Jerusalem Pulse: Recent Research Roundup

Jerusalem Pulse is a periodic digest of the latest research in English shedding light on the multifaceted issues surrounding the lives of Palestinians of Jerusalem.

Jerusalem Story has curated a selection of key articles, papers, and reports by researchers and relevant NGOs, both local and international, that offer insight into some of the exceptional challenges faced by the Palestinians of Jerusalem.

This roundup aims to monitor and document trends as they unfold over time and will serve as a vital resource for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of the evolving dynamics, geopolitical developments, socioeconomic trends, human rights concerns, and scholarly analysis concerning the Palestinians of Jerusalem.

Editor’s Note: This compilation was curated before October 7, 2023. The next roundup will include research from after that point. 

The Israeli human rights NGO Yesh Din published a legal opinion in June 2023 examining “the nature of Israeli control of the occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), identifying and outlining its main characteristics, and analyzing accordingly the impact Israel’s policies and practices in these territories have had on the legal status of the Israeli occupation.”1 The report traces the main features of Israeli rule over the oPT, the demographic engineering of the oPT, physical and legal separation based on nationality, application of sovereign powers, the legality of the occupation, the nature of the occupation regime and the crime of apartheid, and annexation.

In its online bulletin, “Annexation as a Process in the Making: The First Nine Months of the Netanyahu-Smotrich-Ben Gvir Government,” released September 20, 2023, the Israeli movement Peace Now chronologically details 13 of the most significant acts of annexation and settlement expansion undertaken by the government in 2023. The briefing “outline[s] the key political decisions and actions taken by Israel during these nine months, highlighting how settlement expansion and the annexation became the central policy of the current Netanyahu-Smotrich-Ben Gvir government.”2 The brief covers a fabric of policy moves, including laws, transfers of power, budget allocations, change in planning processes, and more.

The Israeli human rights NGO Yesh Din has developed an annexation legislation database. The database “focuses on the de-jure/legislative steps undertaken towards annexation by Knesset legislation. It provides detailed information regarding various bills on numerous topics at the respective stages of legislation, from bills submitted to laws approved by the Knesset and introduced into Israel’s statute book. All these bills and laws incorporate elements pertaining to annexation.”

Yesh Din groups the bills and laws into four categories:

• applying Israeli law and jurisdiction (sovereignty)
• direct legislation by the Knesset on the occupied territory
• assuming the powers of the military commander of the Area
• normalizing and blurring the Green Line

This report by Peace Now, released September 11, 2023, highlights how Jewish settlements and outposts in the occupied Palestinian Territories (oPT) proliferated following the Oslo Accords, while Palestinians in the West Bank face ongoing challenges. According to the report, the number of settlers in the West Bank and (including East Jerusalem) has risen from around 250,000 in 1993 to nearly 700,000 in 2023.3

In its latest settlement watch report, released September 21, 2023, Ir Amim reports that “over 18,000 housing units have been advanced in East Jerusalem settlements since the start of 2023.”4 The report offers an overview of East Jerusalem settlement advancements thus far in 2023, documenting 30 zoning plans with a total of 18,223 new housing units being pushed through the planning process. These plans include five new settlements, two of which are in Palestinian neighborhoods. The briefing provides a historical background and context for each of the settlements, along with detailed and specific data tables and maps. The analysis indicates that 2023 is on track to surpass 2022 as the year with the record number of housing units advanced in East Jerusalem settlements.

Peace Now reported on two major settlement plans in East Jerusalem that were approved by the Jerusalem Local Planning and Building Committee on September 11, 2023.

• The first one is to expand the Givat HaMatos settlement.
• The Planning and Construction Committee also approved a new settlement called Kidmat Zion in the Palestinian neighborhood of Ras al-Amud next to the Separation Wall. This settlement is intended to preclude the possibility of ever establishing a Palestinian capital in Abu Dis, as had been proposed in the 1990s.

The approvals are not the final stage in the development process, but they are a significant advancement.

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights published its weekly update on “Israeli Human Rights Violations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (21–26 September 2023),” which documents violations of the right to life and bodily integrity, settler attacks and retaliatory acts, and violations against the right to education. Israeli violations recorded in East Jerusalem in this period included protest suppression, demolition of homes and commercial facilities, establishment of additional temporary military checkpoints, closure of streets, raiding and searching a secondary school for girls, firing rubber-coated bullets at a child, forcing a Palestinian to self-demolish part of his house, and providing heavy police.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) published its Protection of Civilians Report (September 5–18, 2023), documenting a number of Israeli violations of Palestinians’ human rights. In East Jerusalem, these included incidents of house demolition and police brutality, including the assault of a Palestinian child by Israeli forces. The report also mentions the closure of Palestinian cities on the Jewish New Year and the restriction of Palestinian access to al-Aqsa Mosque and its storming by Jewish settlers.

