JERUSALEM FROM THE 20TH C.E. TO TODAY
n The Jordan-Israeli period: 1948 à 1967
THE GREEN LINE/ In 1945: End of WWII.
In 1946
In 1947:
UN Partition Plan à "the creation of a special international regime in the City of Jerusalem, constituting it as a corpus separatum under the administration of the UN." Rejected.
In 1948:
War broke out in 1948 when Britain withdrew. The Jews declared the state of Israel (May 14th, 1948, the day before the British withdrew) and troops from neighboring Arab nations moved in. East Jerusalem captured and annexed by Jordan after the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.
In 1949:
Armistice line. Established the West Bank and Gaza Strip as distinct geographical units. JM: a two-nation place.
In 1950: Jordan annexed the territories it was occupying, including East JM and the Old City.
East Jerusalem was held “in trust” by Jordan for the Palestinians.
THE 6-DAY WAR
Jordan, Egypt, and Syria launched their second war of annihilation in 1967. This time, the Israelis defeated all three armies in six days and pushed the 1949 armistice lines outward, taking the Golan Heights from Syria; the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza Strip from Egypt; and the West Bank, as well as East Jerusalem, from Jordan.
Egypt and Jordan later relinquished (laisser tomber) their claims to Gaza and the West Bank, and Israel returned the Sinai to Egypt. Israel never formally annexed those territories because adding millions of Palestinian Arabs to its population would threaten its Jewish majority over the long term.
/ è “Before 1967, Israeli Jerusalem was 9,500 acres. Israel captured and annexed 1,500 acres held by Jordan and another 16,000 acres from 28 villages surrounding the city” = Israeli JM surface increased by ____ % in 1967
The blue line, dividing Jerusalem from the West Bank, is what Israel now considers its national border.
PALESTINE LIBERATION ORGANIZATION
/ Radicalization: rise of the PLO
As JM remained split up, the city became, in essence, two armed camps, replete / filled with concrete walls and bunkers, barbed-wire fences, minefields and other military fortifications.
Terrorist attacks became more organized with the creation of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO). To the Palestinian Arabs, the area that the Jews called Israel, would always be Palestine…
l Population displacements:
The war led to displacement of Arab and Jewish populations in the city.
Arab populations left the Western part of JM in 1948. Jewish refugees left the Eastern part the same year.
Arab populations living in Western Jerusalem neighborhoods (Talbiya, Katamon or Malha) fled or were in some cases forced out. Arab residents were driven from their homes. These refugees were also encouraged to leave Israel by Arab leaders promising to purge the land of Jews. Yet, the 2/3 left without ever seeing an Israeli soldier. The number of Arab refugees who left Israel in 1948 is estimated to be around 630,000…
The same fate befell Jews in the eastern areas, including the Old City and Silwan. The number of Jewish refugees from Arab lands is estimated to be the same (> 600,000). E.g. the 1,500 residents of the Jewish Quarter of the Old City were expelled and a few hundred taken prisoner when the Arab Legion captured the quarter on May 28th. The Arab Legion also attacked Western Jerusalem with snipers.
By the end of the war Israel had control of 12 of Jerusalem's 15 Arab residential quarters. An estimated minimum of 30,000 people had become refugees
VOCABULARY:
Families were driven out into exile… most families had lived in the city for centuries… to befall so. (arriver à qq’un)…
l City division: East vs. West Jerusalem. (sketch above)
The Green (or Blue) Line was the name given by both sides to stand the cease-fire. But none of the 2 countries recognized it as the border (each side hoped that it was temporary and that JM’s final status would be decided later).
l Under Jordanian rule, East JM witnessed a series of intolerant and aggressive deeds.
The Jordanians ravaged Jewish cultural and holy sites in East Jerusalem and threatened other communities.
Abdullah el Tell, Jordanian commander and later military governor of the Old City: “For the first time in 1,000 years, not a single Jew remains in the Jewish Quarter. Not a single building remains intact. This makes the Jews’ return here impossible.”
Jewish holy sites were desecrated and the Jews were denied access to places of worship. The Jordanians systematically desecrated the ancient Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives. They also enforced a segregation-like policy of preventing Jews from visiting the Temple Mount and the Western Wall.
Jordanian King Hussein permitted the construction of a road to the Intercontinental Hotel across the Mount of Olives’ 2000-year-old cemetery. Hundreds of Jewish graves were destroyed by a highway that could have easily been built elsewhere. The gravestones of rabbis were used as pavement and latrines in army camps (inscriptions on the stones were still visible when Israel liberated the city).
