Friday, 9 September 2016

al Quds - Yesterday and Today

The following talk was presented, at a conference titled “Palestine Conference” at Jamia Millia Islamia on September 6, 2016



Jerusalem, known in Arabic as Al­ Quds, or Holy Sanctuary is one of the oldest and most contested

cities on earth. Built 5,000 years ago, it has been demolished and rebuilt 18 times, is home to dozens

of civilizations and languages, in 37 different eras, and survivor of several occupations and

aggressions.

From time immemorial, Jerusalem has been diverse and cosmopolitan, one of the few cities in the

world where crescents cling to crosses in harmony. Today’s Palestinians represent the mosaic of that

past, and the history and the spirit of their city are evidence of the survival of the Arab character of

Jerusalem against all colonizers.

It was founded between 3000 BCE and 2600 BCE by a West Semitic people, possibly the Canaanites,

the common ancestors of Palestinians, Lebanese, many Syrians and Jordanians, and many Jews. But

when it was founded Jews did not exist. The city was unknown to the Jews for at least a thousand

years. After Jews were uprooted and expelled by Emperor Hadrian in 136 CE, they had no historical

presence or memorable activity in the city for 18 centuries.

When Muslim Arabs conquered Jerusalem under Caliph ‘Umar, it had not seen a Jewish presence in

over five centuries 1

After the crusades ended with Salahuddin Ayyubi capturing Jerusalem in 1187, the city continued

under Ottoman Islamic rule until 1917, when British occupation facilitated Zionist immigration and

colonisation.

Jews gained strength through informal terrorist outfits like Haganah and Irgun. Immediately after the

World War II, they started a guerilla war against the British. Who then referred the issue to the UN

which recommended the partition of Palestine, giving 56 percent to the 23 percent Zionists who

owned only 6 percent of its private land), 42 percent to the 77 percent Arabs who had lived and called

100% of Palestine their home (Jerusalem was earmarked for an international regime). In 1948, Zionist

militia managed to occupy western Jerusalem and expel Palestinians from it through mass killings and

massacres like the one at Deir Yassin.

After the war of 1948, an armistice agreement between Jordan and Israel divided Jerusalem into

eastern and western parts. The eastern part included Al­Aqsa compound and the Old City.

1

(Zaza, p.38).

Israel completed its occupation of Jerusalem during the 1967 war. Soon after the war ended, Israel’s

government announced the unification of East and West Jerusalem as Israel’s “eternal capital,” in

clear disregard of the international law and the Fourth Geneva Convention, an action the Security

Council condemned through resolution number 487 in 1980 declaring the Israeli declaration and all its

consequences illegal, but Israel ignored it.

Under international law, East Jerusalem is occupied territory, as are the parts of the West Bank that

Israel unilaterally annexed to its district of “New Jerusalem”. The Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949

and the Hague Regulations of 1907 forbid occupying powers to alter the lifeways of occupied

civilians, and forbid the settling of people from the occupiers' country in the occupied territory.

Israel's expulsion of Palestinians from their homes in East Jerusalem, its usurpation of Palestinian

property there, and its settling of Israelis on Palestinian land are all gross violations of international

law. Israeli claims that they are not occupying Palestinians because the Palestinians have no state are

cruel and tautological.

The United Nations resolutions adopted since 1967, acknowledging the rights of Palestinians to East

Jerusalem and calling upon the Israeli government to stop altering the character and demographics of

the city have fallen on deaf ears, and the United Nations has no practical means or intention to enforce

them.

The burning of the al­Aqsa mosque in 1969, the 1991 massacre in its holy precincts, the bloody events

of the 1996 opening of the tunnel under the Haram Al Sharif compound, and the September 2000

storming of the Al Aqsa compound by Ariel Sharon which sparked the second intifada attest to the

dark history of Israeli provocations.

At the heart of Jerusalem stands the Haram Al Sharif of al­Aqsa, comprising more than 35 acres of

fountains, gardens, buildings and domes, including the famous golden Dome of the Rock. The entire

compound, conventionally referred to as al­Aqsa, constitutes nearly one­sixth of the walled city.

Jews are drawn to the site to worship at the Western Wall, next to the Haram al­Sharif, and

traditionally considered the holiest site in Judaism and the location of a future temple. The wall is the

only remnant of the Jewish temple destroyed by Herod in AD 70.

