Jerusalem Pulse: Recent Research Roundup

Jerusalem Pulse is a periodic digest of the latest research 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 after October 7, 2023, and includes research from that point until November 20, 2023.

Amnesty International released a new report on November 8, 2023, documenting the dramatic increase in the number of Palestinians being arrested and administratively detained by Israel since October 7, which was already at a 20-year high before that date. According to data cited in the report, more than 2,200 Palestinians have been detained between October 7 and November 8, 2023. Separately, and also cited in the report, Israeli human rights organization HaMoked announced that in a single month between October 1 and November 1, 2023, 751 Palestinians had been administratively detained, bringing the total number held under this measure to 2,070.

The report includes testimonies from released detainees and human rights lawyers, as well as video footage and images that illustrate some of the forms of torture that Palestinian prisoners have been subjected to in the past weeks, including torture, severe beatings, and extreme humiliation, such as being stripped, mocked, beaten, and urinated on.

The report also takes note of the one-month extension of the “state of emergency in prisons” which “grants Israel’s National Security Minister virtually unrestrained powers to deny sentenced prisoners access to visits by lawyers and family members; to hold detainees in overcrowded cells; to deny them outdoor exercise and to impose cruel collective punishment measures such as cutting off water and electricity for long hours, effectively allowing for the intensification of cruel and inhuman treatment of detainees, in violation of the prohibition of torture and other ill-treatment.” Heba Morayef, Amnesty International Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa, called these measures “inhumane.”1

The report also details thousands of cases of Palestinians from Gaza who were detained without any notice or legal representation on two Israeli military bases.

Several recent reports2 published by Adalah—The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel shed light on Israel’s crackdown on the freedom of expression of its Palestinian citizens. This crackdown is carried out under the banner of the draconian amendment that the Israeli Knesset recently passed to the counter-terrorism law criminalizing “consumption of terrorist publications.”3 The amendment has made it easy for Israeli academic institutions to persecute Palestinian students for expressing solidarity with the Palestinian people in Gaza or even for sharing verses from the Holy Quran.

According to the reports, expulsions and suspensions are being carried out often before any hearings take place. They include job terminations and suspensions, police ban on protests, suppression of speech by Palestinian lawyers, as well as incitement against members of Knesset from Palestinian political parties.

7amleh—The Arab Center for the Advancement of Social Media published a comprehensive briefing on rapidly escalating violations of Palestinians’ Digital Rights. The briefing, covering the period from October 7 to November 1, 2023, surveys violations across many platforms including Meta, X (formerly Twitter), Telegram, TikTok, Google, LinkedIn, and Mailchimp. It also details the extensive crackdown on digital rights of Palestinian citizens and residents by the Israeli government, including in East Jerusalem, by various official bodies such as the Israeli police, elected officials, and the Internet Referral Unit, or the ”Cyber Unit.”

Badil Resource Centre for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights released an online report titled “Under the Umbrella of the Genocidal War on Gaza: The Israeli Colonial-Apartheid Regime Escalates Its Suppression in the West Bank and in 1948 Palestine.” The report, which is undated, details various forms of suppression exercised by Israeli occupation authorities since October 7, among them: displacement and land confiscation, arrests, military raids on refugee camps, violations within prisons, closure of checkpoints, attacks on healthcare, as well as dismissal from work and expulsion from educational institutions simply for being Arab. The data are broken down by geographic area: (1) the occupied West Bank and (2) Israel inside the Green Line (1948 areas).

On November 25, 2023, the Palestinian human rights organization al-Haq released a new report entitled “Suffocating Palestinian Civil Society Organisations: A Means to an End.” The report, based on field and desk research, covers the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem. According to the report:

The report establishes the motives the state has for targeting Palestinian Civil Society Organizations (CSOs), then surveys the various methods used to target, delegitimize, asphyxiate, and, in many cases, shut Palestinian CSOs.

Four case studies are explored, including the Union of Agricultural Work Committees, al-Haq, Addameer, and the Orient House.

The report concludes with a legal analysis and recommendations.

Peace Now released an online bulletin October 15 on “Violence and Settler Aggression in the First Week of the Gaza War” that lists various violations of Palestinians’ rights and safety by Israeli authorities and settlers in the first week of the war. Those include mass armament, militarizing agricultural outposts, and other forms of attacks by settlers including petrol bomb attacks and the expulsion of Palestinian communities.

In its 45th flash report, released November 20, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN-OCHA) tallied the number of Palestinian killed and injured in attacks by Israeli forces and settlers since October 7. In total, OCHA recorded 256 settler attacks in the West Bank; a number which “reflects a daily average of almost six incidents, compared with three since the beginning of the year. In nearly half of all incidents, Israeli forces were either accompanying or actively supporting the attackers.”

Ir Amim and Bimkom jointly reported that Israeli authorities have resumed their efforts to finalize the Mount Scopus Slopes National Park Plan (TPS 1195114), which would seize and allocate the open space between the Palestinian neighborhoods of al-‘Isawiyya and al-Tur in East Jerusalem as a national park. According to the alert issued by both organizations on November 14, if approved, “This [plan] will severely limit proper development of both neighborhoods, including the ability to adequately expand, which is essential. In addition, a large national park in this location would contribute to Israeli territorial contiguity between Jerusalem and the E1/Maaleh Adumim area. It will likewise serve as a form of touristic settlement, which increases Israeli control over more land and fractures the Palestinian space in the city.”5 The plan had been frozen from 2014 to February 2022 on the grounds that it did not take into urban development account the needs of the two neighborhoods.

