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26 May 2009 Warnings continue to mount about the
escalating Israeli campaign to turn Jerusalem into an
all-Jewish city, with calls for immediate action to
save the holy city from the schemes being implemented
by the occupation government and Zionist groups, which
have almost reached their final stages.
Sheikh Raed Salah, head of the Islamic Movement in
occupied Palestine, has revealed “a new scheme taking
shape in five racist Israeli ministries that target
occupied Jerusalem.”
The Terrible Destruction of
Jerusalem Homes
Sheikh Salah, in a press conference held May 7th in
the Umm Kamal Tent, erected on the ruins of a house
destroyed by occupation authorities in Shaykh Jarrah
in Jerusalem, said, “There is a comprehensive scheme
underway, with each of its links currently being
tightened, in order to alter the social fabric of the
area and turn the whole belt from Sheikh Jarrah until
Wadi al-Joz and Sawwanah in the so-called ‘Sacred
Basin’ into a Jewish enclave. The aim is to completely
encircle the Old City and to expand 32 illegally
expropriated sites in the vicinity of the al-Aqsa
Mosque in order to gain mastery over it.”
Salah revealed that the municipality of the occupation
government has recently embarked upon enforcement of a
new engineering measure for all the houses of
Jerusalem. A search will be conducted for any add-ons
to houses, which will result in the issuance of a
demolition order for the add-on or for the entire
building. He described the number of houses which the
municipality wants to demolish as “frightening”.
He pointed out that the Jerusalem Municipality has
assigned some engineers the task of drawing up new
engineering schemes at the expense of the existing
houses of the city. He referred to a handwritten
document of the Ateret Kohanim Foundation, which is
heavily involved in expropriation of Arab properties.
In it an offer was made to one of the residents of
Jerusalem to purchase a number of his properties, for
two-and-a-half-million shekels (600,000 dollars) per
square meter.
Meanwhile, a report by the heads of the European
missions in the Palestinian territories issued on May
5th stated that Israel is in the process of
systematically eradicating the Arab presence from
occupied Jerusalem.
The report mentioned a number of matters contributing
to this tendency, including the plan by the occupation
to increase the population of Zionists in East
Jerusalem, with a corresponding reduction in the
Palestinian population, and stressed that it would not
be easy to separate the Palestinian population from
the Jewish settlers living in East Jerusalem due to
the unprecedented increase in the number of settlers.
Feverish Expropriation Activities
It stated that the institutions overseen by Jewish
settlers, such as Il Ad and Ateret Kohanim, pursued
different strategies to expand the settlements, most
of which are carried out with foreign financing.
The report noted that the Absentee Property Law is one
of the methods used by the settlement organizations to
expropriate the property of Palestinian civilians. The
law is used to carry out a secret campaign initiated
by the government of Ariel Sharon targeting
Palestinian real estate in the Old City and the Silwan
neighborhood of Jerusalem for transfer of ownership to
Zionist settlers.
It also pointed out that the organizations for Jewish
settlement sometimes purchase real estate and land
from the Palestinians directly and sometimes through
intermediaries. In both cases the Palestinian tenants
who live in these houses are unaware that their homes
have been sold to settlers until they are being turned
out of them.
It further pointed out that settlers build settlement
units in the heart of Arab neighborhoods without
obtaining the required permits, but such structures
are never demolished, as happens regularly with
Palestinian-owned houses.
The report said that occupation authorities have begun
building a synagogue near al-Aqsa Mosque, which has
increased Palestinian fears of a long-term plan
promoted by some settler groups to take over al-Haram
al-Sharif (The Temple Mount).
It explained that the settlement activity being
implemented around the Old City of Jerusalem is part
of a plan by the occupation aimed at linking up the
settlements built in East Jerusalem with those in the
Old City.
