The Jerusalem "time bomb"

The Civic Coalition for Defending the Palestinian Rights in Jerusalem says Israel is pressuring Palestinians to leave the city in order to increase the percentage of Jews. The Coalition sees the problem as a bomb with short fuse, as in this poster issued in 2010 on the 62nd anniversary of the expulsion of Palestinians in the Israeli war for independence, which Palestinians call the Nakba (catastrophe).

An activist from the Coalition said the tools of the pressure include land confiscation, a nearly impossible process for building permits, house demolitions, the separation barrier,  revocation of Jerusalem residency, and denial of family unification.

He says there is a shortage of 42,000 housing units for Palestinians in Jerusalem, and 9,000 homes have been destroyed since 1967. During the same period, 14,050 Palestinians have had their Jerusalem residency revoked.

Palestinian students cross checkpoint on way to school in Jerusalem

The activist says 9,000 Palestinian children do not have access to education because there is no place for them in the segregated schools. He says 50% of them drop out before finishing high school (we had earlier heard a figure of 40%), primarily because they need to go to work. 75% of Palestinians in Jerusalem are on or under the poverty line, and the unemployment level is 35%. It sounds indeed like a time bomb.

You can learn more about the Coalition and its work at www.civiccoalition-jerusalem.org.

Yusef Daher

We heard earlier today of family unification problems from Yusef Daher, Executive Secretary of the Jerusalem Inter-Church Center of the World Council of Churches. His brother married a Jerusalem-born U.S. citizen who is now living apart from him in Atlanta, because she is not permitted to live with him in Jerusalem after a series of short-term visas. His sister and her husband moved from Jerusalem to Ramallah with Jerusalem IDs 10 years ago and are not allowed to reclaim Jerusalem residency.

Yusef briefed us on the 2009 Kairos Palestine document of the Palestinian Christian churches, which  "requests the international community to stand by the Palestinian people who have faced oppression, displacement, suffering and clear apartheid for more than six decades." For details, see www.kairospalestine.ps/.

Yusef said there were 32,000 Christians in Jerusalem before 1948, and now there are only 8,000.