ILLEGAL GLOOMY ZIONIST JERUSALEM DAY IN SHEIKH JARRAH

By Jeremy Siegman, reprinted from Sheikh Jarrah: A Just Struggle for a Just Jerusalem
“We will never let Jerusalem again be a divided, gloomy, and halved city,” said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu today to celebrate Jerusalem Day, a national and religious holiday in Israel marking the day that Israeli forces conquered East Jerusalem.
Not Unified.
In Sheikh Jarrah this Jerusalem day, things looked rather divided, more than gloomy, and at times positively racist, as hundreds of far-rightists marched with Israeli flags and danced while the evicted Palestinians of the area watched, and the police did their part to arrest two of our activists, in plain violation of the Israeli High Court ruling. Later one settler summed it up: “we are here to purify the air.”
At Netanyahu’s speech and at the Western Wall, many celebrated the Jerusalem of their dreams (which is their right), but here in Sheikh Jarrah, it looked like the far-right demonstrators were celebrating the actual Jerusalem, in which they were able to put three Palestinian refugee families out onto the street this year, making them refugees for a second time with support from the Israeli courts. Legal proceedings are underway to banish two more families from their homes. So, sitting in the real Sheikh Jarrah, our jaws dropped when Netanyahu came to the part of his speech about a Jerusalem in which Israel is “not banishing anyone.”
Something here doesn’t make sense. Why would one half of a city be trying to take over the other half if it were actually unified? Why would the ‘Jewish half’ be attempting to Judaize the ‘Arab half’? As even the rightist speaker of the Knesset, Reuven Rivlin, acknowledged today, the answer is clear: Jerusalem is hardly united.
Not in 1967.
In June 1967, the territorial “unification” of Jerusalem happened when Israel occupied 70 square kilometers of territory that became East Jerusalem. Only six square kilometers of this was the Old City; the rest made up 28 Palestinian villages. The simple principle: maximum territory, minimum Palestinians. These Palestinians then became permanent residents of Jerusalem—a feared, racialized demographic “threat.” Meanwhile, most of that empty territory was reserved for Jews only, the goal being to preserve a Jewish majority in the newly re-mapped city—which was by no means unified.
That same June, the symbolic “unification” happened: you’ve seen the picture of the three soldiers gazing up in awe (or was it confusion?) at the Wall. Just meters behind them, in a scene that’s awfully familiar to us here in Sheikh Jarrah, Israel summarily demolished the Mughrabi quarter, emptying over 100 homes of their residents to build a shining plaza. One woman was found dead next to her home the next morning.
We usually chant, “from Sheikh Jarrah to Silwan, stop the settlements!” Today: from the Mughrabi Quarter to Sheikh Jarrah, stop celebrating when you make people refugees!
Not here, not now.
In Sheikh Jarrah and in Silwan, we have seen with our own eyes what Daphna Golan said so succinctly in today’s Haaretz: “Jerusalem, which celebrates its unification today, is a city divided between Jews, for whom the city is planned, and Palestinians, whom the State of Israel views as foreigners in their own city.”
For Jews, Jerusalem has urban plans, paved roads, well-groomed parks, and one can go to school or work without being randomly checked by police. For over 250,000 Palestinians in East Jerusalem (over 1/3 of the city’s residents), there is no urban plan. Many main roads are unpaved, there is scarcely a public park, and there is a shortage of over 1,000 classrooms in the schools. Garbage is collected only occasionally, Arab buses (separate and not equal) are routinely stopped for police checks, and of course, in Sheikh Jarrah, you can be thrown out of your home if Jews owned it before 1948. (But, as Kai Bird wrote this week, you can’t have your old home in Talbiyeh back.)
Elie Wiesel and Netanyahu can dream about Jerusalem, and Jews can celebrate it, but the Jerusalem we live in simply isn’t united. And here in Sheikh Jarrah, with traditional Jewish party music blasting in a stolen home across the street from the homeless children in their tent, there should be no celebrating. Not here, not now. Not until the Al-Ghawis, Hanouns, and Al-Kurds are back in their homes, and not until the two new eviction cases are dropped, along with the broader Israeli policy of installing armed-to-the-teeth settlements in the middle of Arab neighborhoods—just so many nails in the coffin of the dying peace deal.
Then, we might have something even better to celebrate: an agreement on Jerusalem, and most importantly, a more just Jerusalem.

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