Islamic Antiquities Theft and
Falsification of History
In a related development, the occupation authorities
placed stones stolen from sites near the southern wall
of al-Aqsa Mosque on display in the garden of the
newly opened building of the Israeli Knesset. This is
consistent with Zionist plans to turn Jerusalem into a
Jewish city and obscure its landmarks, according to
Palestinian institutions concerned with heritage and
charitable endowments.
The most prominent of those relics is a large stone
weighing five tons stolen from a site close to the
south-east of al-Aqsa Mosque below the Marwani prayer
hall. A sign near the stone identifies it as being
from the Temple Mount, and the accompanying
explanation says that the stone is from the era of the
alleged Second Temple.
The al-Aqsa Institute for Charitable Endowments and
Heritage said, “The move reflects the insistence of
the Zionist enterprise and its official political arms
to escalate their activities targeting the historical
relics of Jerusalem, seeking to turn Jerusalem into a
Jewish city and obliterate its Islamic and Arabic
landmarks.
It added that the opening of the park that day (May
5th) is an attempt by the occupation to play up the
alleged Hebrew history of Jerusalem based on the claim
that the stones were stolen from the alleged remains
of the Second Temple.
60 Thousand Palestinians Are
Threatened
In the same vein, the Archbishop of Sebastia in the
Greek Orthodox patriarchate in Jerusalem, Archbishop
Ataullah Hanna, urged Arab countries to work quickly
to save the city of Jerusalem from the Judaization
process, which is in its final stages. He pointed out
that the Jews are taking over both Islamic and
Christian holy places.
In a lecture delivered at the Association for Opposing
Racism and Zionism in Jordan on May 6th, he examined
the current reality of Jerusalem, calling it a
disaster, and said: “The Judaification process is in
full swing, and the Zionist excavations carried out
under al-Aqsa Mosque of Jerusalem threaten the
historic buildings.” He criticized the official Arab
position regarding what is happening to Jerusalem.
In a related development, a new report issued by the
Organization for Humanitarian Affairs of the United
Nations stated that data indicates the Israeli
government intends to build tens of thousands of new
apartments in the Jerusalem area and what is called
Gush Etzion, including 20,000 at a newly expropriated
site south of Jerusalem called Gifa’at Ya’al, 2000 new
housing units at the expropriated site of Bat Ayin,
and 5000 housing units in the expropriated site of
Gifaot.
The United Nations on 8th May urged Israel to freeze
the demolition orders against Arab homes in East
Jerusalem, stressing that 60 thousand Palestinians are
threatened with the loss of their homes if the final
go ahead is given to destroy all unlicensed housing.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of
Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) stressed in a recently
released statement that “at least 28% of Palestinian
houses in East Jerusalem have been built without
permits,” because the municipality issues only a
limited number of building permits to Arabs in this
part of the city.
OCHA added “Therefore the Israeli authorities may end
up destroying the homes of 60 thousand Palestinians
out of the 225,000 people who live in East Jerusalem.”
The Weakness of Arab and Islamic
Movements Because of these and other
developments, Arab foreign ministers at an emergency
meeting held on May 7th in Cairo demanded a stop to
the Judaization of Jerusalem and called for support of
the Palestinians living in and around the holy city.
The meeting considered the expansion of settlements in
the eastern part of occupied Jerusalem, the demolition
and confiscation of Palestinian homes, and excavations
beneath and around al-Aqsa Mosque to all be steps in
the process of Judaizing Jerusalem.
In the resolutions of the meeting, the foreign
ministers called on the Security Council, the Quartet
and the relevant regional and international
organizations “to immediately intervene to halt all
Israeli actions in East Jerusalem.” The resolution
noted that these procedures are aimed at “the
isolation of Jerusalem, the expulsion of its Arab
population, and its conversion into a Jewish city.”
Observers believe that Arab and Islamic activities at
the popular and official levels in response to the
rapid makeover of Jerusalem will not reach the minimum
required level to fend off the dangers posed to the
holy city and to confront the Zionist schemes designed
to obliterate its Arab and Islamic landmarks.
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