Sheikh Jarrah and the Renewed Israeli-Palestinian Violence

On Monday, Israeli police stormed the al-Aqsa compound, where thousands of worshippers had gathered to defend themselves from encroachment by settlers. Three hundred Palestinians and twenty-one Israeli officers were wounded. Hamas responded by firing hundreds of rockets from Gaza into Israel, some of which struck in Tel Aviv, Ashkelon, and other cities. Israel retaliated with a hundred and thirty air strikes in Gaza. Over the last two days, at least twenty-six Palestinians, including nine children, and two Israelis have been killed. 

 The violence began on Jerusalem Day, when Israelis celebrate the capture of the eastern part of the city during the 1967 Six-Day War. The atmosphere is far from tranquil in the city: it is more like an arena of battle. Last month, at the beginning of Ramadan, Israeli police officers erected barriers to prevent Palestinian residents of the Old City from gathering on the steps of Bab el-Amud, the Damascus Gate, one of the few public places available to them to congregate. Jerusalem’s young Palestinians protested, and after two weeks, the police removed the barriers. Yet other sources of deep and pervasive tension have remained.

 Up the hill from the Old City, in the Palestinian neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, four Palestinian households have been waging a long battle against attempts by Jewish settlers to evict them. 

The struggle of the families has sparked numerous protest rallies and other demonstrations of solidarity. Jerusalem is divided, both in physical terms and in the allocation of rights that are granted to its principal residents, Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs. The population is almost a million, with Palestinian Arabs making up about forty per cent of the total. The Israeli government, after occupying the eastern part of the city, classified the Palestinians living there as permanent residents, but they did not automatically make them citizens of Israel. To this day, most Palestinians in Jerusalem have little voice in the governance of the city, and a majority boycott local elections. 

 For decades, the Israeli national government and Jerusalem’s municipal authorities have pursued policies aimed at increasing the Jewish presence in the city and restricting the expansion of the Palestinian community.

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