Jerusalem Undivided
To be sure, the Arabs of Jerusalem have a litany of complaints against Israel, which has never treated them equally with the city's Jewish citizens and which is growing increasingly alarmed by the so-called demographic threat to the capital's Jewish majority. City Hall has made it virtually impossible for local Palestinians to get building permits, leading many of them to illegally build houses that the city, in turn, frequently demolishes. Arabs in the capital lost the right to bring in their spouses from the PA territories or abroad after a few West Bank Palestinians used the pretext of "family unification" to gain residence and commit acts of terrorism. Many of the city's Arabs lost access to jobs, school, and family in the West Bank, cut off by Israel's security fence and military checkpoints.
Better off. Still, Jerusalem Palestinians are voting with their feet. Thousands who had left for West Bank jobs have moved back to the city out of fear of being denied re-entry, causing rents on the capital's Arab side to nearly triple in the past few years. While the population, overall, is certainly poor by Israeli standards, it is far better off economically than Palestinians in the West Bank, not to mention those in Gaza, whose economy is a humanitarian disaster. Furthermore, in return for the taxes they pay to Israel, Arabs in Jerusalem receive healthcare and social benefits., including monthly child allowances. And if Israeli police tend to be overly suspicious or worse toward Jerusalem's Arab population, they also tend to know their limits. A Palestinian bystander in Gaza is liable to be killed by a Fatah gunman, a Hamas gunman or an Israeli-fired missile; a Palestinian bystander in Jerusalem is extremely unlikely to be killed by anyone. Notes the local attorney: "The saying you hear [from Arabs] in the city now is 'Give me hell in Jerusalem over paradise in the PA.'"
Despite their abiding Palestinian national identity and resentment of Israel, many local Arabs are coming to terms with Israeli sovereignty. They are reporting crimes to Israeli police in greater numbers. There is also a big shift in the schools away from the PA-approved curriculum to the one approved by Israel--at the insistence of Jerusalem Arab parents. Ayman Gbara, an Arab high school principal in Beit Safafa, a neighborhood just across the security fence from Bethlehem, says the shift is happening at his school because parents see that their children are physically barred from going to the West Bank to attend college, so they want their kids to have a high school diploma that can get them into an Israeli college in Jerusalem. "Twelve, 15 years ago, this was considered to be like treason," says Gbara. "Today, it's considered to be acceptable, even advisable."
For 40 years, conventional wisdom has held that, for Israeli-Palestinian peace, Jerusalem has to be redivided roughly, if not exactly, along the border that existed before the Six-Day War. For all this time, Israel has been hard at work trying to change that perception. Now, on the other side of that old prewar border, Israel has gained untold numbers of silent, resigned supporters for its cause.
With Khaled Abu Toameh
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