
It's almost 4 a.m. and Palestinians are already lining up outside the Ministry of Interior�s East Jerusalem offices, not far from the U.S. Consulate and the American Colony Hotel. Only in four hours� time will they, and the hundreds of other Arab residents of Jerusalem who join them, be admitted in order to carry out routine but essential tasks, like obtaining passports or birth and death certificates. Some men earn a living by coming early and securing good places in line, selling them for 100-150 shekels ($20-$30) to people who can afford not to wait in the oppressive August heat.
The heavily guarded but understaffed offices on Nablus Road are among the few institutions that still remind the capital�s 200,000 Arab residents -- who have, by and large, not participated in the last two years of the intifada -- that Israel is sovereign in the Arab parts of East Jerusalem. It is also a symbol of their special status: caught in a kind of limbo, between Israel and the Palestinian state-in-the-making.
The long lines and infuriating delays in dealing with requests that would normally take a few minutes are seen by East Jerusalemites as yet another example of Israeli humiliation of the Palestinians. For years, the ministry has funneled all residents of Arab neighborhoods to the Nablus Road office, while Jewish Jerusalemites carry out their business at the more spacious offices just off Jaffa Road in the city center.
Similar scenes may be found at the East Jerusalem office of the National Insurance Institute, near the Old City�s Herod�s Gate. The NII office has been turned into a fortress, surrounded by barbed wire and bulletproof concrete walls. At least a dozen policemen and private security personnel stand guard, some with their fingers ready on the trigger. Since the beginning of the intifada, the offices have been targeted several times by Palestinian gunmen. In late October 2000, Esh-Kodesh Gilmore, a young Israeli guard and a U.S. immigrant, was killed and another guard was seriously injured when a lone attacker shot them outside NII. Since then, the Jewish clerks are transported to work in armored cars, and receive special "danger pay."
The attacks have only served to aggravate the situation for Arab Jerusalemites, who undergo tough, thorough searches at the entrance to all Israeli offices. But they feel the treatment is worth their while: It is in their interest to keep their blue Israeli ID cards and preserve their status as permanent residents, with freedom of movement and social and economic benefits -- including health insurance, the right to unemployment compensation and income-support payments, and disability and old-age pensions.
"People look at what is happening inside the Palestinian-controlled areas today and say to themselves, �Thank God we have Israeli ID cards,�" maintains Shalom Goldstein, adviser on Arab affairs to Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert. "In fact, most of the Arabs in the city prefer to live under Israeli rule than under a corrupt and tyrannical regime like Yasser Arafat�s."
According to Goldstein, during the failed Camp David talks in the summer of 2000, hundreds of East Jerusalemites flooded his office asking to remain under Israeli rule rather than being "handed over" to Palestinian rule under the terms of then-prime minister Ehud Barak�s offer to cede parts of the city to the PA.
Many Palestinians confirm Goldstein�s words, but few are prepared to say so on the record. They are still afraid of the long arm of the PA�s security forces, which continue -- despite a crackdown by Israeli police since the start of the intifada, and the government�s closing of East Jerusalem PA offices -- to operate undercover agents in almost all of the Arab neighborhoods. The fear is justified: Zohair Hamdan of Sur Bahir, a village near the southern edge of Jerusalem, suffered five gunshot wounds not long after he organized a petition against bringing the PA into Jerusalem.
"Jerusalem�s Arabs are in an awkward situation," explains a veteran lawyer from Beit Haninah, a north Jerusalem Arab neighborhood, speaking on condition of anonymity. "They are happy to live in an open city, enjoying many privileges that their brothers in the West Bank don�t. But they cannot divorce themselves completely from the Palestinian people and cause."
Recent terrorist attacks in East Jerusalem -- including the bombing at Hebrew University on July 31, which killed nine -- have created the mistaken impression that the intifada has finally moved to the city. In fact, police say that over the past two years, there have not been more than a handful of cases in which East Jerusalem Arabs were involved in major attacks -- and no suicide bomber has come from East Jerusalem. The fact that most of the perpetrators were, rather, West Bank residents who entered the city illegally was a relief to East Jerusalemites, who fear they could come to be denounced as a fifth column.
East Jerusalemites, says Goldstein, are justifiably confused by the zigzags of Israeli policy regarding their part of town. Under Benjamin Netanyahu, the government, anxious to reinforce Israeli sov-ereignty, approved an investment of over 100 million shekels to upgrade infrastructure there. Those plans were frozen by the Barak administration, which had a different political agenda for East Jerusalem. And under Ariel Sharon, the money is again flowing into improving the sewerage, lighting and roads.
Palestinians from the West Bank have often criticized Jerusalem Arabs for failing to play a bigger role in the intifada. They accuse them of "eating chocolate" while their brethren a few miles away bear the brunt of Israeli occupation. The envy inside the PA toward Jeru-salemites with Israeli IDs is palpable. Even before the intifada, young men from Jerusalem were picked up by Palestinian police when they�d go out on the town in Bethlehem and Ramallah, questioned and released -- often with their heads shaved. The two neighboring towns are now off-limits, because the Israeli army won�t let blue-ID holders enter PA territory.
