Palestinian and Arab religious, national and resistance discourse should not narrowly focus on Jerusalem but rather see through Jerusalem the problem of the whole of Palestine
By Azmi Bishara
Al-Ahram Weekly
"....The decision to build the 88 kilometre-long annexation barrier was taken by the Ministerial Committee for Jerusalem Affairs on 11 May 2002. In addition to cutting between houses of the same village, literally separating one side of the street from the other, abolishing ancient roads such as the Jerusalem-Ramallah road, and turning entire neighbourhoods and villages into islands, the wall cast out of Jerusalem between 80,000-90,000 Arabs who held Jerusalem or Israeli identity cards. More recently, on 11 May 2008, the Israeli government moved to register Palestinian properties in the tabu (land registration office) in the name of Jews who took over these properties in the area of Harat Al-Sharaf. The area is adjacent to the Wailing Wall and Haram Al-Sharif. The original inhabitants were expelled from the area in order to make place for a square for prayer in front of the Wailing Wall and to revive the "Jewish Quarter" as this part of the Old City within the walls has come to be named. The area itself has been doubled and tripled several times. However, the registration of expropriated properties in the name of private Jewish individuals marked a precedent that is now being repeated routinely. The Absentees' Property Law and Land Acquisition Law have been privatised in the areas occupied in 1948. Israel is even eliminating the questions of the refugees and Jerusalem from a formalistic standpoint, by dispersing them into thousands of private ownership cases, whereas previously these lands were regarded as public property and let out to Jewish citizens, even if with 49 or 99 year leases. This privatisation, naturally, is sponsored, planned and protected by the state. It is part of the greater project to eliminate pending final status issues concerning the Palestinians and Jerusalem.
Meanwhile, Arab regimes are engaged in a different kind of privatisation process as far as all this is concerned. That process goes by the name, "leave the Palestinian question to the Palestinians." For the Palestinian Authority, it is leave Jerusalem to the Jerusalemites. In practical terms, this form of privatisation means leaving the Palestinians/Jerusalemites stranded. Which is why, again, I urge the adoption of the formula: the whole of Jerusalem equals Haram Al-Sharif and the whole of Palestine equals Jerusalem. Then Jerusalem and Palestine will be reinstated as core concerns of the entire Arab nation and not just the Palestinians alone. Only then will the impending demolition of a Palestinian home in Jerusalem be taken up as a cause of all Jerusalemites, Palestinians and Arabs. We do not leave poverty to the poor, illness to the ill or education to the uneducated. Society assumes such burdens and this is how societies develop and nations are built. The reverse approach -- allowing the Palestinians and Jerusalemites to fend for themselves, which is equivalent to the logic of letting the poor, ill and uneducated fend for themselves -- opens the question of Jerusalem to a completely different type of symbolism."
By Azmi Bishara
Al-Ahram Weekly
"....The decision to build the 88 kilometre-long annexation barrier was taken by the Ministerial Committee for Jerusalem Affairs on 11 May 2002. In addition to cutting between houses of the same village, literally separating one side of the street from the other, abolishing ancient roads such as the Jerusalem-Ramallah road, and turning entire neighbourhoods and villages into islands, the wall cast out of Jerusalem between 80,000-90,000 Arabs who held Jerusalem or Israeli identity cards. More recently, on 11 May 2008, the Israeli government moved to register Palestinian properties in the tabu (land registration office) in the name of Jews who took over these properties in the area of Harat Al-Sharaf. The area is adjacent to the Wailing Wall and Haram Al-Sharif. The original inhabitants were expelled from the area in order to make place for a square for prayer in front of the Wailing Wall and to revive the "Jewish Quarter" as this part of the Old City within the walls has come to be named. The area itself has been doubled and tripled several times. However, the registration of expropriated properties in the name of private Jewish individuals marked a precedent that is now being repeated routinely. The Absentees' Property Law and Land Acquisition Law have been privatised in the areas occupied in 1948. Israel is even eliminating the questions of the refugees and Jerusalem from a formalistic standpoint, by dispersing them into thousands of private ownership cases, whereas previously these lands were regarded as public property and let out to Jewish citizens, even if with 49 or 99 year leases. This privatisation, naturally, is sponsored, planned and protected by the state. It is part of the greater project to eliminate pending final status issues concerning the Palestinians and Jerusalem.
Meanwhile, Arab regimes are engaged in a different kind of privatisation process as far as all this is concerned. That process goes by the name, "leave the Palestinian question to the Palestinians." For the Palestinian Authority, it is leave Jerusalem to the Jerusalemites. In practical terms, this form of privatisation means leaving the Palestinians/Jerusalemites stranded. Which is why, again, I urge the adoption of the formula: the whole of Jerusalem equals Haram Al-Sharif and the whole of Palestine equals Jerusalem. Then Jerusalem and Palestine will be reinstated as core concerns of the entire Arab nation and not just the Palestinians alone. Only then will the impending demolition of a Palestinian home in Jerusalem be taken up as a cause of all Jerusalemites, Palestinians and Arabs. We do not leave poverty to the poor, illness to the ill or education to the uneducated. Society assumes such burdens and this is how societies develop and nations are built. The reverse approach -- allowing the Palestinians and Jerusalemites to fend for themselves, which is equivalent to the logic of letting the poor, ill and uneducated fend for themselves -- opens the question of Jerusalem to a completely different type of symbolism."
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