East Jerusalem

East Jerusalem

11 November 2017, updated 27 January 2019

Palestinian children from Shu'fat refugee camp walk towards an Israeli checkpoint on their way to schools in other parts of East Jerusalem

Israel unlawfully annexed East Jerusalem to its territory. Since then, and despite its incursion upon their home, it has treated the Palestinian residents of the city as unwanted immigrants and worked systematically to drive them out of the area.

Israel has been treating the Palestinian residents of the city as unwanted immigrants and has been working systematically to drive them out.

In June 1967, immediately upon occupying the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, Israel annexed some 70,000 dunams [1 dunam = 1,000 sq. meters] of West Bank land to the municipal boundaries of Jerusalem and applied Israeli law there, in breach of international law. The annexed territory greatly exceeded the size of Jerusalem under Jordanian rule (about 6,000 dunams), encompassing approximately 64,000 more dunams. The additional land belonged, in large part, to 28 Palestinian villages, and some of it lay within the municipal jurisdiction of Bethlehem and Beit Jala. The annexed area is currently home to at least 350,000 Palestinians and some 209,000 Israeli settlers.

The new municipal boundaries of Jerusalem were drawn largely in accordance with demographic concerns, chief among them to leave out densely populated Palestinian areas in order to ensure a Jewish majority in Jerusalem. In keeping with this logic, Israel included some lands belonging to villages near Jerusalem within the city’s municipal jurisdiction, yet left the owners outside it. This occurred, for example, with Beit Iksa and al-Birah to the north, and with sparsely populated areas within the municipal jurisdictions of Bethlehem and Beit Sahour to the south. In doing so, Israel divided Palestinian villages and neighborhoods, annexing only parts of them.

In June 1967, Israel held a census in the annexed area. Palestinians who happened to be absent at the time, lost their right to return to their home. Those who were present were given the status of “permanent resident” in Israel – a legal status accorded to foreign nationals wishing to reside in Israel. Yet unlike immigrants who freely choose to live in Israel and can return to their country of origin, the Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem have no other home, no legal status in any other country, and did not choose to live in Israel; it is the State of Israel that occupied and annexed the land on which they live.

Permanent residency confers fewer rights than citizenship. It entitles the holder to live and work in Israel and to receive social benefits under the National Insurance Law, as well as health insurance. But, permanent residents cannot participate in national elections – either as voters or as candidates – and cannot run for the office of mayor, although they are entitled to vote in local elections and to run for city council.

Permanent residents are required to submit requests for ‘family reunification’ for spouses who are not residents themselves. Since 1967, Israel has maintained a strict policy on requests of East Jerusalem Palestinians for ‘reunification’ with spouses from other parts of the West Bank, from Gaza or from other countries. In July 2003, the Knesset passed a law barring these spouses from receiving permanent residency, other than extreme exceptions. The law effectively denies Palestinians from East Jerusalem, who are permanent residents of Israel the possibility of living in East Jerusalem with spouses from Gaza or from other parts of the West Bank, and denies their children permanent residency status.

Israeli policy in East Jerusalem is geared toward pressuring Palestinians to leave, thereby shaping a geographical and demographic reality that would thwart any future attempt to challenge Israeli sovereignty there. Palestinians who do leave East Jerusalem, due to this policy or for other reasons, risk losing their permanent residency and the attendant social benefits. Since 1967, Israel has revoked the permanent residency of some 14,500 Palestinians from East Jerusalem under such circumstances.

 

Israel’s attempts to shape the demographic reality of East Jerusalem are concentrated in several spheres:

Land expropriation and building restrictions

While the Jewish neighborhoods of Jerusalem and the settlement blocs on its outskirts enjoy massive development and substantial funding, Israel goes to great lengths to prevent development in Palestinian areas. As part of this policy, since 1967 the state has expropriated more than a third of the land annexed to Jerusalem – 24,500 dunams, most of it privately owned by Palestinians – and built 11 neighborhoods on them, earmarked for Jewish inhabitants only. Under international law, the status of these neighborhoods is the same as the Israeli settlements throughout the West Bank.