Whenever Jewish extremists, under the guise of prophecy (on selected dates according to the lunar

calendar), plan to to storm al­Aqsa compound and build their Temple there, Palestinians gather to

protect their holy site.

When thousands of Jews converged on occupied Jerusalem last weekend to mark what they believed

to be the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans, Israel’s Deputy Defence Minister Eli

Dahan confirmed their intention: “We are here to announce that we’ve returned to Jerusalem and that

we’re preparing our hearts to return to the Temple Mount and rebuild the Temple.” As a warning, he

added, “We’re not ashamed of this: we want to build the Third Temple on the Temple Mount.”

Dahan’s remarks were not the rant of a lunatic fringe. They were a reflection of the prevailing view

within the Israeli political establishment; that the Temple is central to the Jewish people without

which they cannot exist. To them, Al­Aqsa Mosque is an inconvenient obstacle in the way of their

enterprise.

The late rabbi Meir Kahane, who founded and led the terrorist Kach movement, claimed that Israel’s

biggest mistake was that it did not destroy Al­Aqsa in 1967 when Jerusalem was occupied during the

Six­Day War. Thus, for all intents and purposes, the issue is now simply one of unfinished business.

But the extremist groups do not constitute a threat only to al­Aqsa. Official Israeli statements and

actions concerning the Haram Al Sharif are intended to isolate Palestinians and their cause, removing

it from its real historical, political and human rights context. Looking at it from a purely religious

perspective deflects attention from Israel’s continuing settlement expansion, and is used by Zionists as

a test balloon to probe Arab and Muslim reactions to accepting another theft of a Muslim and

Christian holy site.

In order to strengthen its Jewish character and to ensure future expansion of Jewish localities and

settlements, more areas were added to Jerusalem’s municipal limits in 1995 out of West Bank as well

as from Israel beyond the so­called Green Line.

Israel started hectic settlement activity in the new limits of Jerusalem, unleashing a policy of

exclusion and expulsion of Jerusalem’s Arab residents.

Contrary to the claims of the current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli governments have

not in fact been united or consistent about israeli policy on East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin gave undertakings as part of the Oslo Peace Process to withdraw from

Palestinian territory and grant Palestinians a state, promises for which he was assassinated by the

Israeli far right (elements of which now support Netanyahu's government). As late as 2000, the then

Prime Minister Ehud Barak claims he gave oral assurances that Palestinians could have almost all of

the West Bank and through some arrangement could have East Jerusalem as its capital.

Ever since its occupation in 1967, Israel has tried through a number of measures, to integrate eastern

Jerusalem into Israel, by seizing private Arab lands and properties, expelling Arab citizens and

settling as many Jews as possible in the Holy City and its immediate environs. Israeli authorities have

tried to seize Arab­owned properties by declaring them as evacuee/absentee or neglected properties

which could be acquired on one hand or by denying Arabs permits to build or use their properties, on

the other. To achieve this, Israel revived the Land Acquisition Law issued by the British in 1943

which allows acquisition of private land “for public purpose. Using this “law,” Israel acquired 23,500

dunam Palestinian land during 1967­1996 alone. It bulldozed Arab localities adjacent to Western Wall

like the Moroccan Quarter which existed since the days of Salahuddin, the hasty destruction left 1,000

Palestinians homeless. 2

Israeli efforts to change the demography of Eastern Jerusalem may be gauged from the fact that

189,708 Jewish settlers moved there by 2007 (Statistical Book for Jerusalem 2002­2007).

To expedite the land­grabbing, Israeli authorities have also revived an old Ottoman law which states

that ownership of an agricultural land will revert to the State if it is not tilled for a continuous three

years while it is the Israeli occupation force which does not allow Palestinian farmers access to their

lands. The latest example is the apartheid wall erected by Israel, following a policy of Judaization,

displacement and ethnic cleansing in West Bank where vast chunks of lands fall to the west of the

wall to which Palestinians have no access. These lands, eaten up by the wall, have been in effect

acquired without paying any compensation to their owners. The main purpose of the wall is to cut off

East Jerusalem from its natural commercial and social interaction, dismantling the social fabric which

evolved over hundreds of years.

Israel also limits Arab presence in East Jerusalem through mass destruction of homes on a number of

pretexts like punishment for resistance activity, administrative demolition and military requirements.