Jamil Shehadeh, 25, from the village of Issawiyeh near Mount Scopus, was arrested by PA General Intelligence agents three months ago as he was sitting with friends in a Ramallah caf�. He was taken to an interrogation center and beaten. Shehadeh had an Israeli ID card and was thus a "suspect" of an unspecified offense. He was released after a relative bribed a PA security official.
The distinction between East Jerusalem-ites and other West Bank Palestinians dates back to the 1967 Six-Day War. Shortly afterwards, when Israel reunified the city and annexed East Jerusalem, there were about 65,000 Arabs living in the city, all carrying Jordanian passports. They were given Israeli ID cards, granting them the status of permanent residency in the state, but allowed to retain their Jordanian passports, so as not to be cut off from the Arab world.
Under Israeli law, the residents are entitled to Israeli citizenship, on condition they renounce any other nationality they possess and have no blots on their "security background." Between 1967 and 1993, only a few hundred chose to take Israeli citizenship -- and were condemned by the PLO and Jordan as traitors. A few, mainly those who sold land to Jews, were killed, and many more were physically harmed and ostracized.
After the signing of the Oslo Accords and the establishment of the Palestinian Authority, there was a sudden rise in the number of Jerusalem Arabs applying for Israeli citizenship. Today, some 7,000 are citizens, and another 15,000 are waiting for their applications to be approved.
In 1996, Interior Ministry policy on Arab citizenship changed completely: If in the past East Jerusalemites were encouraged to seek Israeli citizenship in order to strengthen Israel�s claim to both parts of the city, now the ministry began looking to limit the phenomenon. East Jerusalemites contend, as well, that the Ministry is putting impossible conditions on those who want Israeli citizenship, including getting a statement from Jordan saying it agrees to have them relinquish their Jordanian citizenship. At the PA�s request, Jordan has never issued such a statement.
Now some residents fear that the early-August announcement by Interior Minister Eli Yishai of his intention to revoke the citizenship and permanent residency of three Israeli Arabs involved in terrorist activities could pave the way for large numbers of Jerusalem Arabs to lose their Israeli ID cards. "There are thousands of people from Jerusalem with security records," says Hatem Abdel Kader, a PA legislator and Fatah leader from East Jerusalem, who holds an Israeli ID card. "If the Israelis decide to take away their IDs, it would be the beginning of a conspiracy aimed at emptying the city of its Palestinian inhabitants. We will do all we can to thwart this plan."
Yet Abdel Kader knows there is little he and his PA colleagues can do. Although Barak had floated the idea of giving the PA control of parts of East Jerusalem in a final-status deal, on the ground, Israel has consistently opposed any action that would integrate East Jerusalem into the PA. Over the past two years, and especially since Sharon came to power, in March 2001, the PA has been pushed farther and farther out of East Jerusalem; PA activities in the city have almost ceased entirely. The closure of Orient House, the PLO�s "embassy" in the city, together with several other PA offices dealing with health, education, social welfare and an unofficial system of arbitrators, has dealt a severe blow to the PA�s efforts to gain a foothold in Jerusalem. More significantly, the sudden death in May 2001 of PLO representative Faisal al-Husseini, who embodied Palestinian hopes for control over East Jerusalem, was a major setback." So far, Husseini�s successor, Sari Nusseibeh, has failed to establish himself as a leader of Husseini�s stature.
In the years after Oslo, Palestinian police were successful in establishing a presence in Jerusalem, with Israel�s tacit approval. But under Sharon�s hard-line Internal Security minister, Uzi Landau, Israel has waged an unrelenting war against Palestinian policemen operating in the city�s Arab neighborhoods and villages. Today, only a handful of Palestinian security personnel operate in the city discreetly. In addition to Orient House, Israel closed down the PA headquarters in Abu Dis, just outside the city limits. The office, set up in 1996 with Israeli consent, was in charge of running the affairs of Jerusalem Palestinians, including those with Israeli ID cards.
Those Arabs still working in East Jeru-salem complain that the PA is not paying them their salaries on a regular basis. "Sharon threw us to the street and Arafat turned his back on us," complains a former senior official at Orient House. "The PA has lost the battle for Jerusalem."
Now there is talk that Israel will not allow Jerusalem Arabs to participate in the PA elections scheduled for January. In the first and only elections, in 1996, they were permitted not only to vote, but to run as well. Nevertheless, only 3,500 Palestinians bearing Israeli ID cards chose to cast their votes. By comparison, more than 10,000 Arabs voted in the last municipal elections, despite a call by the PA to boycott the vote.
East Jerusalem�s Arabs do not disguise their sympathy for their Palestinian kinsmen. But they have opted to remain on the fence -- keeping at arm�s length from both Palestinian violence and from the Israelis. Israeli and Palestinian officials see them as trying very hard to maintain their own status quo in an existential no man�s land between Israel and the PA until there is a political settlement. One local academic has a novel prescription: "The best thing that could be done with Jerusalem�s Palestinians," he quips, "would be to make them an international force, not attached to either side."
September 9, 2002
Palestinian Affairs
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