Immediately after the annexation, Israel cancelled all the Jordanian outline plans for the annexed areas but left those for the rest of the West Bank in place. This created a planning vacuum that took some time to fill. Only in the 1980s did the Jerusalem Municipality draw up outline plans for all Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem. The most striking feature of these plans was the designation of huge swathes of land as “open scenic areas” where development is forbidden. In 2014, after several amendments made to the plans over the years, these “scenic areas” made up about 30% of the land in Palestinian neighborhoods. Only some 15% of the land area in East Jerusalem (about 8.5% of Jerusalem’s municipal jurisdiction) is zoned for residential use by Palestinian residents, although Palestinians currently account for 40% of the city’s population.

Another measure Israel has employed to limit the amount of land available to Palestinians is declaring national parks where development is almost entirely forbidden. To date, four national parks have been declared in East Jerusalem, within the city’s municipal boundaries, including on privately owned Palestinian land or on land that lies within or adjacent to the built-up areas of Palestinian neighborhoods and villages. The Jerusalem Municipality is planning more parks in East Jerusalem.

The unusually high number of national parks in East Jerusalem, some of which contain nothing of archaeological or natural importance, indicates that – unlike other parks declared by Israel’s Nature and Parks Authority – the purpose of these parks is not conservation. Instead, they are an instrument for sealing off large expanses of land in East Jerusalem in order to further political goals such as ensuring Jewish-only contiguity from the Old City to the planned settlement area of E1, while increasing Jewish presence in East Jerusalem.

In any case, the municipality consistently avoids drawing up detailed urban building plans (UBPs) – a prerequisite for receiving building permits – for Palestinian neighborhoods. As a result, Palestinian communities in East Jerusalem suffer an extreme shortage of housing, public buildings (such as schools and medical clinics), infrastructure (including roads, pavements, and water and sewage systems), trade services and recreational facilities.

With no land reserves for development, the Palestinian population in East Jerusalem – which has grown more than fivefold since 1967 – remains confined within increasingly crowded neighborhoods. According to statistics gathered by the Jerusalem Institute for Policy Research, in 2015 population density in Palestinian neighborhoods within Jerusalem’s municipal boundaries was almost double that of Jewish neighborhoods: an average of 1.9 persons per room and 1 person per room, respectively.

Given this reality, Palestinians have no choice but to build without permits. The Jerusalem Municipality estimates that between 15,000 and 20,000 housing units were built without permits in Palestinian neighborhoods until 2004. An unknown number have been built since, including densely packed multi-story buildings east of the Separation Barrier. These structures are then issued demolition orders by the Israeli authorities, which wilfully ignore their role in forcing residents into this impossible bind. Thousands of Palestinians in East Jerusalem live under constant threat to their homes and businesses; in many cases, the authorities follow through on this threat or force residents to demolish the structures themselves. From 2004 to the end of December 2018, Israeli authorities demolished 803 housing units in East Jerusalem.

At the same time, various authorities encourage hundreds of settlers to take up residence in the midst of Palestinian neighborhoods, driving Palestinians out of their homes. Settlement pockets in East Jerusalem encircle the Holy Basin to the south (in Silwan and Ras al-‘Amud), east (in a-Tur and Abu Dis) and north (in Sheikh Jarrah), and some are strategically located along main routes leading to the Old City. Other pockets have been established within the Muslim and Christian quarters of the Old City. According to Israeli NGO Ir Amim, a total of approximately 2,800 settlers live within Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem. These settler enclaves have altered the neighborhoods in which they were established, making the lives of the Palestinian residents unbearable, the latter having to contend with legal proceedings aimed at driving them from their homes, invasion of their privacy, financial pressure and daily harassment by settlers. All these lead to violent confrontations between Palestinians and settlers. The incursion of settlers has also brought increased presence of police, Border Police and state-paid private security personnel who use violence against the Palestinian residents, threaten them and arrest teens, thus exacerbating the disruption of life in the neighborhood.