The ancient Jewish Quarter of the Old City was ravaged: 58 Jerusalem synagogues - some centuries old - were destroyed or ruined, others were turned into stables and chicken coops. Slum dwellings were built close to the Western Wall. Christians too were subjected to various restrictions: limited numbers allowed to visit the Old City and Bethlehem at Christmas and Easter; laws imposing strict government control on Christian schools, including restrictions on the opening of new schools; Jordanian state controlled school finances and appointment of teachers; issued requirements that the Koran be taught. Christian religious and charitable institutions were also barred from purchasing real estate in Jerusalem. Because of these repressive policies, many Christians emigrated from Jerusalem, leading their numbers to dwindle from 25,000 in 1949 to less than 13,000 in June 1967.
l Jerusalem in and after the 1967 war:
Teddy Kollek, Jerusalem’s mayor for 28 years, called the reunification of the city “the practical realization of the Zionist movement's goals.”
Israel annexed East Jerusalem: it offered the Arab locals almost full citizenship. Few accepted it at the time, so Israel declared them “residents of Jerusalem”: the same identification cards that Israeli citizens’, legal rights of citizenship except for eligibility to vote for members of the Knesset, the Israeli parliament (Arab residents can vote in local elections). About 20,000 of them were turned Israeli citizens.
Israel respected religious traditions: Israel left the Temple Mount under the jurisdiction of the Islamic waqf, but opened the Western Wall to Jewish access.
The Israeli government originally built Jewish neighborhoods in empty areas formerly used by the Jordanian army (some neighborhoods, in fact, were in places that had been Jewish before the Jordanians destroyed them after 1948). Today, about 200,000 Israeli Jews live in East Jerusalem, in neighborhoods like French Hill, Ramat Shlomo, or Gilo, on what was once the Jordanian side of the Green Line.
JM was annexed and remained for Israel a political objective (to name it the new capital city, apart from Tel-Aviv). On July 30th 1980, the Israeli Parliament passed a bill that stated that "the integrity and unity of greater Jerusalem in its boundaries after the Six-Day War shall not be violated." («Jérusalem réunifiée capitale éternelle d'Israël»). The Jerusalem Law forced the UN to react: UN Security Council Resolution 478, adopted by 14 votes to none, with 1 abstention (United States), declared after that the law was "null and void" and "(had to) be rescinded" (abrogée).
Israel retains the right to build anywhere it chooses in Jerusalem and continues to exercise sovereignty over the undivided city.
c- THE ISRAELI PERIOD: 1967 à PRESENT-DAY
In 1973: the Kippur War. In 1978: the Camp David Accords à Israel - Egypt Peace Treaty (1979)In 1980: The “Basic Jerusalem Law” stated that "the integrity and unity of Greater Jerusalem in its boundaries after the Six-Day War shall not be violated" and that “Jerusalem, complete and united, is the capital of Israel.”
In 1987: 1st Intifada … followed by the 2nde Intifada (stoned war) in September 2000.
In 2000: Camp David Summit = stated that JM was an Israeli territory. Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat refused the American-Israeli partition offer at Camp David and launched a war of suicide bombers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_Camp_David_Summit
Today: the Palestinian National Authority still views East Jerusalem as occupied territory according to UN Security Council Resolution 242. They claim all of East Jerusalem, including the Temple Mount, as the capital of the State of Palestine…
EAST JERUSALEM TODAY: Palestinians and Israelis
http://t-j.org.il/JerusalemAtlas.aspx = to see more / POPULATION COMPOSITION
n Tolerance and intolerance
Israeli political analyst Jonathan Spyer: “‘No, you don’t know what the final status (of JM) is going to look like. The final status you have in mind is what you came up with by negotiating with yourself. ”
Tolerance was enforced towards all religions…
Under Israeli rule, all Muslim and Christian sites have been preserved and made accessible to people of all faiths…
The Old City population numbers 36,000 people. The cosmopolitan nature is not to be contested: 65% of the inhabitants are Jewish, 32% are Muslim, 2% Christian.
… But obstructions, obstacles and constraints are still strong
The inextricable religious constructions:
The al-Aqsa Mosque is Islam's third holiest site. It sits on an ancient esplanade, which Muslims call the Noble Sanctuary. Jews call it the Temple Mount because it was the site of two ancient Jewish temples. Jews pray below the esplanade at the Western Wall, a retaining wall of the Roman period temple. Etc.
