Israeli authorities have allocated just 8.5 percent of Jerusalem for Palestinian development, according to a new joint report by Israeli NGOs Ir Amim and Bimkom.
Deliberately Planned: A Policy to Thwart Planning in the Palestinian Neighborhoods of Jerusalem details how Israeli authorities “deliberately delay and ultimately undermine the approval of plans that would actually allow for construction in the Palestinian neighborhoods of Jerusalem”.
Since 1967, when Israel’s military occupation of the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt) began, Israel has expropriated more than 38 percent of East Jerusalem to build settlements. Israel illegally annexed occupied East Jerusalem, a move not recognized by the international community.
Traumatised Palestinian kids pay the price for Israel's illegal house demolitions in Jerusalem @billvanesveld @HRW https://t.co/2uctOb1gs5 pic.twitter.com/3PZ3fA3jl2
— Gerry Simpson (@GerrySimpsonHRW) May 21, 2017
While Palestinians constitute 37 percent of Jerusalem’s residents, only 15 percent of East Jerusalem – and 8.5 percent of the whole city – has been allocated for Palestinian development.
Ir Amim and Bimkom focus on three case studies in East Jerusalem that, they say, “evidence how urban planning is used to deliberately suppress the growth and development of the Palestinian community in service to demographic objectives”.
While the Israeli authorities claim that home demolitions are simply a matter of upholding the law, the same authorities “do everything within their power to delay the process and ultimately thwart any detailed plan of significant scale, effectively preventing lawful construction by Palestinians”.
Nine Palestinian families lose their homes as Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem hit by wave of house demolitions https://t.co/RV2UX7a3Md
— Daniel Wickham (@DanielWickham93) May 6, 2017
According to the two NGOs, “plans prepared for the Palestinian neighborhoods of East Jerusalem attest to politically motivated discrimination in line with the state’s overriding policy objective of maintaining the demographic balance in the city”.
Since the beginning of 2009, detailed outline plans allowing for approximately 10,000 housing units have been approved for Israeli settlements in occupied East Jerusalem.
“By contrast”, the report notes, “only minor detailed plans in the range of hundreds of housing units have been approved in the Palestinian neighborhoods”, and “no broader outline plans have been approved for these neighborhoods”.
Amnesty International slams Israel for Kalansuwa house demolitions https://t.co/72ikDkgSjG via @Jerusalem_Post h/t @AmnestyIsrael
— amnestypress (@amnestypress) January 13, 2017
In recent years Israeli authorities have granted only eight percent of building permits for housing units in Jerusalem to the Palestinian neighborhoods. In parallel, demolitions have recently begun to spike – in 2016, Israeli authorities demolished 123 housing units in East Jerusalem.
(MEMO, PC, Social Media)