Cutting off East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank

Until 1967, Jerusalem under Jordanian rule was an economic, medical, cultural and religious hub for many residents of the West Bank, who continued to work, study and shop in the city after the Israeli annexation. However, in the early 1990s, during the first Intifada, Israel put up checkpoints deep within the West Bank, and since then has forbidden Palestinians from other parts of the West Bank to enter Jerusalem without a special permit. In addition, the Israel Police erected checkpoints at the entrances to several Palestinian neighborhoods in the city, curtailing residents’ movement. These restrictions weakened East Jerusalem’s position as a regional center.

In 2002, during the second Intifada, Israel began constructing the Separation Barrier in the area of Jerusalem, most of it in the form of a high concrete wall that in some parts passes right by Palestinian homes. The barrier was completed in 2016. Unlike the checkpoints that the military erected some ten years earlier deep within the West Bank, the barrier completely sealed East Jerusalem off from the rest of the West Bank, heightening its separation. This was the intentional result of building as much of the barrier as possible along the municipal boundaries that Israel declared around Jerusalem in 1967, in order to ensure control over the annexed land. However, until the barrier was built, these municipal boundaries were largely theoretical and had almost no effect on life in Jerusalem and its environs.

The barrier cut through a vibrant fabric of Palestinian communities with ties that cut across municipal lines, including trade, culture, education and health services. Tens of thousands of Palestinians with permanent resident status who had moved to East Jerusalem suburbs were left on the other side of the wall, cut off from the rest of the city. The construction of the barrier abruptly overturned their lives, forcing them to cross checkpoints every time they wish to enter the city, usually on a daily basis. As a result, many permanent residents moved back within city limits, driving up real estate prices and causing massive crowding. This severed East Jerusalem almost completely from the rest of the West Bank, and it lost its status as a regional hub for good.

The route of the Separation Barrier deviates from the municipal boundaries of Jerusalem in five locations, in keeping with the goal that governed the drawing of these boundaries in 1967 – to annex as much land and as few Palestinians as possible. This resulted in a winding route that adds up to some 202 kilometers in the area of Jerusalem.

Two areas were cut off from the city although they lie within the municipal boundaries: Kafr ‘Aqab to the north and Shu’fat Refugee Camp to the northeast, which are home to some 140,000 Palestinians, including an unknown number of West Bank residents. Residents of the neighborhoods in these areas pay municipal and other taxes, but both the Jerusalem Municipality and the various government ministries avoid entering them and ignore their needs. Consequently, these areas have become a no man’s land: The authorities do not provide basic municipal services such as waste removal, road maintenance and education, and there is a severe shortage of classrooms and day care facilities. The water and sewage systems fail to meet the population’s needs, yet the authorities do nothing to repair them. In addition, the residents suffer extreme restrictions on their movement due to the checkpoints separating them from the rest of the city.

In three other areas, the route of the barrier – including the existing sections, those under construction and those awaiting construction – effectively expands the city without formally changing its municipal boundaries. This choice of route has added open areas, as well as settlements and land adjacent to them, to the city. The added land mass amounts to about 65,000 dunams in the area of the Gush Etzion settlement bloc, to the south; some 60,000 dunams in the area of Ma’ale Adumim and nearby settlements to the east; and about 25,000 dunams in the area of Givat Ze’ev and nearby settlements to the north. The northern section has been completed. In the Gush Etzion area, only some 21% of the route (about 11 kilometers) have been built and another 14% (about 7 kilometers) are under construction. In the Ma’ale Adumim area, about 28% of the route (some 14 kilometers) are in various stages of construction.

Discrimination in budget allocation and municipal services

Palestinians in East Jerusalem are required to pay taxes like any other inhabitant of the city, but do not receive the same services that others do. The Jerusalem Municipality deliberately avoids significantly investing in infrastructure and services in the Palestinian neighborhoods – including roads, pavements, water and sewage systems, schools and cultural institutions. This policy affects almost every aspect of Palestinians’ lives in East Jerusalem. For example, Ir Amim estimates that as of 2017, there is a shortage of 2,557 classrooms in Palestinian neighborhoods, and about a third of the children do not complete twelve years of schooling. Only some 52% of the population in these neighborhoods has legal access to the water grid.