Figures for the period between 1994­2006 show that during this period alone Israel issued more than

ten thousand demolition orders in East Jerusalem alone though not all of them were carried out.

According to a 2005 study, Israel confiscated 43.5 percent of the lands of East Jerusalem for Jewish

settlements, while designating 41 percent lands as “green land” where construction is illegal. In

2

(aljazeera.net study on Jerusalem “Al­Quds Hikayat Madinah Muhtallah”:

http://www.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/D2BF5E4F­2078­42E8­97B3­841122FB000F.htm).

addition to this, Israel has earmarked 3.4 percent of East Jerusalem lands for military and

infrastructure purposes. The PLO study further said that these figures are still not final because the

Israeli occupation authorities confiscated all Palestinian land records when they closed down the

Orient House in 2001 which functioned as a de facto Palestinian administration in East Jerusalem.

UN Security Council resolution 298 in 1971 resolved that acquisition of land by force is illegal and it

asked Israel to cancel all its actions in this regard.

While Islamic and Christian facts dot every inch of the holy city, Jews have only one physical

historical evidence to support their claim to the city, the “Wailing Wall” better known as the Western

Wall of the Aqsa Mosque or the Buraq Wall. An international commission appointed by the League of

Nations in 1929 had categorically affirmed that the Western Wall is a part of the Aqsa Mosque and a

property of Muslims alone and that Jews have only the right of access, without the right to introduce

anything new at the site. Zionist interference at the site has been a continuous source of friction and

controversy.

Christian sites too have suffered Zionist intrusion; Israel has refused to hand over Room of the Last

Supper on Mount Zion to the Vatican, claiming it to be the grave of King David.

In another act of erasure, Israel labels the Aqsa Mosque as the "Temple Mount," a term that has been

mainstreamed even in Western discourse, thus, offering legitimacy to the Jewish narrative and claims

alternative to Islam’s third holiest site, never mind the fact that the actual site of the first and second

temples are disputed.

The greatest changes have been introduced underground, where Israelis started extensive excavations

under the Aqsa Mosque complex and its vicinity, searching for archeological artifacts to support their

claim on the holy city in general and the site of Aqsa, in particular. The heart of the conflict lies in the

Zionist claim that the remains of their alleged Haykal, their Temple of Solomon, exist underneath

Al­Haram Al­Sharif compound.

Occasional reports have confirmed that extensive tunnels and a number of underground synagogues

have been constructed beneath the al­Aqsa mosque. The excavations are feared to have compromised

the complex’s foundations and any quake or blast could be enough to pull down the whole structure.

Israel’s drilling activities, demolition of buildings and historical Arab and Islamic sites in the Old

City, the construction of Jewish­only structures on stolen Palestinian land, all demonstrate its utter

disregard for the interests of non-­Jews in the holy land or the international opinion expressed through

the UN and other forums.

While foreign tourists and Jewish migrants are “finding oxygen” in Jerusalem, its indigenous residents

are being suffocated by institutionalized racist, apartheid and discriminatory policies aimed at

emptying Jerusalem of its non-­Jewish population in violation of international humanitarian law, and

principles of the International Bill of Human Rights.

Israel routinely raids neighborhoods and civilian facilities, closes down Palestinian institutions and

racially discriminates against teachers and students. It has also run a campaign of arrests of citizens,

minors and public officials, rendering them unable to exercise their right and duty of democratic

representation of their constituents, in accordance with international humanitarian law.

Interfering with freedom of worship, Israel only allows those over the age of 60 to pray at the al Aqsa

mosque. The restriction on freedom of movement highlights the extent of erosion of Palestinian

control over Jerusalem in five decades of occupation.

Their inspiration seems to be Zionist ideologue Theodore Herzl, who said, in the first Zionist

conference in Basel in 1897, "If I ever control Jerusalem, I will definitely remove all the holy places

except the Jewish ones"

Draconian Israeli policies target the Palestinian residents of Jerusalem, suffocate the natives, through

arrest campaigns, in contravention of international humanitarian law, particularly the Fourth Geneva

Convention, and the principles of the International Bill of Human Rights, and Article 9 of the

Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Palestinians have no freedom of movement and residence in any part of the occupied Palestinian

territory, including Jerusalem, while the world looks on.

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