"On a clear day, which could turn out to be gloomy for the Jewish majority in Jerusalem," Chaim Silberstein fears, "the Arabs of East Jerusalem will decide to break a long-standing taboo. "To the polls to vote for a list or lists of their own. The 'resident' status they hold gives them the right to vote and be elected to the Jerusalem City Council, a right that most of them have to this day chosen not to exercise."
Silberstein is the founder and president of the "If I Forget You" organization, which works for the unity of Jerusalem, but he was exposed to the general public due to the tragedy of his daughter, Shira Ish-Ran.
She was seriously injured in a terrorist attack at the Ofra junction in December 2018, and the baby in her womb - the late Israel - was born and died three days later. The permit, as stated, through the organization he established.
"The Arabs of East Jerusalem," Silberstein recalls, "equal in the municipal ballots more than a third of the seats in the city council: 13-12 seats out of the 31. To date, for 55 years, the municipal political game has been conducted within the Jewish sector only." "The PLO, PA and Hamas boycotted all election campaigns in Jerusalem. Their boycott was intended to prevent Israel from recognizing, at least de facto, its rule and sovereignty in East Jerusalem. Those who still wanted to vote were few. Some of them were threatened and deterred."
Will the rules of the game change in more than a year, in the local elections in October 2023?
Can RAAM's unprecedented and historic partnership in the government and the coalition (or could) lead to a historic turning point in East Jerusalem as well? On the East Jerusalem street, says Silberstein, such a possibility is already being talked about.
A few months ago, a rumor spread among the residents that the Prime Minister herself would run in the municipal council elections. Mansour Abbas clarified in response to my request that "the issue was not discussed by the Prime Minister," but did not address the possibility.
The connection, at least ideologically, between Hamas and the southern faction of the Islamic Movement and its Shura Council, represented in the Knesset by the Prime Minister, is well known. First for East Jerusalem residents to vote for an Arab, religious or national list or lists for city council?
No complications.
Katz, Photo: Yehoshua Yosef
Demography - one of the cornerstones of Israel's policy in Jerusalem - has always been a key player in Israeli conduct in the capital.
Almost every decade, Israel has updated its demographic target - and always downward.
Initially, a target of 80 percent Jewish majority was set.
The target was then updated to a majority of about 70 percent, and finally the planning authorities settled for a more modest majority, of only 60 percent.
Making do with little was a constraint, because the Arab population grew faster than the Jewish population.
To this built-in deficit is added a permanent negative migration balance: for 31 years now, far fewer Jews have joined Jerusalem than those who choose to leave it - about 530,000 Jews have left the city in the last three decades, and only about 325,000 have come to live there.
In recent years, there has been a change in trend, and the increase in the rate of Arabs in the capital has been largely halted, but since 1967 the situation has changed drastically, after the Jewish majority in Jerusalem has decreased in the last 55 years from 74 percent to only 60 percent.
The patent - girls' municipalities
A new-old bill by MK Israel Katz, which has already been tabled in the Knesset, seeks to increase the Jewish majority in Jerusalem by establishing a umbrella municipality for the capital, and de facto annexing Jewish localities in the Jerusalem metropolitan area to the capital's municipal borders. "Kim, including Benjamin Netanyahu and Bezalel Smutrich, want to add Beitar Illit, Ma'ale Adumim, Givat Zeev, Efrat and the localities of the Gush Etzion Regional Council to Jerusalem, and turn their councils into subsidiaries of the Jerusalem municipality.
Today, about 150,000 Jews live in all of these localities, constituting about a third of the Jewish population in Judea and Samaria.
According to Katz, the merger will initially be without the application of sovereignty, but with a municipal and administrative affiliation with the large, new and expanded Jerusalem municipality.
The addition of the settlements will change the demographic balance in the capital and will re-establish the Jewish majority in it at about 70 percent.
The councils will maintain budgetary independence and managerial autonomy, but with an affinity to the central municipality and the city, which can use areas that it currently cannot use for various needs.
"I am a hunter of opportunities," says Katz, who will bring the bill to a vote "as soon as I am convinced that there is a chance to raise a majority for it."
The proposal has another part, no less interesting, and perhaps even more: the Arab neighborhoods beyond the security fence in North Jerusalem - the Shuafat refugee camp, Kfar Akev and Anata - areas that have been severely neglected in government, infrastructure and services for decades, will also have autonomous municipal management and become a subsidiary. Of the Central Municipality.
These Arab neighborhoods are home to a third of East Jerusalem's population, about 140,000 people, most of whom hold residency certificates.
Katz's proposal is reminiscent of a similar proposal made a few years ago by the Minister of Jerusalem Affairs, Zeev Elkin.
He also proposed leaving the neighborhoods under Israeli sovereignty and leaving their residents' Jerusalem resident certificates in their hands, but at the same time - removing them from the jurisdiction of Jerusalem and establishing a separate local council for them.
If Elkin's proposal had been accepted, the Jewish majority would have grown even more, to about 76 percent (fair disclosure: I too was a partner in this initiative, within the framework of the Jerusalem Center for Public and State Affairs and the "If I Forget You" organization).
Katz, unlike Malkin, leaves the northern Arab neighborhoods within Jerusalem, and does not separate them from the municipal area of the capital.
His proposal turns them into a sixth-daughter municipality, which is subordinate to the Jerusalem municipality, like Ma'ale Adumim or Beitar Illit.
Katz avoided the additional step that Elkin supported and that Silverstein also supports, "to prevent various political and political complications," he said.
