The ACRPS has published Jerusalem: Ethnic Cleansing and Forms of Resistance (583 pp.) by multiple authors and edited by Ayat Hamdan. Israel has sought to Judaize the city of Jerusalem for more than half a century since it came under occupation following the War of June 1967. It has used legal and administrative means to bolster this policy, rooted in the construction of settlements and the apartheid wall, that have expanded to include disrupting the city’s social, cultural, and economic fabric by inserting settlement clusters and isolating East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank.
In light of the importance of Jerusalem in the Arab Israeli conflict, this book highlights spaces of contention related to Israeli ethnic cleansing and Palestinian resistance mechanisms. It considers the legal status of Jerusalem, as well as the city’s political, economic, social, cultural, and religious reality and the role of mass movements and social actors in confronting Israeli policies of replacement and Judaization. The volume is divided into four sections: history and the struggle for holy sites; education and the conflict over consciousness; instruments of control and modes of resistance; and Jerusalem in international history.
Jerusalem and its inhabitants face a series of threats, present and future. Judaization is at work, strong as ever, confining the Palestinian presence to isolated neighbourhoods and reducing the city’s Palestinian population to 20%, equivalent to the proportion of Arab citizens of Israel. These demographic shifts also affect the fields of education, healthcare, construction, and employment. An important component of Jerusalemite identity and national belonging, education is subject to the Israeli mechanism of erasure, exclusion, and distortion in service of exerting control over all aspects of life in the city. Israel seeks to Judaize and Israelize the space and place of Jerusalem by implementing Hebrew names, continuously expelling Arab families, and providing the bare minimum of social services to widen the gap between Jewish and Palestinian society; the former benefit fully from the country’s wealth and resources, while the latter are left to survive on the remaining crumbs.
The volume argues that Jerusalemites should hold fast to Palestinian school curricula and devise new educational schemes, at all levels, that conceive of Jerusalem not only as a religious landmark but as a powerful political symbol and the future capital of the State of Palestine. At the same time, Palestinians must strategize against Israelization policies in conjunction with strong diplomatic efforts to mobilize Arab political and economic leaders in support of resistance campaigns in Jerusalem.
Demographic shift theory shows that, despite various population growth factors and uneven balances of power, Palestinians and Israelis in Jerusalem and the vicinity are undergoing a continuous “population boom”. An examination of history shows that a demographic triumph of one population over the other is farfetched in the foreseeable future, except in the case of a war in which ethnic cleansing is practiced, on the basis of which have emerged proposals for a geopolitical settlement to the Israeli Palestinian conflict contingent on a two-state solution.
Research indicates that relations between a minority repressed by the ruling majority will be destabilized and descend into confrontation if this minority should exceed 30% of their allotted space, as has happened with Palestinian Jerusalemites. Hence, they have begun demanding equal rights so as to transform the country from a case of occupation and racial discrimination into a collective, diverse nation in which all citizens are peers: a one-state solution.
Given the decisive rejection of this proposal on part of the Israelis, a settlement to the demographic and humanitarian struggle in Jerusalem based on the principles of justice, equality, and guaranteeing a dignified life is unlikely in the near future. Challenges aside, settlements between Palestinians and Israelis in and around Jerusalem could serve as a testing ground for a nationwide geopolitical resolution.
The Israeli lobby in the United States has conventionally focused on two points: religious and cultural affinity, and the US-Israeli alliance in the Middle East. However, Jews make up less than 2% of the US population and so-called “Christian Zionists” no more than 20%; these figures and a reading of the history of American policy on Jerusalem and Israel suggest that religion has not been a decisive factor in this relationship. Moreover, many experts have cast doubt on Israel’s strategic importance to the United States. This volume suggests that the Israeli lobby, despite variation among groups as to the permissibility of critiquing Israeli policies, is the most important factor in American political support for Israel, and that its role demonstrates the leading influence of internal factors, defined by political fundraising and organizing more than religious demographics or culture, on US decision making.
