Amid the wave of stabbing attacks largely emanating from Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, Israeli authorities have set up checkpoints at the entry to many of those districts. They have also erected concrete dividers along the border of the southern neighborhoods of Jabal Mukaber and Zur Bacher, which abut the Jewish district of East Talpiot. Additionally, there are plans to erect a barrier between Isawiyah and the  French Hill neighborhood. The question is whether these dividers will be removed once the crisis abates, or whether they are a precursor to Israel moving its security barrier away from the municipal boundary dividing East Jerusalem from the West Bank, rerouting it through certain eastern neighborhoods.

Much of the recent violence emerged after unsubstantiated allegations that Israel was about to change the status quo procedures on the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif, an area that is holy to Muslims and Jews but used exclusively for Muslim prayer based around al-Aqsa Mosque. A growing number of Israeli Knesset members have made personal visits to the area amid right-wing complaints that Jews were barred from praying there. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu subsequently demanded that they stop, and he continues to insist that the government has not made any moves toward altering the status quo. Yet Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas, who normally supports nonviolence, urged his people to “defend the mosque,” telling a Palestinian television audience on September 10 that he welcomed “every drop of blood spilled for Jerusalem.” Netanyahu has since charged Abbas with “incitement.”

BACKGROUND

After the 1967 war, Israel gerrymandered twenty-eight Palestinian villages into a reconstituted Jerusalem that was triple the size of the city’s prewar configuration; the gerrymandered areas are now politically designated as East Jerusalem. With this move, the city’s total municipal area expanded from 14.7 square miles to 41.7. Israel then annexed the entire city and gave Palestinians who lived there residency permits allowing them to access all Jerusalem neighborhoods — a right not accorded to Palestinians in the West Bank.

Afterward, Israeli politicians on the right and left pledged never to divide Jerusalem. Yet in the minds of most Israeli Jews, this principle largely meant retaining control of the Old City (home to vital religious areas such as the Western Wall and adjacent Temple Mount) as well as Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem. Today, about 40 percent of Jerusalem Jews live in eastern districts taken in 1967. In terms of geography, the largest Jewish neighborhoods (e.g., Ramot and Gilo) are located in northern and southern Jerusalem.

Read the article in full at the Washington Institute.