Ir Amim reported November 15 that the Jerusalem District Planning Committee would meet November 21 to discuss objections against the Lower Aqueduct settlement plan (TPS 808840). This plan would see a new settlement of 1,465 units built on a sliver of land located between the settlements of Givat Hamatos and Har Homa—and is intended to connect the two. In doing so, it will establish a huge, uninterrupted continuum of Israeli settlements on the southern rim of Jerusalem and destroy any possibility of contiguity between the West Bank and East Jerusalem for Palestinian localities.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN-OCHA) continues to monitor demolitions and displacement in the occupied Palestinian Territories (oPT). According to the latest OCHA data, between October 7 and December 7, 48 structures belonging to Palestinians were demolished in East Jerusalem, with the largest numbers found in Beit Hanina (10), Sur Bahir (9), and Jabal Mukabbir (8). Of this number, 33 were inhabited residences and 187 people (of whom 104 were children) were displaced as a result, making for a total of 207 demolished structures so far in 2023.

The International Labor Organization (ILO) issued its first technical bulletin on the impact of Israel’s Gaza war on the labor market and livelihoods in the oPT. The bulletin, produced in partnership with the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) in November 2023, reports that spillover effect of the war in Gaza has resulted in the loss of 24 percent of employment in the West Bank, equivalent to 208,000 jobs.6 This loss can be attributed to restrictions imposed on Palestinians’ access to the Israeli labor market and to reduced economic activity in the region, which has affected the West Bank’s private sector.

Additionally, an estimated 67,000 workers throughout the West Bank are finding it challenging to reach their workplaces due to the closures and checkpoints Israel has imposed since October 7 for “deterrence.”7 These workers are therefore also facing reduced productivity and risk losing their jobs.

Anwar Qadah wrote an essay, about Israel’s efforts to Israelize the education of Palestinians in East Jerusalem, in Arabic in October 2022. This was translated to English and republished in the Autumn 2023 issue (no. 95) of the Jerusalem Quarterly. The essay takes a historical look back at the various phases of Israel’s attempts to Israelize education since 1967, and how they take a significant turn in 2018 with the launch of a five-year plan for East Jerusalem that “clearly focused on education.” The essay also touches on some of the ways Israel creates problems or allows them to be created in order to justify eliminating other stakeholders in the education system and thereby securing sole control.

This essay, written by Zayd al-Qiq in Arabic in 2019 for qudsn.co, was translated into English and republished in the Autumn 2023 issue (no. 95) of the Jerusalem Quarterly. It summarizes findings from a two-year research project and focuses on the significance and implication of the closure of the Palestinian Directorate of Education in the Old City on November 20, 2019, notably on the awqaf schools run by the Palestinian Authority, which will likely be weakened, according to the author.

This study was published by Rawan Asali Nuseibeh, Aviv Cohen, and Zvi Bekerman in Higher Education in August 2023. The three education researchers (one Palestinian, two Israeli) conducted 19 in-depth interviews using a semi-structured format in Arabic. All were second- and third-year Palestinian students studying in two departments, education and one additional. Their ages ranged from 19 to 23, and all except for one were women. All were first-generation members in their families to attend university.

The interviewees shared that they faced significant linguistic, cultural, and academic barriers—especially with Hebrew—in their first year. The language barrier was so great that some students said they understood nothing of their lectures the first year and they could not make sense of their assignments or exams either. Academically, they struggled with the large volumes of reading assigned and the type of writing required.

By the second year, some of these academic barriers eased, and they were able to stay apace with the other students in their work.

Socially, the participants shared that they found themselves estranged from other Israeli Jewish students who were largely older and post-army service. They also felt that some, although not all, of the instructors stereotyped them and had low expectations of them. They were alienated and marginalized and sometimes opted for self-exclusion. Overall, the institutions supported the students only in some individualistic ways, but not as members of national or ethnic collectives. Hence, the study found that although the second year was smoother academically, the students remained isolated in their own social “bubbles” within their own community.

Two journal articles published recently offer insight into the realities facing Palestinian Jerusalemites who must address their legal status issues in Israel’s labyrinthine bureaucracy. In “The Bureaucracy of a Second Dispossession: A Personal Account of Returning to Jerusalem” (Journal of Palestine Studies, November 20, 2023), D. A. Jaber, a Palestinian whose family was ethnically cleansed from Lifta in 1948 and resettled in Ramallah and Jordan, has returned with her husband, a Palestinian Jerusalemite, to live and teach in the city. She describes in minute details the subjective experience of applying for lam shamel or family unification. She notes that the bureaucratic process is “arbitrary and incredibly rigorous” and “the approval rate is low.” The article goes on to detail all the indignities and uncertainties of this humiliating process.

In “Precarious Bureaucratic Waiting and the Measurement of Delay at the East Jerusalem Ministry of Interior” (Journal of Palestine Studies, September 7, 2023), Thayer Hastings, an Israeli citizen born in Jerusalem, explores the “affective associations and meanings”8 embedded in the despised Wadi Joz branch of the Israeli Ministry of Interior in East Jerusalem, the only office that processes applications for status and residency for the estimated 366,800 Palestinian Jerusalemites.9 The author compiles his own experiences, field notes from conversations with Palestinian Jerusalemites, Google reviews, and other data to try and distill the various layers of meaning. As he notes, “The relationship of Palestinian residents to the ministry must be understood within this broader context of organized abandonment.”10 He later notes, “the extent to which Palestinians’ lives are determined by this ministry cannot be overstated.”11