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Occupation magazine - Jerusalem

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Ahead of Jerusalem Day, report of Israeli landgrab, abuse and violence in the neighborhood of al-‘Esawiyah


As Israel prepares to mark Jerusalem Day this Thursday (May 21), B’Tselem is
releasing a new report describing life in the Palestinian neighborhood of
al-‘Esawiyah 53 years after East Jerusalem was annexed to Israel. Over the
past year, al-‘Esawiyah has become a flashpoint because of a police
operation designed primarily to harass residents. In This is Jerusalem:
Violence and Dispossession in al- ‘Esawiyah, B`Tselem analyzes Israel’s
policy of dispossession, deliberate neglect, lack of planning and police
violence in the neighborhood, which is an extreme example of its actions
throughout East Jerusalem.

As Jerusalem Day nears, B`Tselem is publishing a new report about the
Israeli policy that has shaped the lives of al-’Esawiyah’s 22,000
Palestinian residents, making it one of the city’s poorest and most
overcrowded neighborhoods. The report, This is Jerusalem: Violence and
Dispossession in al- ‘Esawiyah, reviews the key features of this policy –
systemic landgrab and deliberate lack of planning:
Since 1967, Israel has overtaken about 90% of al-’Esawiyah’s land, which
once spanned almost 2,500 acres.
The landgrab is a key reason for the neighborhood’s poverty, as residents
are denied the opportunity to benefit from their land.
The stolen land serves the Jewish public.
Al-’Esawiyah residents now have less than 250 acres, which are mostly built
up and hemmed in by Israeli institutions (primarily the Hebrew University
and Hadassah Mt. Scopus Medical Center) and Jewish neighborhoods.
The Jerusalem Municipality has yet to draw up a proper outline plan that
allows legal residential construction and reflects residents’ needs,
including infrastructure development and public buildings. Instead, the only
plan approved for the neighborhood, in 1991, was mostly designed to limit
construction.
This has resulted in about half the homes in the neighborhood (some 2,000
units) being built without a permit and countless families living under the
constant threat of house demolition and paying hundreds of thousands of
shekels in fines.

Institutional violence also takes a more direct form than landgrab and lack
of planning, as seen in daily police brutality: For more than a year now,
the Jerusalem police has been waging a campaign of abuse and collective
punishment in the neighborhood, as part of which Special Patrol Unit and
Border Police forces enter al-’Esawiyah for no reason almost daily. The
officers, armed from head to toe, enter the neighborhood with vans, jeeps
and drones and intentionally create violent “friction” that disrupts routine
and makes daily life extremely difficult in the Palestinian neighborhood.
Among other things, they randomly close off main streets, creating long
traffic jams; use loudspeakers on patrol cars and police vehicles late at
night; provoke residents by aiming weapons at them; conduct degrading
inspections and search cars and bags (including children’s schoolbags);
verbally goad residents; order shops to shut down for no apparent reason,
without showing a warrant; use dogs to search shops; raid homes and search
them without a warrant; and falsely arrest minors (sometimes in the middle
of the night), in severe violation of their rights. According to the
community leadership, from the beginning of the operation through January
2020, some 300 neighborhood residents were injured as a result of the
violent police activity. Up to the beginning of May, the police arrested 850
neighborhood residents, most of them minors.

Al-‘Esawiyah is one, particularly extreme, example of Israel’s policy in
East Jerusalem, which sees Palestinian residents as no more than subjects
who can be treated as it wishes. Israel’s policy regarding these
neighborhoods is driven by its goal to take over as much land as possible
and expand its control as far as it can – utterly ignoring the harsh
consequences for residents, which include extreme poverty, unbearably
crowded living conditions and planning chaos.

This reality, which is the result of an ongoing policy led by all Israeli
governments since 1967, lays bare Israel’s priorities in the only part of
the West Bank it has – as yet – taken the trouble to formally annex: no
equality, no rights, and not even reasonable municipal services. Instead,
state authorities use their power in the annexed territory to cement the
supremacy of one group over another.

Executive summary
Link to report
Link to map
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