Israel cracks down in Jerusalem
Arabs say more security will bring more violence.
Palestinians in Jerusalem, more than a third of the city’s 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 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.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s 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.
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.
“They want to humiliate us,” 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.
Domestic critics say Netanyahu — long opposed to any negotiated partition of Jerusalem into two capitals — is effectively dividing the city along ethnic lines with his security measures.
“The great patriots ... who don’t 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,” commentator Nehemiah Strassler wrote in the Israeli daily Haaretz.
Some warn that recent events — a rise in “lone wolf ” attacks by Palestinians and Israeli crackdowns — offer a taste of the constant hate-filled skirmishes that would likely prevail for years if there’s no deal on setting up Palestine next to Israel.
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.
“This is what the future looks like,” said Jerusalem expert Daniel Seidemann. “It’s the one-state reality.”
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.
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.
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’s failed attempt last year.
Netanyahu, meanwhile, rejects the notion that Palestinian attackers, including those in Jerusalem, are driven by anger over decades of Israeli rule.
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.