CIAO DATE: 03/2013
December 2012
For many Arab East Jerusalemites, the battle for their city is all but lost. Settlements have hemmed in their neighbourhoods, which have become slums in the midst of an expanding Jewish presence; trade with the West Bank has been choked off by the Separation Barrier and checkpoints; organised political life has been virtually eradicated by the clampdown on Palestinian institutions; their social and economic deprivation is rendered the more obvious by proximity to better-off Jewish neighbours. Israel may not have achieved its demographic goal. But its policies have had profound effects: Arab Jerusalemites are disempowered and isolated from the Palestinian polity as rarely before. Since 1967, Palestinians overwhelmingly have boycotted Israeli institutions in the city on the grounds that acting otherwise would legitimate occupation. This is understandable, but potentially obsolete and self-defeating. As Palestinian Jerusalemites increasingly are adrift, bereft of representation and lacking political, social, and economic resources, it is time for their national movement to reassess what, no longer a considered strategy, has become the product of reflexive habit.
Resource link: Extreme Makeover? (II): The Withering of Arab Jerusalem [PDF]