In addition, while Palestinians make up 40% of the Jerusalem population, the municipality runs only six family health centers in the Palestinian neighborhoods, as opposed to 27 centers in Jewish neighborhoods. The municipality also has only four social services offices in the Palestinian neighborhoods, as opposed to 19 in Jewish neighborhoods – although in the former, 76% of all residents and 83.4% of the children live below the poverty line.

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The Baten al-Hawa neighborhood. Photo: Omri Eran-Vardi, Activestills, 4 January 2025

East Jerusalem

The ethnic cleansing in East Jerusalem is happening now - Large Israeli forces are currently entering the Silwan neighborhood to evict 11 Palestinian families from their homes.

Amidst the ongoing illegal and lethal Israeli-American offensive against Iran, Israel is expanding its ethnic cleansing in East Jerusalem, throwing Palestinian families into the streets.Initial reports from the ground: Police forces have sealed off the entire neighborhood and are preventing anyone includes journalists from entering. Preliminary reports indicate violence and the arrest of family members. At this very moment, settlers brought to evacuate the houses are actively throwing the families' belongings out of the windows.The eviction of 11 families, which is taking place at this very moment, marks the beginning of a massive displacement wave: approximately 2,200 people in Silwan are facing an imminent threat of forced displacement - 150 families (1,500 individuals) in al-Bustan and 90 families (700 individuals) in Baten al-Hawa.The forcible displacement follows the Israeli Supreme Court's decision to dismiss the appeals of 20 Palestinian families from Baten al-Hawa, leaving 136 individuals at immediate risk of losing their homes.This is the reality of systematic, institutionalized violence and a clear manifestation of an Israeli policy aimed at engineering the demographic balance and "Judaizing" the neighborhood by exploiting discriminatory laws. These measures are designed to expand Israeli presence and control over one of the most politically and religiously sensitive areas in the region, serving as a crucial component of the broader ethnic cleansing currently unfolding across the West Bank.

25 March 2026

שכונת בטן אל-הווא. צילום: עמרי ערן-ורדי, אקטיבסטילס, 4.1.25

East Jerusalem

Ongoing ethnic cleansing: Home demolitions, expulsion and dispossession in Silwan

