PLO Plans to Flood Jerusalem With Refugees
An Arab reporter for the Hebrew-language newspaper YERUSHALAYIM recently reviewed the plans of the Palestinian Authority should Israel cede control over east Jerusalem, which includes a plot to flood the city with Palestinian refugees.
Following is a translation of the article entitled “The Palestinian Authority Will Transfer Thousands of Refugees to East Jerusalem,” by Khaled Abu-Toameh, whose family has close connections with the PA.
“It is hard these days to find people in East Jerusalem who support the idea of dividing the city afresh. Even representatives of the Palestinian Authority oppose a return to the situation that existed before the Six Day War. The Palestinians would prefer that the city remain open and without frontiers.”
“Already with the rise to power of Ehud Barak, preparations began in the sovereignty over East Jerusalem. Senior figures in the Palestinian Authority knew even before the last elections that if Barak was elected prime minister he would give up the eastern part of the city. “We received promises from senior figures in the Labor Party that if they rose to power they would divide Jerusalem and grant us an independent state,” says Hatem Abdul Kader, a representative of the “the Jerusalem district” in the Palestinian Legislative Council.
“The plans of the Palestinian Authority for East Jerusalem include, among other things:
1. Stationing between 2,500 and 4,000 Palestinian policemen and security personnel in all the Arab housing estates of Jerusalem, including the Old City and the central commercial area (Sallah Ad-Din, Sultan Suleiman, Az-Zahra and Wadi Joz). Also the headquarters of various security apparatuses of the Palestinian Authority will be transferred from Gaza and Ramallah to East Jerusalem.
2. Opening an office of Chairman Yasser Arafat located on the Temple Mount or in one of the buildings in the Muslim Quarter which overlook the mosques. Arafat wants to see from the window in his office the Al-Aksa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock. He likes to compare himself with the great Muslim fighter Sallah Ad-Din who liberated Jerusalem from the Crusaders, and a picture of him against the background of the Temple mount will help him to create the image of one who continues the path of the Commander [of the Faithful]. In the PA, by the way, these days they are considering whether to confer upon Arafat the title “Fateh Al-Kuds” (“Liberator of Jerusalem”) as a sign of esteem for his having liberated Jerusalem from the hands of the Zionist occupiers.
3. The PA is planning to take over all the assets of the Muslim Waqf and state lands in East Jerusalem. The Muslim Waqf (which continues to be subordinate to the Jordanian government) has today thousands of houses and large plots of land in the Old City and in the surrounding Arab housing estates. Also Israel has lands that were partly expropriated for public needs.
4. Recently calls were heard in the PA to enable tens of thousands of Palestinians, and chiefly refugees living in the refugee camps of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, to resettle in East Jerusalem. The aim: to create an Arab majority in East Jerusalem and to turn the “settlers” of French Hill, Ramat Eshkol, Pisgat Ze’ev, Gil and Armon HaNatziv into a minority. In this way the Palestinians hope eventually to bring about the evacuation of the Jewish housing estates that were set up in the eastern part of the city after 1967. Only it is precisely the [Arab] residents of East Jerusalem who need to be worried about the flooding of their housing estates and villages with tens of thousands of [other] Arabs. The residents of Ramallah and Nablus have already had this bitter experience.
5. Palestinian security sources tell of a long list of residents of East Jerusalem who are suspected collaborators with Israel. According to those sources, most of the collaborators will be arrested immediately upon the entry of the Palestinian Police into Jerusalem. Up to now the informers enjoyed the rights of the blue [Israeli] identity card that they hold.
“On the other hand, the PA has at this stage no answers to the severe economic problems that are liable to be created upon the withdrawal of Israel from East Jerusalem. About 50,000 families entitled to payments verge on starvation if they stop receiving benefits. The PA has no orderly welfare apparatus that could replace the [Israeli] National Insurance Institute. Accordingly, economists estimate that the standard of living in East Jerusalem will go down by about fifty percent after its hand-over to the Authority. They warn against the serious consequences of that situation, since there will be in Jerusalem two populations: Jews with a very high standard of living and a flourishing economy, and Palestinians with a low standard of living and poverty. If the residents of Isawiyyeh are not well off, warn the economists and other sources, their [Jewish] neighbors on French Hill [and at Hebrew University] will have good reason to be worried.”
Used with Permission from International Christian Embassy Jerusalem.