This is also the reason why Katz removed at this stage from his bill the full sovereignty clause, which was incorporated in one of its previous incarnations in the 17th Knesset.
The Jerusalem municipality, including Mayor Moshe Leon himself, does not like the more aggressive version - the one that Elkin and Silberstein identify with - according to which the northern Arab neighborhoods beyond the fence should be taken out of the municipal jurisdiction, and removed from Jerusalem.
The municipality believes that the demographic distress of the Jewish side of Jerusalem can be addressed through the construction boom in the capital.
City officials point out that in 2021 there will be 5,400 residential construction starts in Jerusalem, and that in each of the years 2022 and 2023 there will be another 6,000 construction starts.
"That's three times the 2,000 apartments built here every year, for two decades now," the municipality says.
"A real turnaround, which may lead to an improvement in the negative migration balance, since the many Jews who leave do so mainly due to the lack of housing solutions. The construction boom will present them with a new option."
Broad Jerusalem is preferable
The one who strongly opposes, like Katz, the withdrawal of the Arab neighborhoods from the jurisdiction of Jerusalem, is the deputy mayor, Arie King.
King estimates that the almost immediate response of the Arab population in the northern neighborhoods beyond the fence to take them out of the city will be their move back to the area inside the fence.
"The same thing happened when we built the security fence in Jerusalem," King recalls, "and it will happen again."
Haim Silberstein, Photo: Oren Ben Hakon
why?
You leave the resident's IDs in their hands, and also leave them within the state.
The only change is in the different definition of their residential address - an Israeli regional council, instead of within the Jerusalem municipality.
"This will happen because the first motivation of the Arabs of those neighborhoods, and I talk to their residents, is to stay in Jerusalem, and not in any other local authority. They know that when a leftist comes to power it will be very easy for him to market the transfer of this new Israeli council "For the Palestinian Authority, what will bring multiple dangers to Jerusalem. There is also no real ability to guarantee that the new leadership of these neighborhoods, which will become a council outside the capital, will not have ties with hostile elements in the PA and create ties between them."
Elkin proposed improving the demographics of Jerusalem for the benefit of the Jewish side, by removing these neighborhoods from the municipal sphere of Jerusalem. Doesn't that make sense?
"I have already explained - we will receive an influx of tens of thousands of residents who will enter from the neighborhoods beyond the fence to the Arab and Jewish neighborhoods inside the fence. Our rent will come out at a loss. The way to demographic improvement for the Jewish side "And also to attach to Jerusalem its Jewish satellite settlements."
First budget, but not enough.
Shuafat,
Are you not afraid of the Mansour Abbas effect, that is, of the possibility that the partnership of an Arab-Israeli party in power will lead to a mass, initial, vote of the Arabs of East Jerusalem for the city council?
King estimates that the involvement of RAAM in the coalition will have no impact on East Jerusalem, adding: "If the alternative is a complete and broad Jerusalem that has Arabs in the city council, versus a narrow, thin and dangerous Jerusalem - They have representatives in the city council, across Jerusalem with fewer Arabs and less territory. "
Silberstein, as he fears the "Abbas effect", sees things differently.
"Separating the Arab neighborhoods beyond the fence from Jerusalem and establishing a separate council for them is good for Israel, both from a demographic point of view and in terms of the well-being of the residents themselves. Where on the one hand the economic burden on the Jerusalem municipality will decrease, and on the other hand the economic bonus for residents, who have been neglected for many years - will increase.
"According to our proposal, the neighborhoods will not be transferred to the PA.
The status of the area will change only from a municipal point of view, and the neighborhoods will continue to be part of the State of Israel, but not part of Jerusalem.
"Jerusalem itself will enjoy hundreds of thousands of dunams in the areas between the city and the satellite towns, and these will be used for the welfare of the Jewish and Arab residents throughout the area, for housing, industry, tourism and commerce."
The neighborhoods that are part of the city - only on paper: a clear governmental vacuum
The northern Arab neighborhoods beyond the separation fence in Jerusalem - Kfar Akev and the Shuafat refugee camp - are officially part of Jerusalem, which is under Israeli sovereignty.
Their residents hold the blue resident certificates, like the rest of East Jerusalem, but in practice these areas ceased to function as part of Jerusalem's urban fabric many years ago.
Due to the cheap and available housing in these huge neighborhoods and the lack of a border or barrier
between them and the Judea and Samaria areas, many Palestinians from the West Bank also came to them, who came into marriage with the Jerusalem side. Many of the families there are involved
Security south of the Kfar Akev area and the Shuafat refugee camp further deepened the neglect, delinquency, poverty and lack of governance that prevailed in these neighborhoods in the first place, until officials defined them as no-man's land. Urbanity and urban services are particularly low, a phenomenon of illegal weapons in the hands of residents, and as a rule - a clear governmental vacuum in many areas.
In recent years the situation has changed, but slightly.
After Mayor Moshe Leon visited neighborhoods beyond the fence, construction of hundreds of classrooms was budgeted there for the first time since 1967.
For the first time, the establishment of a community administration in the Qalandiya neighborhood has also been budgeted, and the Gihon company is currently carrying out replacement work on the sewer pipes in Kfar Akev and Qalandiya.
Few budgets for cultural activities and activities with at-risk youth have also been allocated to the Jerusalem areas beyond the fence.
Were we wrong?
Fixed!
If you found an error in the article, we'll be happy for you to share it with us