Sheikh Jarrah and the masterplan for Jerusalem LEVEL PLAYING FIELD The Hindu, 20 February On a visit to Jerusalem

in December, we met with residents of Sheikh Jarrah, a n eighbourhood north of the Old City, where 28 extended Palestinian families are w aging a struggle against eviction and displacement by Jewish settlers. The families came here in 1948 as refugees from Israel. With the sponsorship of the Jordanian government and the United Nations they built their homes and estab lished their community. In 1967, East Jerusalem, including Sheikh Jarrah, was oc cupied and annexed by Israel. Soon after, Jewish settler groups began laying cla im to the land, on the basis of an alleged Ottoman era purchase. But its only sin ce 2007, as Israel has intensified its efforts to create facts on the ground, es pecially in Jerusalem, that these claims have secured enough political backing t o result in actual evictions. So far, three Sheikh Jarrah families have been rem oved from their homes, to be instantly replaced by Jewish settlers, who have swa thed the occupied building in Israeli flags, barbed wire and surveillance equipm ent. Eviction orders are pending against the remaining families, with more settl ers poised to move in. The residents of Sheikh Jarrah know their history. They are defending homes buil t by their families on land that their families have occupied for 60 years, land and homes which they had every reason to believe they were legally entitled to. They have kept vigil under trees. They have camped out in their own gardens. Th ey and their children have been assaulted by settlers and police. They have trie d every conceivable legal recourse, though the Israeli courts rebuff them time a nd again. They have organised non-violent demonstrations. They have appealed to Obama, the EU and the UN. But the Israelis have plans for Jerusalem and at the m oment they see no reason to allow the residents of Sheikh Jarrah or Silwan or Al -Bustan or any of the other Palestinian neighbourhoods under similar pressure to stand in their way. Within weeks of the 1967 war, Israel announced the annexation of 70 sq km of lan d captured from Jordan and the creation on that land of an enlarged Jerusalem mu nicipality. It declared the unified Jerusalem its capitol and shifted its national institutions there. This annexation is in clear violation of international law and has never been formally recognised by other countries, which retain their em bassies in Tel Aviv. Yet, at the same time, these governments have been willing to tolerate and, in the case of the US, subsidise the Israeli policy of Judaisati on of Jerusalem, the policy that ousts the people of Sheikh Jarrah from their hom es. The master plan for Jerusalem, endorsed by the Israeli Government and the Jerusale m Municipality, aims explicitly at preserving a Jewish majority of 60 or 70 per cent (the exact ratio is in dispute). Its hard to think of another example, since the fall of South African apartheid, of an ethnic planning quota being adopted as state policy. In pursuit of ethnic dominance, Israel has created a complex regime of discrimin ation in planning, residency rights, restrictions on movement, and provision for education, healthcare and infrastructure. Palestinian private land is confiscat ed (as at Sheikh Jarrah), settlement building and road construction fragment and limit Palestinian development, and the wall, in its tortured progress through, across, into and out of Jerusalem, sets in concrete the whole policy. This has n othing to do with the security of Israel and everything to do with Israeli contr ol over Palestinians and Palestine as a whole. Though they were born in the city, have spent their lives there and have no othe

r home, Palestinians resident in Jerusalem are treated like foreign citizens. Un like Israelis, they must prove that Jerusalem is their centre of life if they are to retain the Jerusalem ID card without which they cannot gain access to the cit y, its markets and services. In order to safeguard their residency status, famil ies crowd into inadequate housing. When they seek permission to expand their hom es, they are refused. When, left with no option, they build unapproved extension s, they face demolition. In the Old City, the Jewish Quarter feels sanitised. The restoration has a heavy touch. The area is colonised by tour groups and the souvenir industry, whose wa res include tee shirts bearing the slogans: Super Jew, Dont Worry America Israels Beh ind You (illustrated with a tank), and Guns n Moses. In this city of multiple, entw ined histories, only one history, one thread, is permitted. The Muslim Quarter, though physically more decaying, lives more in the present. Its a marketplace sim ilar to marketplaces in other Arabic cities, with Palestinians mainly buying fro m and selling to each other. Here and there in the Muslim Quarter Jewish settlers have occupied buildings, ea sily identified by the Israeli flags and bulging security apparatus. I watched J ewish kids playing football on barbed wire enclosed rooftops a strange form of s elf-imprisonment. If nothing else, it testifies to an ideological will power str ong enough to compel parents to subject their own children to a life of fear and stress. Its a platitude that Jerusalem means different things to different people. Even i n the Bible itself, and certainly in the Talmudic literature that followed, Jeru salem is more a symbol than a geographical space. The city is a metaphor, an obj ect of longing, a place from which we are all exiled, a better world to which we all aspire. In some parts of the tradition Jerusalem is an ideal of social just ice. The literalism of Zionism, and of many pro-Zionist Christians, is very much a modern, reductive twist. At Sheikh Jarrah, Silwan and elsewhere, it is thin c over for a naked land grab. Shortly after our visit, the Jerusalem Municipality demolished part of the Pales tinian owned Shepherds Hotel, perched on a ridge above the Sheikh Jarrah homes. It is to be replaced by a new apartment block for Jewish settlers. Another blow followed soon after: the revelation in the Palestine Papers leaked documents pub lished by Al Jazeera and the Guardian that Palestinian Authority negotiators wer e prepared to barter away Sheikh Jarrah. The families we met expected little fro m the PA, but not outright betrayal. Nonetheless, they feel they have no choice but to continue their struggle. It is a duty to themselves and to the future. They embody the critical Palestinian vi rtue of sumoud steadfastness. Events in Egypt will have given them new hope. But u ntil world opinion rouses itself against the ethnic cleansing of Jerusalem, the odds are stacked against them.