The Silwan area, located south of the Old City of Jerusalem and annexed to the city’s municipal boundaries, is home to some 20,000 Palestinian residents. Its unique location next to the Old City, near al-Aqsa Mosque for Palestinians and the Temple Mount for Jews, puts it at the forefront of the Israeli regime’s campaign of dispossession and displacement in Jerusalem, as part of a broader plan to cleanse the area of its Palestinian residents and Judaize the neighborhoods surrounding the Old City. This plan is actualized through several racist mechanisms, including discriminatory legislation such as the Absentee Property Law and various municipal by-laws; the deliberate absence of detailed planning schemes for construction in Palestinian neighborhoods; and designation of land as national parks or other national projects in order to justify the dispossession. In Silwan, joint efforts by settler organizations and state authorities to Judaize the area are focused on three projects currently underway: excavation of the so-called Herodian Street, demolition of homes in al-Bustan neighborhood, and eviction of residents from Baten al-Hawa.These efforts place the residents of Silwan under very real threat of eviction from their homes and dispossession of their land. Over the past two years, evictions in the neighborhoods of Baten al-Hawa and Wadi Hilwa, where the City of David tourist site is located, together with home demolitions in al-Bustan, have left hundreds of residents homeless.In Baten al-Hawa, from October 2015 to April 2026, 33 families were evicted – a total of 77 people, 37 of them children. Fifteen of them were evicted in March 2026. Now, another 53 families are facing expulsion – a total of 237 people, 130 of them children.Many Palestinian families challenged eviction orders in court, but their petitions were dismissed in a series of rulings issued in late 2025, ordering 157 neighborhood residents to vacate their homes. In several cases, the evicted families were even ordered to pay the settlers tens of thousands of shekels in compensation. As of February 2026, 28 families from Baten al‑Hawa face immediate risk of eviction after the court denied them leave to appeal, ruling legal proceedings in their cases had been exhausted. Several additional court cases concerning dozens of neighborhood families are still pending before the Magistrates’ Court or awaiting decisions on appeals to the Supreme Court.Meanwhile, in the nearby neighborhood of al-Bustan, 48 homes were demolished from October 2023 to April 2026 following demolition orders issued by the Jerusalem Municipality. Fourteen of them were demolished in March-April 2026, with 56 residents evicted, 20 of them children. The remaining 123 families are in danger of expulsion – a total of 1,450 people, 900 of them children. The municipality has issued demolition orders for 17 of the homes.In 2010, the Jerusalem Municipality under Mayor Nir Barkat proposed establishing a tourist park named King’s Garden on al-Bustan land, as a direct extension of the Jerusalem Walls National Park and the City of David archaeological site. The latter has been operated since the 1990s by Elad, a settler organization that openly works to Judaize Silwan. In early February 2026, four bulldozers working in the service of the Jerusalem Municipality entered al-Bustan and demolished walls, fences, storage structures, gates and commercial properties belonging to neighborhood residents, without prior notice. The demolition was justified through the manipulative use of a municipal by-law ostensibly intended to allow the “removal of obstacles from the street.” The targeted structures, however, had been standing for years on land that was never designated as a street. Despite a District Court order to halt the demolition, the bulldozers continued destroying buildings in the neighborhood.To prevent these demolitions and evictions, the international community must urgently and effectively intervene to demand an end to the Israeli regime’s criminal policy of forcible transfer.The goal: full Judaization of SilwanImmediately after Israel occupied East Jerusalem in 1967, it annexed some 70,000 of the West Bank in violation of international law, and brought some of them under Jerusalem’s municipal jurisdiction. In the years that followed, the city’s socio-geographical composition was reengineered, and the state allocated about one third of the annexed territory to building Israeli settlements such as Armon Hanatziv, Gilo, East Talpiot, Ramot, Neve Ya’akov, Pisgat Ze’ev, Ramat Shlomo, French Hill, Har Homa and Givat Hamatos. The official purpose of these settlements was to secure a Jewish majority in Jerusalem and cement Jewish territorial contiguity. Another tool used by the authorities to Judaize the city has been the establishment of Jewish enclaves in the heart of Palestinian neighborhoods, such as the Shimon Hatzadik compound on land belonging to Sheikh Jarrah, or the so-called renewed Jewish Quarter within the Muslim Quarter of the Old City. The actions pursued by Israel in Baten al-Hawa and Wadi Hilwa in Silwan follow the same path.Silwan lies within what is also known as the Holy Basin, which includes the Muslim and Christian quarters of the Old City, Sheikh Jarrah, a‑Tur (Mount of Olives), Wadi al‑Joz, Ras al‑‘Amud and Jabal al‑Mukabber. Due to