Reclaiming Occupied Jerusalem

Reclaiming Occupied Jerusalem Gulfnews


From time to time, occupied Jerusalem becomes the object of sad news. With the purpose of erasing or at least reducing this holy city's Arab population, successive Israeli governments have followed a policy of using colonies as a territorial, demographic and economic siege.



Facing this tragic fact, and having nothing but condemnation, we were only able to declare occupied Jerusalem as the 2009 Capital of Arab Culture. What occupied Jerusalem is facing today confirms the serious disaster of the policy of silent destruction of its Arab houses and quarters. Ever since 1967, Israel has been systematically following a policy of demographic change in occupied Jerusalem, part of a plan to create new facts on the ground by gradually eradicating the Palestinian existence in the city to be replaced with a Jewish majority.




Judaising occupied Jerusalem has always been a part of the Zionist programme, and has been endorsed by every leader of the Israeli entity since its inception. David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first premier, said, "We regard it as our duty to declare that [occcupied] Jerusalem is an organic and inseparable part of the Israel." Even Yitzhak Rabin, hailed as a champion of peace, made a unified occupied Jerusalem a condition for any such peace, saying, "There is no state of Israel without [occupied] Jerusalem and no peace without [occupied] undivided Jerusalem." Ariel Sharon reiterated this claim with his provocative visit to the Al Aqsa which sparked the second intifada, and Ehud Olmert called occupied Jerusalem "the city that God has chosen to be the capital of the Jewish people." Current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has of course made his belief widely known that Israel will never allow the city to be divided.









Since 1967, a new reality has been enforced in the city, which threatens to change everything. The Israeli project has the objective of besieging the Palestinians of the 1948 areas, both Muslims and Christians, as a means to deport them silently, or at best, to gather them in certain ghetto-like quarters in the old city. This goes hand-in-hand with enlarging the borders of western part of occupied Jerusalem as part of a 'Greater Jerusalem' project that will reduce the population of Palestinians of 1948 areas. A unified occupied Jerusalem, therefore, they hope, will remain the capital of the Zionist state. This is clearly expressed materially and practically in the practice of annexing and Judaising occupied Jerusalem by means of encircling it with colonies, destroying the houses of Palestinans in 1948 areas, confiscating land, withdrawing the identity cards of Jerusalemites, and other geographic and demographic changes.




Israel has realised that occupied Jerusalem is key to the Palestinian cause, and that Al Aqsa Mosque is the symbol of the Islamic character of the city.

    That is why some Israeli extremists have tried hard to burn or destroy Al Aqsa
    to pave the way for building the Third Jewish Temple over its ruins. According
    to a report published by some Israeli media, there are 25 extremist Jewish
    groups that are working to destroy Al Aqsa and to have the Temple built at its
    site.

If we add to this the overall Judaising of Palestine, we realise the real goal of the Zionist state, namely the Israelisation of occupied Jerusalem, politically, culturally, socially and religiously by erasing the city's history as a centre of the Arab, Christian and Islamic cultures.





At the same time, Unesco has named occupied Jerusalem as the 2009 Capital of Arab Culture, which entails various cultural activities that befit this occasion - many of which have been suppressed by the Israeli authorities. As Jerusalem and the whole of Palestine are under Zionist occupation, the city, until it is liberated, must be declared the eternal capital of Arab culture. Numerous and various are the societies that bear the name of occupied Jerusalem. Their efforts, especially in the cultural side, are modest.

    The declaration of occupied Jerusalem as the 2009 Capital of Arab Culture
    should be coupled with a plan for the liberation of occupied Jerusalem: the
    land, the people and the culture. Otherwise, this year will pass and we will
    look as if we have merely performed a bothersome obligation


We have said that Israel wants unified occupied Jerusalem to be its eternal capital. Hence its efforts to force facts on the ground and to finish with the Jerusalem question at this serious stage of the peace process, irrespective of the fact that the question of occupied Jerusalem is the most vital one. While Israel should not be allowed to determine alone the future of occupied Jerusalem, east and west alike, the Israelisation of the city is gaining momentum, hiding behind an imaginary peace process that has achieved nothing but the isolation of the holy city.

    Occupied Jerusalem is not
    merely a Palestinian city; it is Arab and Muslim too. Will the Arabs and the
    Muslims take a unified stance, nay, a 'reasonable' stance to safeguard the holy
    city against the dangers and plots that beset it?

This has to be part of a comprehensive, national strategy that befits occupied Jerusalem. It has to have an Arab, an Islamic, a European and an international dimension; for Jerusalem, to us, is the scintillating star in our skies

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Author: As'ad Abdul Rahman