JERUSALEM — An city government official recently made an announcement that is realistically true in terms of Middle East peace:
Yakir Segev, who holds the East Jerusalem portfolio in the Jerusalem municipality, made an uncharacteristic remark on Friday, declaring that the Palestinian neighborhood east of the separation fence were “no longer part of the city.”
Some 50,000 Palestinians, identification card holding residents of Jerusalem, live outside the separation fence. Most of them reside in the northern Jerusalem neighborhoods which are currently under near anarchy due to the fact that Israeli authorities — municipality, police, service authorities — almost never enter this area and the Palestinian authorities also refrain from entering under Oslo guidelines forbidding them to operate within Jerusalem.
Speaking at Hebrew University, Segev, seen as a right-winger, said Thursday that the reality that has formed in the region is irreversible, and that the separation fence, which many Israelis credit with the dramatic drop in terror attacks perpetrated by Palestinians in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, was built for political and demographic reasons — not just security concerns. “The Jerusalem municipality has no hand in managing these neighborhoods, and doesn’t have the power to address the difficult situation facing the 55,000 people who live there,” he said.
“The State of Israel has given up,” he went on to say. “[The neighborhoods] are outside the jurisdiction of the state, and certainly the municipality. For all practical purposes, they are Ramallah.”
There are three main obstacles to peace — at least as far as implementing a two-state solution is concerned — in the region: Palestinian hostility towards the very existence of Israel (especially as a Jewish state) and the terrorism that it inspires; settlements and the border between Israel and any future Palestinian state in the West Bank (and perhaps the Gaza Strip); and the status of Jerusalem.
But here is the question that no one addresses: What, exactly, is “Jerusalem”? It is an idea, of course, that is firmly planted in the minds of Christians and Jews — and, to a lesser extent, Muslims. But as far as a geographic entity, the physical location of “Jerusalem” has not always been constant — just like the areas of cities throughout the world:
The residents of Little Cambridge resolved to secede from Cambridge when the latter’s government made decisions detrimental to the cattle industry and also failed to repair the Great Bridge linking Little Cambridge with Cambridge proper. Legislative approval for separation was obtained in 1807, and Little Cambridge renamed itself Brighton.
In October 1873, the Town of Brighton voted to annex itself to the City of Boston, and in January 1874 Brighton officially became a neighborhood of the City of Boston.
Brighton, where I lived for a few years, is a neighborhood of Boston. Before that, it was independent. Before that, it was part of Cambridge. Now, imagine that Boston — for whatever reason — has carried the same religious meaning as Jerusalem since 1850 or thereabouts. Which areas, exactly, would have those religious connotations today?
Brighton was not a part of Boston when it became “holy.” So, say the city of Boston was divided like Jerusalem might be divided one day — and Brighton would no longer be part of Boston under this hypothetical scenario. I could imagine religious people arguing that “Boston” should not be divided because of its significance to them even though Brighton was not part of the city at the time. When Brighton joined the city of Boston, it acquired the religious significance as well.
Now, here is a brief history of the expansion of the City of Jerusalem:
The first neighbourhoods outside the Old City walls, built from the 1860s onward, were scattered chiefly along the main roads from the west and northwest leading into the city. These early Jewish suburbs were paralleled by non-Jewish expansion prompted by Christian religious or nationalistic motivation. The latter included the Russian Compound on the meydan (old Turkish parade ground), near what is today the commercial heart of west Jerusalem; the German Colony, near what became the railway station; and the American Colony, north of the Damascus Gate. Some early communities, such as Mishkenot Shaʾanannim and Yemin Moshe, with its famous windmill landmark, have been reconstructed and resettled or turned into cultural centres. Others include the Bukharan Quarter; Meʾa Sheʿarim, founded by Orthodox Jews from eastern and central Europe, with its scores of small synagogues and yeshivas; and Maḥane Yehuda, with its fruit and vegetable market, inhabited mainly by Jews of North African and Oriental origin. Residential quarters established between World Wars I and II include Reḥavya in the centre, Talpiyyot in the south, and Qiryat Moshe and Bet Ha-Kerem in the west. The old campus of the Hebrew University at Mount Scopus, northeast of the Old City, formed for some 20 years (1948–67) an Israeli exclave in the Jordanian sector; it was entirely rebuilt after the Six-Day War. Some Arab districts, such as Talbieh and Katamon (Gonen), whose residents fled during the fighting of 1947–48, are now Jewish neighbourhoods, and thousands of houses were built for new Jewish immigrants in districts to the west, newly incorporated into the city. Arab neighbourhoods outside the Old City include El-Sheikh (Al-Shaykh) Jarrāḥ, Wadi al-Jōz (al-Jawz), and Bayt Ḥanīnā in the north and villages such as Silwān and Bayt Ṣafāfāin the south.
Since 1967 large new housing developments for more than 200,000 Jews have been built on the southern, eastern, and northern edges of the city, both within and beyond the extended city boundary. Their construction on territory claimed by both Israelis and Arabs gave rise to repeated confrontations and controversy. Meanwhile, construction of housing for Arabs within the city has been severely limited, which has resulted in large-scale ribbon development of Arab housing, particularly along the road leading north to Ramallah.
As we can see, specific areas that are considered part of “Jerusalem” today was not part of the city — or much less even existed — hundreds, or even thousands, of years ago. The city limits expanded over time, and different areas were incorporated later. But any proposed division of Jerusalem can enrage religious Jews and Muslims, cause riots in the streets, and potentially bring down governments.
For example, the German Colony in south Jerusalem (the picture above is from Wikipedia) did not exist at the times of David, Jesus, and Mohammed. So why is that specific piece of land now considered a sacred part of Jerusalem? If the mayor officially incorporates an outlying neighborhood into the city, does that act of law spread the sacredness of Jerusalem to the new area?
If the German Colony were given solely to Israel or a Palestinian state, the opposing side would raise hell (pardon the pun). But why, exactly? “Jerusalem” seems to be just whatever the municipal government says it is. I’ve never quite figured this out. When Segev, the municipal official who stated that the section of Jerusalem east of the separation barrier was “no longer part of the city,” he was being realistic — just like the fact that Israeli settlements inside the barrier will likely remain part of Israel.
If the part of land known as east Jerusalem were eventually given to a Palestinian state, could the city government not just deem the Western half to be “Jerusalem”?