Yet Another Unpublished Letter-to-the-Editor

Sent on March 3:

In Isabel Kershner's despatch regarding Israel's High Court decision on property ownership in a Jerusalem neighborhood, she wrote "Israel captured the eastern part of the city, including Sheikh Jarrah, from Jordan in the 1967 war, then annexed it" ("Palestinians Threatened With Eviction Can Stay in Their Homes — for Now", March 1).

The term "annexation", as defined in international law, means "the forcible acquisition of territory by one State at the expense of another State". In 1967, the eastern districts of Jerusalem had been illegally occupied by Jordan, which had invaded the city in 1948. Israel but reunited the city, in a defensive war against Jordanian aggression, which, except for those 19 years of Jordanian occupation, had been but one city, not two, for some 3000 years.

Published? 

Naw.

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How Many Jews Reside in Post-67 Jerusalem?

I have posted about this before but as a figure of 325,000 has been published, I think a review of the most up-to-date figures should be reviewed.

From the Jerusalem Institute Yearbook for 2019, with 2017 figures (Jewish growth rate is 1.5% annually).

Their over all figure is 215,900.

Their breakdown by neighborhoods:

I can't come up with more than 225,000 Jews, even rounding off upwards.

I think a detailed explanation is required to justify a difference of some 100,000 Jews.

And don't get me wrong. I hope I am proven wrong.


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To the Term "East Jerusalem" (Updated)

In the latest report - Report on Preliminary Examination Activities 2017, The Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court - relating to "Palestine", point 54 on page 12 reads:

In June 1967, an international armed conflict (the Six-Day War) broke out between Israel and neighbouring states, as a result of which Israel acquired control over a number of territories including the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Immediately after the end of the Six-Day War, Israel established a military administration in the West Bank, and adopted laws and orders effectively extending Israeli law, jurisdiction and administration over East Jerusalem. 

Did an entity called "east Jerusalem" exist? 

A fairly simple question, no?

Here are two maps from before 1967 and after 1948.

The first is a Russian one from 1949:

The second is a British one from 1957 but with a 1960 update*:

The British map actually includes Neve Ya'aqov, a destroyed and ethnically-cleansed Jewish moshav, overrun in the 1948 war.

Both note "Jerusalem" but not an "East Jerusalem" nor a "West Jerusalem".

I presume those terms were diplomatic ones, not geographical ones.

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UPDATE

Even the NYTimes used "Old" and not "East":-

And I add the population statistics of 1946:

It was not an "Arab city" in any demographic sense.

Of course, in the meantime, the New York Times manages to rewrite history:

“East Jerusalem was exclusively Arab in 1967.” 

And why was it exclusively Arab?  Was that because the Arabs practiced apartheid?  Ethnically-cleansed that part of the city of its Jews? Terrorized the Jewish population during the 1920s and 1930s to become refugees from the Old City and Shiloach and Georgian neighborhoods?

And the neighborhood in 1915 - how many Arab homes do you see?

And then during the 1947-48 war of Arab aggression, forced Jews from the Old City, Nahlat Shimon and Shimon HaTzadik neighborhoods to flee?

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A lawyer commented to me that in para 56 there is a reference to “the city of Jerusalem” as a single entity.

So I rechecked and found that there are an additional 12 (!) times that "East Jerusalem", including one section entitled "West Bank and East Jerusalem", is included in the report.  And that one time was using language from both Camp David and Oslo.

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*

How Many Revenant Residents Are There?

According to B'tselem's current web site entry, the number of Jewish Israelis residing beyond the Green Line, a category they term "settlers", is

an estimated 588,000...This figure is derived from two sources: According to data provided by Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), at the end of 2015, 382,916 people were living in the settlements of the West Bank, excluding East Jerusalem. According to data provided by the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies, the population of the Israeli neighborhoods in East Jerusalem numbered 205,220 people at the end of 2014.

However, as they note, the annual population increase of that population is 4.1%.

My calculation is that increase would be around 23,500 people. Two years have passed and so 588,000 + 47,000 (23,500 x 2) = 635,000. Correct? 

Peace Now's figures are 399, 300 in Judea and Samaria at end of 2016. And in "East Jerusalem" (what do they do with Jewish neighborhoods constructed since 1967 in the north and south of the city?) live 208,410 Jews.  That totals to 607,710. We then add 23,500 and that equals 631,210. Correct?

The Yesha Council lists 421,400 Israeli residents in the area as of January 2017, but excluding post-1967 Jerusalem neighborhoods.  An average of B'tselem's figure and Peace Now's figure for Jerusalem would be 206,815 and, added to the above number, would total 628,215. We'll leave the extra population figure off.

An average of those three figures results in 631,475.

So, in another two months, we can expect the number of Jewish Israelis residing in regions of the historic Jewish homeland not as yet under full Israel sovereignty to total, in my estimation, at least 640,000.

Ken yirbu ( & tfoo-tfoo)

____________________

Now I have to figure what percentage the Jewish Israelis are of the total population.  Off my head, in Judea and Samaria, that would be 20% approximately.

