Evictions and planning decisions on the ground are jeopardising prospects for a two-state Middle East peace deal


March 8, 2010

In the brochure handed out by the mayor's office in Jerusalem last week, there were pretty sketches illustrating a development that would turn a poor, crowded area into a park, with streams, restaurants and hotels. It talked of reviving the area's "ancient glory" and returning the site to "an island of green" just outside the walls of the Old City. True, some houses would have to be demolished but they had been built illegally and anyway the plan was a "win-win" for both the residents and the city, said the mayor, Nir Barkat.

Except that Jerusalem is not any city: it is at the heart of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians and planning projects like this are political and potentially volatile. The area under the spotlight is Bustan, part of Silwan in east Jerusalem, home to Palestinians and, increasingly, to well-funded, heavily guarded Jewish settlers. Most of the world, including Britain, does not recognise Israeli sovereignty in the east of the city, the part it captured in 1967, occupied and then annexed.

Barkat is a secular mayor with strong rightwing views. When asked about the Palestinians of Bustan, he intervened to say they were "Arab residents". He highlighted the fact that the 88 Palestinian homes in Bustan were built without planning permission and that a city like New York, say, would never allow unplanned homes to be built in Central Park. But planning here is an instrument of policy, a policy in which Israel maintains a Jewish demographic majority in Jerusalem and seeks to exert full control over the city it regards as its united, eternal capital. Few Palestinians get planning permission, but most go ahead and build regardless. Only 13% of the east is zoned for Palestinian construction, according to the UN.

Although much attention has been paid to rows over settlements in the occupied West Bank, it is in Jerusalem that the key contest is being fought. The rightwng government insists a united, fully sovereign Jerusalem is a pillar of the Jewish state. But Palestinians say without east Jerusalem as a capital of a Palestinian state there can be no viable two-state peace agreement.

The Bustan plan – on hold now because Israel is conscious of international criticism – is one change among many. In Sheikh Jarrah, also in the east, Palestinian refugees have been evicted from their homes and settlers have moved in. A growing number of Palestinians are losing Israeli residency permits without which they cannot live in the city. New passport stamps issued by Israel at the Jordanian border are preventing some visitors – mostly expatriate Palestinians – from entering Jerusalem. Put together, it represents a significant, if quiet, change on the ground. European diplomats are so worried that in leaked internal reports they warn it is gradually making the prospect of a two-state peace deal "unfeasible".