its geographic location, Silwan is rich in archaeological and historical sites, which Israel uses to justify planning and zoning policies that restrict Palestinian development and promote Israeli control in the area. Declaring land as a national park, archaeological site or nature reserve serves, in practice, as a tool for dispossessing Palestinian residents of their land. Moreover, the development of these areas as heritage sites is carried out in close cooperation with far-right NGOs, particularly Ateret Cohanim and Elad. This joint effort serves a clear political objective: creating a Jewish strip of territory that severs the contiguity of Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem and cuts them off from the rest of the West Bank.The takeover and expulsion mechanism: Baten al-HawaThe expulsion of Baten al‑Hawa’s residents is the first time an entire Palestinian community in East Jerusalem has been forcibly displaced since 1967. It relies primarily on the 1950 Absentee Property Law, which applies to the property of Palestinians expelled from their homes during the 1948 Nakba, and on the 1970 Legal and Administrative Matters Law, which effectively allows only Jews to claim title to property owned before 1948. Another route used by settler organizations to take over properties operates through the office of the Guardian General, a statutory entity formed when the state was established and empowered to administer Jewish trusts (‘hekdesh’) in East Jerusalem. These are properties owned by Jewish trusts before 1948 and dedicated to public purposes, which are now managed via a trustee. The use of a trust to claim title to property provides legal justification under Israeli law for the expulsion of Palestinian residents from their homes. In 2001, the Jerusalem District Court approved the Guardian General’s decision to transfer management of the Benvenisti Trust to members of the Ateret Cohanim organization. In 2002, the land where the buildings housing most of the families facing displacement was transferred to this trust by the Guardian General, and a further three-dunam plot, housing 10 more Palestinian families, was sold to the trust in 2005.Pursuant to the Absentee Property Law and the Legal and Administrative Matters Law, in combination with the fact that the Guardian General facilitates Jewish takeover of homes previously owned by Jews, Palestinian residents who lawfully purchased these homes are being stripped of their property and left defenseless.Backed by private security guards paid for by the Israeli Ministry of Housing to the tune of hundreds of millions of shekels per year, Jewish settlers in the neighborhood harass Palestinian residents, violently confront them, and frequently get Palestinians arrested by the police on various pretexts. In addition, as settlers moved into the neighborhood, Israel Police and Border Police presence increased dramatically. Officers also use violence against Palestinians, issue threats, detain minors and disrupt daily life. And so, even before they are physically expelled from their homes, Baten al‑Hawa’s residents suffer relentless abuse, fully backed by Israeli state institutions and security forces, which makes their lives unbearable and is intended to push them to leave “voluntarily.” Palestinian residents also suffer from gross, ongoing neglect in terms of public infrastructure and services that should be provided by the Jerusalem Municipality: many streets are unpaved, garbage is not collected and left to pile up in the streets, and street lighting is limited.Gross discrimination between Jews and Palestinians under Israel’s apartheid regime is not confined to discriminatory legislation. It is also manifested in planning, budgeting and service provision. While Palestinian residents of Silwan endure deliberate neglect underpinned by systematic state violence, settlers in the Jewish enclaves in the neighborhood, such as the Yemenite Village or Kfar Hashiloah within Baten al‑Hawa, or the City of David in Wadi Hilwa, enjoy around the clock security and modern services and infrastructure, including paved access routes and wider, better‑lit streets, financed in part by taxpayer money.These families are being forcibly displaced in violation of international law with the full backing of Israel’s Supreme Court, which, while accepting the Baten al‑Hawa families’ claim that they purchased their homes lawfully, ruled that the settlers’ property rights prevail,In Silwan, as in other Palestinian neighborhoods of Jerusalem and Palestinian villages across the West Bank, the Israeli regime uses every tool at its disposal to dispossess Palestinians of their land. The goal of removing Palestinians from their homes is pursued out in the open, through legislation manifesting the core features of Israel’s apartheid regime, via the court system, and in cooperation with settler organizations, with matching efforts to make Palestinians’ lives unbearable through systematic neglect and violence perpetrated by both official and unofficial actors.This is the reality of systematic, institutionalized violence in which Palestinian residents of Jerusalem live daily under Israel’s apartheid regime, stripped of their most basic rights. Confronting this reality requires urgent and immediate intervention by members of the international community.

