{"id":5290,"date":"2020-05-25T09:07:00","date_gmt":"2020-05-25T09:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jahalin.org\/?p=5290"},"modified":"2020-07-07T09:32:29","modified_gmt":"2020-07-07T09:32:29","slug":"this-is-jerusalem-violence-and-dispossession-in-al-esawiyah","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jahalin.org\/archive\/?p=5290","title":{"rendered":"This is Jerusalem: Violence and Dispossession in al-\u2018Esawiyah"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Summary, May 2020<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since April 2019, the Israel Police has been engaged in a campaign of abuse and collective punishment against the neighborhood of al-\u2018Esawiyah in East Jerusalem. The operation continues, despite social distancing restrictions announced by the government, putting local residents in danger.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the poorest neighborhoods in Jerusalem, al-\u2018Esawiyah lies on the eastern slopes of the Mount Scopus ridge, hemmed in by an array of Israeli institutions, Jewish neighborhoods, military bases and roads built on its land. The neighborhood is estimated to have 22,000 residents, and its population density is 3.5 times the average population density in Jerusalem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


This report covers various aspects of Israel\u2019s policy that have together created the harsh living conditions in the neighborhood. While this abusive policy is employed in other Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, Al-\u2019Esawiyah is a particularly glaring example: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

1 Land grab:<\/strong> Since occupying the West Bank in 1967, Israel has taken over more than 90% of al-\u2019Esawiyah\u2019s land using expropriation, declaration of \u201cstate land\u201d and military seizure. Some of this land was annexed shortly after the occupation. In 1945, al-\u2018Esawiyah land spanned some 10,000 dunams \u2013 from the Mount Scopus ridge to the area of Khan al-Ahmar in the east. Today, residents have access to less than 1,000 dunams, locked in by Israeli institutes and neighborhoods \u2013 the Hebrew University, Hadassah Mount Scopus Medical Center, the neighborhoods of French Hill and Tzameret Habira, military and police bases and roads. Most of this area is densely built, and there are hardly any land reserves for construction. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of all the Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem that Israel has eaten away at since occupying the West Bank, nowhere have the authorities benefited more from the land grab than in al-\u2018Esawiyah. The landgrab, always for the needs of the Jewish public, has robbed al-\u2019Esawiyah\u2019s residents any chance of benefitting from their land, and it is one of the key factors for their poverty. \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. A no-planning policy:<\/strong> Ever since al-\u2018Esawiyah was annexed to the municipal borders of Jerusalem, the Israeli authorities have gone to considerable lengths to prevent any construction or development in the neighborhood. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For instance, they have avoided drawing up an adequate outline plan for al-\u2018Esawiyah and blocked an independent plan drawn up by the residents in collaboration with Israeli NGO Bimkom \u2013 Planners for Planning Rights. The current outline plan, approved only in 1991, 24 years after al-\u2019Esawiyah was annexed to the Jerusalem municipal boundaries, did not allow significant construction in the first place and appears to be mostly meant to limit building and development possibilities in the neighborhood. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Obviously, the absence of a proper outline plan has not made the real need for housing disappear. Left with no choice, many residents build homes without permits. This sentences them to a life of uncertainty, under constant threat of demolition or of fines amounting to hundreds of thousands of shekels (The exchange rate at the time of writing was 3.5 NIS per 1 USD). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

More than half of the apartments in the neighborhood, upwards of 2,000, were built without a permit. The municipality uses this reality, of its own creation, as an excuse not to build public institutions or develop and maintain infrastructure. It has even found a way to profit off this situation by imposing fines for illegal building, adding millions of shekels to its coffers over the years. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. The campaign of abuse and collective punishment:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For more than a year now, the Israel Police has engaged in a violent campaign in al-\u2019Esawiyah. Special Patrol Unit and Border Police forces regularly enter the neighborhood for no reason, without any prior occurrence that could justify police presence, much less the presence of aggressive paramilitary forces on such a large scale. Special Patrol Unit and Border police officers, armed from head to toe enter the neighborhood with vans, jeeps and drones and intentionally create arbitrary instances of violent \u201cfriction\u201d that disrupt routine and make daily life extremely difficult in the neighborhood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019s 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. Initially, regular police officers also patrolled the neighborhood, took up positions at exit points and ticketed drivers, business owners and passers-by for negligible infractions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just as the police expected, these violent provocations elicited reactions from local residents, the \u201cdisturbances of the peace\u201d the police uses to retroactively justify the entire operation. These reactions include throwing stones, hurling Molotov cocktails and setting off firecrackers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Special Patrol Unit and Border Police officers fire tear-gas canisters, stun grenades and black sponge rounds at residents and beat them. According to the community leadership, from the beginning of the operation through January 2020, some 300 neighborhood residents have been injured as a result of the violent police activity. The police has also falsely arrested several neighborhood leaders. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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