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Jodi Ruderon is a Riot

Jodi Ruderon seems to be in dount, since she wrote this in today's NYTimes:

The authorities counted 42 “riots” — participants call them protests — on a single night in July. 

Now, to be fair, she at least should have encapsulated 'protests' also in quotes.


But, I wonder, what is her definition of riots that she would cast doubt on the police version?

In addition, this bit:

More than 300,000 of Jerusalem’s 830,000 residents are Palestinians. They are not citizens, but get social-welfare benefits from Israel and travel fairly freely. 

is misleading.

First, if they wanted to, they could, under certain conditions, become full citizens.  Their choice not to even apply. [that last section update thanks to SF]

Second, they are permanent residents of the state of Israel nad have the right to vote in municpal elections but not Knesset elections.  Not many do,

Third, what's behind points (1) and (2) are the fear, on the one hand of getting killed or injured or damaged from extremist elements among the Arabs and, on the other, their non-recogniton of Zionsim and Israel, two entities they despise.

Then she writes,

The Al Aqsa compound in the Old City has long been the site of sporadic clashes between Muslim and Jewish worshipers — and the troops that try to keep them apart.

Ms. Ruderon, it's the Temple Mount.  And if a "compound", then, at the least call it the Haram E-Sharif Compound.  Al Aqsa is one mosque therein.   And, as a friend mentioned to me, "I wonder if Rudoren can name even one instance in which Jewish worshipers attacked Muslims, or did anything to initiate 'clashes' with either Muslims or the police".  And they are not truly "troops" but policemen.  And "Jewish worshippers"?  Jews cannot worship there.  Why not point out that back-ver-backwards position of Israel's governments?

She's not a real journalist but she's a riot.


P.S.  She could have read now in Haaretz the truth:

Jerusalemis burningRioting and violence against Jews in Jerusalem is downplayed in the media and ignored by police.By Israel Harel   

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East, North, South - All Around the Town

News of his death sparked widespread clashes near his home and throughout the Israeli-annexed east of the city, late into Sunday night.

From here at the UK's Telegraph. 

east of the city???

No rioting in Shuafat?

Silwan?

They are north and south, respectively.

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There Goes a City

Excerpt from transcript of Mahmoud Abbas address to Israeli Students 16 February 2014

عندما نتحدث بصراحة عن القدس الشرقية نقول:  القدس الشرقية أرض محتلة عام 1967 نريدها عاصمة لدولة فلسطين، ولكن لا نريد إعادة تقسيم القدس، فالقدس مفتوحة نبنى هنا بلدية وهناك بلدية إسرائيلية وفوقهما جسم من أجل أن ينسق بينهما، فأين الخطأ في هذا؟ هذه هي بداية التعايش الحقيقي بين الشعبين.

When we talk about East Jerusalem we say frankly East Jerusalem is occupied territory since 1967, and we want it as the capital of the state of Palestine, but do not want the re-division of Jerusalem. Jerusalem is open.  Let us have our municipality here and there the Israeli municipality and above them the body in order to coordinate between them.  What is wrong in this? This is the beginning of real coexistence between the two peoples.

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Sari Nusseibeh: Arab Jerusalemites "Not Really Rational"; 'Unreasonable'

as part of a broader “anti-normalization” campaign, the Palestinian leadership has for decades warned residents against casting ballots. So a vast majority do not vote, despite the possibility that their large numbers could win a solid blocking minority on the 31-member City Council, if not a winning coalition with sympathetic Israelis.

“The whole thing is not really rational,” said Sari Nusseibeh, president of Al Quds University, whose family has 1,300-year roots in Jerusalem. “It’s not by reason that people are guided; it’s by sentiments and feelings and fears and histories.”

From his mouth to our ears.


And some other things I found peculiar:

a)  "There are about 360,000 Palestinian residents in this officially united but deeply divided city of 800,000..."

Is the city truly "deeply divided" or is that the catch-phrase that everyone in the media and on the Left employs - to further divided the city and keep it apart?

b)  Alaa Obeid, 23, a student who briefly flirted with running for City Council this year...said.  “In our society, it’s very important what the public thinks...If all these years, people have boycotted the elections, I might be in a place where there’s a risk to my future. I’ll be an outcast.”

That is "thinking"?  Or is that fear of being killed by the PLO or Hamas?  That's public opinion"?  So, it's easier and braver to shoot a Jew, stab him or throw a rock at her than to buck Arab public opinion?

c)  and on the contrary to the above, consider this: "Mr. Barkat’s opponent in Tuesday’s balloting...has accused the incumbent of threatening Israel’s sovereignty in the capital by giving “the extreme left”

So, what is going on in Jerusalem?  Are Jews also irrational?

________________

I received this from a smart friend:

There is another key line in the piece: “defending his support of Jewish settlement in Arab areas seized by Israel in 1967.”

1.       Arab areas? Is the Jewish quarter of the Old City an Arab area? French Hill? Ramat Eshkol? Ramat Shlomo? What makes them “Arab”? An 18-year Jordanian occupation? (especially if they were empty land since before the Muslim conquest, or Jewish residential quarters for the centuries preceding the Jordanian occupation)?