B’Tselem’s field researcher compiled testimonies from Palestinians during the Flag March on “Jerusalem Day” May 18, 2023, the Sabbath of Light Procession (Sabt al-Nur) on April 15, 2023, and during police raids on al-Aqsa Mosque during Ramadan on April 2, 2023.

This report by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) revealed that this year has seen the “highest daily average of settler-related incidents affecting Palestinians since the UN started recording this data in 2006”.5 The OCHA assessed the needs of 63 herding communities, home to 10,000 people in the West Bank (including East Jerusalem), who are particularly exposed to settler violence due to proximity and other factors. It found that 12 percent of the studied population have been displaced from their places of residence since 2022, including one community of 53 people in Jerusalem. The communities also reported a higher frequency and severity of settler violence, since the beginning of 2022, with the most common incidents being the prevention of access to land, physical attacks, threats, and damage of property.

The Arab Center Washington DC (ACW) published a policy analysis on the “Political Persecution of Palestinians Using the Education System and Israeli Universities,” written by Mada al-Carmel—Arab Center for Applied Social Research. The article, dated September 21, 2023, presents an overview of two recently tabled education bills that constitute attempts by Israel to “clamp down on the Palestinian education system” by imposing surveillance and securitization on the Palestinian education system, its staff, and students. According to the report,

Both bills were approved in preliminary reading.

The Women’s Centre for Legal Aid and Counseling (WCLAC), in cooperation with the NGO Forum to Combat Violence Against Women (Al-Muntada) and the General Union of Palestinian Women, submitted a follow-up report to the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) in August 2023. The report discusses the progress made in implementing the recommendations of the CESCR, as well as the challenges faced. It also highlights the efforts of Palestinian NGOs in promoting gender equality and provides an economic analysis of the Family Protection from Violence Law and its potential impact on the social development budget.

Shu‘fat refugee camp is the only Palestinian refugee camp in Jerusalem. This essay by Halima Abu Haneya of Bir Zeit University draws on oral history interviews with camp refugees, a literature review of the history of Palestine and Jerusalem, and municipal records to explore the history and origins of the establishment of the camp and its residents, the role of the UNRWA, and Jordanian policies in Jerusalem and regarding refugees from 1948 to 1967. It was published in the Jerusalem Quarterly (issue 93, 2023).

This article by Caitlin Procter of the Migration Policy Centre at the European University Institute in Florence, published in the Journal of Refugee Studies (volume 36, issue 1, 2023), “ethnographically explores ways that young Palestinian refugees seek to strengthen their claims to residency in Jerusalem. It describes the complex layers of colonial subjugation faced by these young people, and the tactics they undertake, in their engagement with Israeli state institutions, to mitigate the increasing uncertainty surrounding residency revocation and subsequent forcible transfer of Palestinians from Jerusalem.”8

In an article published in International Planning Studies (volume 28, issue 1, 2023), Awad Mansour and Maha Samman of Al-Quds University in Jerusalem explore the impact of Israeli policies and practices on Palestinian urban nodes in occupied East Jerusalem focusing on the Kubsa Junction. This junction is located in the eastern part of East Jerusalem at the entrance to the Palestinian villages of al-‘Izariyya (Bethany) and Abu Dis—“a hilltop away from the Old City of Jerusalem and where the Segregation Wall now passes.”9 Drawing on the work of Kevin Lynch, the authors define urban nodes as “‘points, the strategic spots in a city into which an observer can enter, and which are the intensive foci to and from which he is traveling’; they may be primarily junctions, or concentrations.”10 They argue that the wall allows for the practice of eliminating the Arab Palestinian character of the city and has transformed a once vibrant Palestinian urban node into a dead end. Kubsa Junction “illustrates settler-colonial military spatial policies and urban planning which have created a ‘frame’ to segregate and control the colonized Palestinians.”11 A “frame,” a concept developed by Judith Butler, “refers to a contour which delineates the space behind which people’s lives do not matter . . . used to separate who has the ‘right to life.’”12 This frame, the article argues, is better interpreted by settler-colonial state strategies than racialized global capitalism.