Restrictions to non-Jews and the status of the City:
Of the 184 nations with which America has diplomatic relations, Israel is the only one where the United States does not recognize the capital or have its embassy located in that city. The U.S. embassy, like most others, is in Tel Aviv, 40 miles from Jerusalem. The United States maintains a consulate in east Jerusalem that deals with Palestinians in the territories and works independently of the embassy.
“ICAHD estimates that some27,000 Palestinian structures have been demolished in the Occupied Palestinian Territory since1967, based on information collected from the Israeli Ministry of Interior, the Jerusalem Municipality, the CivilAdministration, UN bodies and agencies, Palestinian, Israeli and international human rights groups, our field monitoring, and other sources” (ICAHD = Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions)
The disputed ramp:
Architecture is reused to legitimize one’s presence over the city:
Every excavation is the opportunity to recover a part of the ancient or medieval signs of long-lasting presence.
Islamic radicalism / terrorism:
The Fatah Charter still called for the destruction of the State of Israel until 2010. Then, it still calls for the liberation of Palestine, “free and Arab”, and advocates its option for “armed resistance” (Fatah National Convenance, 2010)
The Al-Aqsa Brigades still proclaim the end of Jewish presence on the old city center in particular.
Radicalism makes universal interfaith agreement impossible.
è The Israeli rule was presented as the coming of peace for the Jewish populations.
Yet, the management of the city remains a bone of contention.
n JM’s changing population
The multicultural composition of the city:
In the Old City:
In 1850, a rabbi called Joseph Schwarz stated the population composition and count:
“Jerusalem contains more than 32,000 inhabitants, to wit, 7,500 Jews (6,000 Sephardim and 1,500 Ashkenazim; under the first are understood all the natives, and the immigrants from Turkey, Asia Minor, Persia, Arabia, and Barbary in Africa; and under the latter the immigrants from Germany, Holland, Hungary, Poland, Russia, Galicia, or other European countries), 15,000 Mahometans, i.e. Arabs and Turks, and 10,000 Christians, i.e. Greeks, Armenians, Latins (Spaniards and Italians), Russians and Germans”.
à The Old City population numbered 23,700 in 1967. à In 2006, the total had grown to 36,000
In Greater Jerusalem (=the expanded Israel municipality of Jerusalem):
In 2006, Jerusalem's population is 724,000 (about 10% of the total population of Israel), of which 65.0% were Jews (approx. 40% of whom live in East Jerusalem), 32.0% Muslim (almost all of whom live in East Jerusalem) and 2% Christian.
35% of the city's populations were children under age of 15.
In 2005, the city had 18,600 newborns. (Source: Israel Central Bureau of Statistics).
A demographic challenge… which turns into an ethnic battle.
In 1967 Jews were 73.4% of the city population, while in 2010 the Jewish population shrank to 64%. In the same period the Palestinian population increased from 26,5% in 1967 to 36% in 2010
The proportion of strict Jewish population in JM fell from 74% in 1967 to 72% in 1980, to 68% in 2000, and to 64% in 2010.
A demographic race is at stake for some Arab and Jewish families, which pretend to legitimize their right to hold the land by a numerical superiority.
The question will remain unsolved until a “political” response won’t be found.
n The cosmopolitan features of the Jerusalemite society today:
Today Jerusalem is Israel’s largest city. It is approximately 49 square miles (31,500 acres).
It was 9,500 acres in 1960s Israeli part, then 27,000 acres after the 1967 Israeli annexation.
The must-see of the city:
F http://travel.nationalgeographic.com/travel/city-guides/jerusalem-must-dos/
Tower of David, Yad Vashem, Israel Museum, Museum of the Seam, all the Old City, … (http://www.coexistence.art.museum/Coex/Index.asp)
JM: an innovation and art place
Jerusalem hosts the renowned Jerusalem Film Festival: http://www.jff.org.il/
Jerusalem is full of underground clubs and incubators for local avant-garde and independent talents: Uganda, Sirta, Bass, HaTaklit, Chet-7.
e.g. Chet-7: a performance space is located underneath the cultural center, Beit Avi Chai, and is known for the Saturday evening parties and for featuring excellent local musicians.
e.g. night bar “Sira” in the Den Sira Nightclubing Street: