{"id":19018,"date":"2015-10-19T08:00:08","date_gmt":"2015-10-19T15:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/arab-areas-of-jerusalem-blocked-off\/"},"modified":"2015-10-19T08:00:08","modified_gmt":"2015-10-19T15:00:08","slug":"arab-areas-of-jerusalem-blocked-off","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/arab-areas-of-jerusalem-blocked-off\/","title":{"rendered":"Arab areas of Jerusalem blocked off"},"content":{"rendered":"

JERUSALEM \u2014<\/strong> Palestinians in Jerusalem, more than a third of the city\u2019s population, have awoken to a new reality: Israeli troops are encircling Arab neighborhoods, blocking roads with concrete cubes the size of washing machines and ordering some of those leaving on foot to lift their shirts to show they are not carrying knives.<\/p>\n

The unprecedented clampdown is meant to halt a rash of stabbings of Israelis. Many of the attacks were carried out by residents of east Jerusalem, the sector captured and annexed by Israel in 1967 and claimed by Palestinians as a future capital.<\/p>\n

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s government has portrayed the measures as temporary, in line with what his advisers say any police department in the U.S. or Europe would do to quell urban unrest. But some allege he is dividing Jerusalem, something Netanyahu has said he would never do.<\/p>\n

Arab residents, who have long complained of discriminatory Israeli policies, say the latest closures are bringing them to a boiling point and lead to more violence.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey want to humiliate us,\u201d said Taher Obeid, a 26-year-old janitor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He spoke over the din of car horns, as drivers stuck at one of the new checkpoints vented their anger.<\/p>\n

Domestic critics say Netanyahu \u2014 long opposed to any negotiated partition of Jerusalem into two capitals \u2014 is effectively dividing the city along ethnic lines with his security measures.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe great patriots … who don\u2019t go to bed at night before praying for a unified, undivided, greater Jerusalem, are now proposing to dissect it, divide it and return it back 48 years in time,\u201d commentator Nehemiah Strassler wrote in the Israeli daily Haaretz.<\/p>\n

Some warn that recent events \u2014 a rise in \u201clone wolf\u201d attacks by Palestinians and Israeli crackdowns \u2014 offer a taste of the constant hate-filled skirmishes that would likely prevail for years if there\u2019s no deal on setting up Palestine next to Israel.<\/p>\n

They say that due to the growth of Israeli settlements, the land between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River has effectively become a binational entity, with Israel ruling over several million Palestinians.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is what the future looks like,\u201d said Jerusalem expert Daniel Seidemann. \u201cIt\u2019s the one-state reality.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Netanyahu has said he supports the establishment of a Palestinian state, there has been no progress in peace efforts during his six years in office, and expectations of a negotiated agreement have faded.<\/p>\n

Israel continues to expand Jewish settlements in east Jerusalem and the West Bank, chipping away at territory sought for a future Palestine. Netanyahu says he wants to negotiate with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, but under tougher Israeli ground rules, with east Jerusalem off the table. Abbas refuses to engage under such conditions.<\/p>\n

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is meeting with both leaders separately in coming days to lower the temperature, but there is no sign the Obama administration will try another mediation mission after Kerry\u2019s failed attempt last year.<\/p>\n

Netanyahu, meanwhile, rejects the notion that Palestinian attackers, including those in Jerusalem, are driven by anger over decades of Israeli rule.<\/p>\n

He blames what he calls incitement to violence against Israel by Abbas and Palestinian Muslim leaders, including claims that Israel plans to erode Muslim-only prayer rights at a major Jerusalem shrine revered by Muslims and Jews. Netanyahu denies he intends to change the status quo, though senior coalition members have been pushing for Jewish prayer rights at the site.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith respect to the Palestinian population (in Jerusalem), Israel has a lot of work to do, as it does with the social needs of its Jewish population,\u201d senior Netanyahu adviser Dore Gold told The Associated Press. \u201cBut the primary problem here are the deliberate lies being spread\u201d about the shrine, he said. The site is known to Jews as the Temple Mount, or home of their biblical Temples, and to Muslims as the Haram as-Sharif, marking the spot where the Prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven.<\/p>\n

\u201cIsrael has no interest in creating divisions in Jerusalem,\u201d Gold said of the dozens of road barriers that went up late last week. Israel \u201chas a right to use the same security measures which every other city facing urban rioting has used,\u201d he added, suggesting the measures could be rolled back.<\/p>\n

The eastern part of the city, annexed by Israel after the 1967 war, has become a jumble of Arab and Jewish areas, a result of Israeli settlement policies over the years. This included building sprawling Jewish neighborhoods on annexed lands and permitting militant settlers to move into heavily guarded enclaves in Arab neighborhoods, such as the Muslim Quarter of the walled Old City. Palestinians make up 37 percent, or 316,000, of Jerusalem\u2019s total population of 850,000.<\/p>\n

Palestinians say they have suffered years of official discrimination, such as severe restrictions on building rights and the threat of residency rights being revoked if they move to the West Bank because the housing shortage in Arab areas.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Israel\u2019s West Bank separation barrier slices through Arab neighborhoods, leaving one-third of Jerusalem\u2019s Arab residents on the \u201cWest Bank side\u201d and making it harder for them to reach jobs, schools and hospitals.<\/p>\n

In the past month, nine Israelis have been killed in Palestinian attacks and 41 Palestinians have been shot and killed by Israelis, including 20 labeled as attackers.<\/p>\n

That has led to Israeli troops setting up even more dividers. They have blocked roads to and from Arab neighborhoods with concrete cubes, forcing cars to squeeze through a few crossing points. There, soldiers stop each vehicle, ask for IDs and demand that some drivers and passengers lift their shirts and roll up pants legs to show they are not armed.<\/p>\n

Around midday Saturday, several dozen cars were held up at a checkpoint on the outskirts of the Issawiyeh neighborhood. The atmosphere was tense, with drivers honking and some saying they\u2019d been stuck in line for more than two hours. Police were on edge, traded curses with the crowd; at one point, they threw a stun grenade into the line.<\/p>\n

On Sunday, troops set up six concrete slabs, each about 5 meters (16 feet) tall, between the Jewish neighborhood of Armon Hanatziv and the adjacent Arab area of Jabal Mukaber, home to some recent attackers. Police said the barrier is meant as a shield against stones and firebombs.<\/p>\n

In the past, similar obstacles billed as temporary have become permanent.<\/p>\n

The Qalandiya checkpoint between the West Bank and east Jerusalem, one of the main crossings through the separation barrier and a frequent bottleneck, started out 15 years ago as a roadside concrete cube manned by a few soldiers. Today, it is a terminal with five lanes for pedestrians, fortified by barbed wire and watch towers.<\/p>\n

Gold, the Netanyahu adviser, played down the extent of Palestinian frustration in the city, saying it is possible to create \u201cpatterns of co-existence and dialogue\u201d once violence has subsided.<\/p>\n

Seidemann said Jerusalem is a binational city that has remained divided, even after 1967, and that Israel\u2019s latest security measures have simply given a physical expression to those rifts.<\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s hard-line leaders \u201ccan\u2019t possibly look this in the eye because they are committed ideologically to a mythical, united Jerusalem that does not exist in nature,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Associated Press writer Mohammed Daraghmeh in Jerusalem contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

JERUSALEM \u2014 Palestinians in Jerusalem, more than a third of the city\u2019s population, have awoken to a new reality: Israeli troops are encircling Arab neighborhoods, blocking roads with concrete cubes the size of washing machines and ordering some of those leaving on foot to lift their shirts to show they are not carrying knives. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":19019,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[65],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-19018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-nation-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19018"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19018\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19018"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=19018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}