22 March 2026

Apartheid

This is apartheid: The Israeli regime promotes and perpetuates Jewish supremacy between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River

Today, B’Tselem published a new position paper that details how the Israeli regime enacts in all the territory it controls (Israeli sovereign territory, East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip) an apartheid regime. One organizing principle lies at the base of a wide array of Israeli policies: advancing and perpetuating the supremacy of one group – Jews – over another – Palestinians. In the position paper B’Tselem rejects the perception of Israel as a democracy (inside the Green Line) that simultaneously upholds a temporary military occupation (beyond it). B’Tselem reached the conclusion that the bar for defining the Israeli regime as an apartheid regime has been met after considering the accumulation of policies and laws that Israel devised to entrench its control over Palestinians. The key tool Israel uses to implement the principle of Jewish supremacy is engineering space geographically, demographically and politically. Jews go about their lives in a single, contiguous space where they enjoy full rights and self-determination. In contrast, Palestinians live in a space that is fragmented into several units, each with a different set of rights – given or denied by Israel, but always inferior to the rights accorded to Jews. The Israeli regime pursues this organizing principle in four major areas: Land – Israel works to Judaize the entire area, treating land as a resource chiefly meant to benefit the Jewish population. Since 1948, Israel has taken over 90% of the land within the Green Line and built hundreds of communities for the Jewish population. Since 1967, Israel has also enacted this policy in the West Bank, building more than 280 settlements for some 600,000 Jewish Israeli citizens. Israel has not built a single community for the Palestinian population in the entire area stretching from the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River (with the exception of several communities built to concentrate the Bedouin population after dispossessing them of most of their property rights). Citizenship – Jews living anywhere in the world, their children and grandchildren – and their spouses – are entitled to Israeli citizenship. In contrast, Palestinians cannot immigrate to Israeli-controlled areas, even if they, their parents or their grandparents were born and lived there. Israel makes it difficult for Palestinians who live in one of the units it controls to obtain status in another, and has enacted legislation that prohibits granting Palestinians who marry Israelis status within the Green Line. Freedom of movement – Israeli citizens enjoy freedom of movement in the entire area controlled by Israel (with the exception of the Gaza Strip) and may enter and leave the country freely. Palestinian subjects, on the other hand, require a special Israeli-issued permit to travel between the units (and sometimes inside them), and exit abroad also requires Israeli approval. Political participation – Palestinian citizens of Israel may vote and run for office, but leading politicians consistently undermine the legitimacy of Palestinian political representatives. The roughly five million Palestinians who live in the Occupied Territories, including East Jerusalem, cannot participate in the political system that governs their lives and determines their future. They are denied other political rights as well, including freedom of speech and association. In the entire area, control over these aspects of life lies entirely in Israel’s hands – the sole power determining the population registry; land allocation; voter rolls; and the right (or denial thereof) to travel within, enter or exit any part of the area. The Israeli regime has grown increasingly explicit regarding its Jewish supremacist ideology, a process that has seen two major unmasking milestones in recent years. One was the enactment of Basic Law: Israel – the Nation State of the Jewish People, which declares the distinction between Jews and non-Jews fundamental and legitimate, and permits institutional discrimination in land management and development, housing, citizenship, language and culture. The second came in the form of official statements regarding formal annexation of more parts of the West Bank, attesting to Israel’s long-term intentions and debunking claims of “temporary occupation.” B’Tselem stresses that the military occupation has not ended: Palestinians in the West Bank remain its direct subjects, while in the Gaza Strip they live under its effective control, exerted from the outside. At the same time, casting Israel as a “democracy” on one side of the Green Line, while it is “temporarily” occupying millions of people on the other side, is divorced from reality. This depiction ignores the fact that this state of affairs has been in place for over fifty years. It fails to take into consideration the hundreds of thousands of Jewish settlers living east of the Green Line. It glosses over the de-jure annexation of East Jerusalem and the de-facto annexation of the rest of the West Bank. These facts lead to the conclusion that these are not two parallel regimes, but a single one, governing the entire area and all the people living in it. B’Tselem’s Executive Director, Hagai El-Ad: “The fundamental tenets of Israel’s regime, although already implemented for many years, have recently grown more explicit. This happened both with the discussion of de jure annexation after decades of de facto annexation, and with the enactment of the Nation State Basic Law, which took the existing discrimination against Palestinians and turned it into an open constitutional principle. Israel is not a democracy that has a temporary occupation attached to it: it is one regime between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, and we must look at the full picture and see it for what it is: apartheid. This sobering look at reality need not lead to despair, but quite the opposite. It is a call for change. After all, people created this regime, and people can change it.”

12 January 2021