2.       Seized? Is that what happened in the Six Day War? Israel grabbed?

3.       Settlement is a loaded term, as she well knows.

How about a neutral phrase:

“defending his support of Jewish residence in parts of Jerusalem occupied by Jordan from 1949-1967.”

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Wisdom From Tom Friedman

Here is Tom Friedman's latest wisdom:

...the world for the most part would not begrudge Israel keeping its forces on the Jordan River — as will be necessary given the instability beyond — if it ceded most of the West Bank and Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem.

Well, I do not know about the "world" but the Pals. would certainly not agree.

That was dumb of Tom, no?

P.S.  Are there "Jewish neighborhoods" of "East Jerusalem"?

Can we retain those?

________________________________________

UPDATE

2) Smacking Friedman down, again

Last week I took issue with Thomas Friedman's Israel lives the Joseph Story.
https://twitter.com/soccerdhg/status/342316938485174272

But I missed a major goof.

And the world for the most part would not begrudge Israel keeping its forces on the Jordan River — as will be necessary given the instability beyond — if it ceded most of the West Bank and Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem.

Elder of Ziyon:

Oh, and don't forget Friedman's other "if-then" fallacy here - that the world would allow Israel to keep the Jordan Valley as a buffer if only it would offer the Palestinian Arabs a state. Wasn't that already offered and rejected?

Meryl Yourish:

The bolded phrase contradicts all of the Palestinian statements made about Israel keeping any soldiers in the West Bank. In point of fact, the Palestinians absolutely begrudge Israel a force on the Jordan.

My Right Word:

Well, I do not know about the "world" but the Pals. would certainly not agree.

Friedman loves to pose as someone who understands simple truths that those in power (especially in Israel) fail to appreciate. But here he shows that he hasn't been paying attention to the past twenty years of the peace process. Maybe in 1993 an Israeli presence in the Jordan Valley was an accommodation would have made. It is no longer.

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Jerusalem's Parts

One of the arguments the territorial concessionist camp sounds out about Jerusalem, united or divided, is that Israel unnaturally extended the municipal boundaries after 1967, incorporating neighborhoods which never were part of Jerusalem.  That, they claim, is even illegal.

Ehud Olmert once stated in a June 13 speech to the British Parliament, to illustrate this approach, that since

We don’t pray facing Beit Naballah or Issawiya, or any of the other Palestinian neighborhoods that have been added to Jerusalem by someone who drew a map one day...

these areas can be yielded.

Here he is being more, er, explicit:

“It was never unified in the way that people talked about it. We have to sacrifice the slogan because we have to face the reality of life. If someone wants to say that Issawiya is Jerusalem, I can’t stop him. When was Issawiya part of historical Jerusalem? When was Abu Dis part of historical Jerusalem? When was Jabal Mukkabir part of historical Jerusalem? What memories do the people of Israel have, of the names I have mentioned? When did we ever pray for Abu Dis, that suddenly it is being sanctified as if there’s no life in Jerusalem without it and without all kinds of other neighborhoods populated by Arabs? We cannot unite them and connect them to the real [social] fabric of Jerusalem. These places have only caused us heartache, nothing else.

Of course, since Jerusalem was only the walled "Old City" for two thousand years of history and more until Mishkenot Shaananim was established, over 150 years ago,  perhaps maybe almost all of Jerusalem is problematic for these people.


To be fair to Olmert, at a June 14, 2006 press conference in France, declared

“I, as prime minister of Israel, will never, ever, ever agree to a compromise on the complete control over the Temple Mount. And not only the Temple Mount, but also the Old City, Mount of Olives, and every place that is an inseparable part of the Jewish history,”

But he also said in 2012:

“Regarding the Old City, we will have to reach a settlement — and that includes the Temple Mount — that will allow us to maintain a peace agreement between us and the Palestinians. That is a very difficult, complex task mandating extraordinary sensitivity, understanding and even a sense of restraint.”

And also we read then that he was reported saying

Israel will "never agree to pull out of all of the territories, because the borders of 1967 are indefensible,"

 
As it was, the Guardian noted at the time that

Mr Olmert's plan, which Israeli officials expect to begin late next year, would see Israel retaining three large settler blocs - Ariel, Maale Adumin and Gush Etzion. Under the plan, about 60,000-70,000 settlers in the West Bank would lose their homes but about 130,000 others would remain. Israel would also retain the Jordan Valley and settlements that effectively encircle Jerusalem, making it difficult for Palestinians to realise their dream of a capital in east Jerusalem.

In any case, consider this bit of information:

Nineteenth century records refer to a small village ''with a few houses, A-Tur is an undeveloped settlement''. The middle of the nineteenth century saw the start of church building. The village has no agricultural land which has limited its development. In 1953 the Jordanian authorities incorporated A-Tur into the municipal area of Jerusalem.

So, is A-Tur (it is on Mount of Olives, not the A-Tur near Hebron Road) part of East Jerusalem, "Arab East Jerusalem" or what?  

At least, from that source we know it's a "settlement".

But is it defensible?


________________

I blogged too soon:

Catherine Ashton, High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy today stressed once again in a statement that Israeli settlements in and around East Jerusalem are illegal and called on the Israeli government to immediately end all settlement activities.

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