JERUSALEM, October 30, 2017 (WAFA) - Minister of Jerusalem Affairs in the Palestinian government and its governor Adnan Husseini warned on Monday that an Israeli plan to break away Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem from their city center would leave critical consequences on between 120,000 to 150,000 of the city’s Palestinian residents.
He said in reaction to the plan presented by an Israeli official and seems to have the support of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that such a plan proves that the apartheid wall Israel has built around Jerusalem and the Palestinian territories is political in nature and not just a security one, as Israel claims, and aims at creating racial segregation with a goal to change the demographic balance in the city in Jewish favor.
Husseini said that after these neighborhoods were separated from Jerusalem through the concrete wall and the barriers, work is now underway to separate the residents from their city while adding quarter of a million Jewish settlers to city creating a new reality of 750,000 people in Jerusalem of which only 180,000 are Palestinians. Currently the city has more than 350,000 Palestinians.
“They plan to have the number of Palestinians in East Jerusalem at around 12%, not the current 34%, and they are accelerating their plans, especially after Israeli studies showed that the growth rate of Palestinians is increasing while there is a decline in the Jewish rate,” said Husseini.
He pointed out that the occupation authorities had carried out a process of what he described as “cold displacement” by forcing Jerusalem’s Arab residents to move to those neighborhoods, where there is greater chance of finding affordable housing, while there is no chance of finding housing in the neighborhoods within the wall, where tens of thousands of Palestinians who carry the Israeli identity card live.
Husseini said that the occupation authorities have created a situation in the city of Jerusalem whereby it will not be possible for those who live in the neighborhoods targeted by the Israeli municipality to return to live inside the walled area since a large area of land in East Jerusalem has been confiscated for the benefit of settlements or classified as green areas to prevent construction on them. At the same time, there are no construction licenses.
M.K.
