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Politics : War -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Thomas M. who wrote (9488)	12/3/2001 11:00:30 AM
From: GUSTAVE JAEGER	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 23908

Why Judeofascists don't want to give up even a square inch of Jerusalem to the Palestinians: August 16, 1998 JEWISH DROP IN JERUSALEM WORRIES ISRAEL By Lee Hockstader Describing the case of a 37-year-old Jewish occupational therapist (Maman) who moved from Jerusalem to Mevasseret Zion in July, the Post report explains how out-migration from the city has undermined the demographic balance between Palestinians and Jews. "City housing prices are crazy," the emigrant told the reporter, adding that life in the city had become a terrible -- congested traffic, dirty streets, and high rent in an urban environment that is plagued by "smoldering social tensions." It continues: The flight of yuppies like Maman, coupled with the high birth rate of Palestinians, is contributing to a demographic tilt in Jerusalem so gradual that it might go unremarked in any other city. But in Jerusalem, whose borders were redrawn three decades ago to pad the Jewish population and exclude Palestinians, demography is politics, and almost no shift is inconsequential. The tilt is taking place despite decades of Israeli efforts to limit the growth of Jerusalem's Palestinian population by legal and administrative impediments. The policies have prevented much new construction on Arab-owned land in East Jerusalem. But they have not been able to stop Palestinians from having babies. Demographics is at the heart of the political struggle in the region, the Post report notes: Jews make up 70 percent of Jerusalem's population, down from about 74 percent after Israel conquered and annexed the city's eastern half in 1967. Arabs and others account for 30 percent of Jerusalem's 630,000 people, but that number includes several thousand former Soviet immigrants officially regarded as not Jewish even though their husbands, wives, fathers or children are Jews. Moreover, as the Jewish population in the city goes down, Palestinians are coming in -- and this increases the pressure for recognizing the city as the capital of a Palestinian state. Palestinians, meanwhile, have been returning to the city for fear of having their residency papers annulled by Israeli authorities if they do not. And despite often severe overcrowding in Arab quarters of East Jerusalem, Palestinians in the city, on average, are having one-third more babies than Jews. Israeli planners estimate that the Palestinian and other non-Jewish population could rise to 40 percent by 2020. Such a sizable non-Jewish presence in Jerusalem could add credence to the Palestinians' long-standing ambition to make Arab East Jerusalem the capital of a future Palestinian state. The sensitive nature of census-taking in the region is apparent. So sensitive are the population figures in Jerusalem that when Palestinian demographers conducted a census of East Jerusalem late last year, it was immediately declared illegal by the Israeli parliament and some census-takers were briefly detained. The results, perhaps unsurprisingly, suggested the Palestinian population of the city is 15 percent larger than the 180,000 acknowledged by Israeli authorities. And while the Oslo peace accord specifies that Jerusalem's ultimate status is a matter to be negotiated between the two sides, a Palestinian capital in Jerusalem is something Israel's right-wing government is determined to avert. "It is not a secret," said Jerusalem's conservative mayor, Ehud Olmert. "We look at Jerusalem as our capital and the only way we can achieve this is by having a very substantial Jewish majority." Said Uziel Wexler, chairman of the Jerusalem Development Authority: "We have to keep [Jerusalem's Jewish-Arab ratio] at 70-30, more or less. If you breach it, it becomes a political issue and Jerusalem is very sensitive. It's a crazy situation and a crazy city. . . . And once you break the proportions things would get even crazier." Wexler, the article continues, "is a driving force behind a bitterly contested plan, made public a few weeks ago, to boost Jerusalem's Jewish population and tax base and cement Israel's dominance of the city and its environs far into the future." Under that plan, "Jerusalem would annex a raft of mostly small suburban municipalities to the west, and build some 80,000 apartments and houses there for Jews over the next couple of decades." Not surprisingly, the idea has infuriated Palestinians and drawn the attention of Arabs to the demographic dimension of politics in the Middle East. [snip] africa2000.com