In 2000, then-President Bill Clinton suggested that one of the thorniest issues of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – the division of Jerusalem to create two capitals for two states – should be decided along demographic lines. In other words, Jewish neighborhoods would be incorporated into Israel and Arab neighborhoods would become part of the future Palestinian state.
The past decade has seen a significant expansion of Jewish areas in the Arab neighborhoods closest to the Old City, which could affect how the city is divided – or prevent it from being divided at all. This has raised the ire of Palestinians, the United Nations, and others, because the expansion has taken place in a territory that Israel occupied and then unilaterally annexed – and thus the transfer of civilian populations is considered illegal under international law. Here are five of the most controversial developments:
Sheikh Jarrah
Sheikh Jarrah has become a flashpoint in the Israeli-Palestinian battle for Jerusalem because of Jewish construction projects, recent home evictions and demolitions, and the resultant protests by Palestinians and Israeli and foreign activists. Sheikh Jarrah is north of the Old City, and abuts the road that until 1967 served as a divider between East and West Jerusalem.
Once an affluent Arab neighborhood, it is home to many Western consulates, the International Red Cross, and the UN refugee agency. Right under the nose of the international community, a bitter fight is playing out between the predominantly Palestinian population seeking a capital in East Jerusalem and Jews seeking to gain a greater foothold around the Old City and its holy places.
In the latest conflagration in Sheikh Jarrah, a portion of the Shepherd Hotel owned by American Jewish millionaire Irving Moscowitz was demolished Jan. 9 to make way for housing units for 20 new Jewish homes.
There are several other controversial activities in Sheikh Jarrah, which is also referred to by the Hebrew names for two areas of the neighborhood: Nahalat Shimon and Shimon HaTzadik. Among them are Jewish plans for 200 new housing units where dozens of Palestinian homes now stand; a planned conference center, known as the Glassman Campus; and the ongoing court battle over the eviction of two Palestinian families, the Hanouns and the Ghawis, who were settled in Sheikh Jarrah by the UN refugee agency before Israel captured the area in the 1967 war.
Silwan
Jews have seen Jerusalem as their rightful home for millenniums, and the City of David – believed to be the stomping grounds of the biblical King David – is at the heart of this longing for home. Nestled in the shadow of the Old City walls, the area includes an archaeological tourist site, additional excavation projects under way, a number of heavily guarded Israeli Jewish homes, and 40,000 Palestinians who refer to the larger neighborhood as Silwan.
Silwan is also home to a controversial building occupied by Israeli Jews and known as Beit Yohonatan, or House of Jonathan, a seven-story structure that was built illegally and is slated for demolition.
Under a broader plan to broaden Jerusalem’s appeal to tourists – currently it receives only a tiny fraction of the visitors who go to Paris or New York every year – the city’s mayor has advanced plans to build an archaeological park in Silwan known as King’s Garden. Mayor Nir Barkat has billed the project as a way to increase the prosperity of local Palestinians and improve the neighborhood, where public services such as sewage and roads have long been neglected.
But it has drawn the ire of locals because it involves the demolition of 22 illegally built homes and is seen as driving a wedge between the Old City and the West Bank, complicating plans for a Palestinian capital in Jerusalem and cutting off Palestinians from sites sacred to them as Muslims and Christians.
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