Jerusalem preserves its Arab-Islamic-Christian identity in story

The Qatari-based Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies has launched “Jerusalem Story”, an English-and-Arabic-language online platform, in a bid to preserve Jerusalem’s identity.

The website tells the history of occupied Jerusalem and provides the readers facts and information about the city and the conflict that is taking place in its vicinity.

“The website aims to provide the Arab-sided history of the city to avoid depending on only the Zionist narration,” said Israeli-Arab public intellectual Azmi Bishara in a speech during the launch of the website on Saturday. On the website, readers are acquainted with the city’s history starting from 1948 until the current time. 

The website took three years to be launched after a group of 12 researchers, along with a number of volunteers, designed it. The center is also scheduled to launch a new website called “The Palestinian Memory” in January 2023, besides another project on “The Syrian Memory” in March 2023.

“What is happening in Jerusalem at the moment is an exceptional case that will reflect on what is going on in the Arab region and the Middle East […] the occupation [Israeli forces] uses the weapons of land and population to erase the identity of Jerusalem,” said Palestinian historian Nazmi Jubeh, a professor of history at Birzeit University in Palestine, at the ceremony of the website launch.

Jubeh added that Israel attempts to limit the Palestinian population to live on only 10 percent of the city's area, saying that the Israeli occupation tremendously succeeded in increasing its settlements to control the land and break up the national social fabric.

The demographic factor is deeply worrisome to the Israeli occupation, as Palestinian births exceed Jewish births, he continued. Economically, the historian said that Israel adopts a policy to impoverish the city's residents by forcing the Palestinian middle class out of Jerusalem and investing outside it.

For several years, Israeli forces have forced Palestinian families to leave their homes and hand them over to Israeli settlers. In 2015, for instance, a Palestinian family called Abu Nab was evicted by Israeli forces from its home in Silwan, East Jerusalem, to give it to settlers from the right-wing Ateret Gohanim movement, Mondoweiss reported on October 19, 2015. Several evictions have occurred afterwards. 

Since 1967, a total of 700,000 Jewish Israeli settlers have been living in 300 settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, said Michael Lynk, the UN Special Rapporteur for the situation of human rights in Palestine, on March 25.

“[Israeli is a] political regime which so intentionally and clearly prioritizes fundamental political, legal and social rights to one group over another within the same geographic unit on the basis of one’s racial-national-ethnic identity,” he added.

Also, the Israeli violations aiming to remove the Palestinian and Arab identity of Jerusalem/Al-Haram Al-Sharif have escalated since April, when Israeli troops stormed Al-Aqsa Mosque, clashed with worshippers, and arrested dozens of Palestinians.

Jordan, which protects the Al-Haram Al-Sharif sanctities, has been accusing Israel of trying to remove the Arab, Islamic and Palestinian identity of Jerusalem through the occupation forces’ illegal practices there. 

“The Al-Aqsa Mosque/Al-Haram Al-Sharif, with its whole area of 144 dunams [144K square meters] is an exclusive worship place for all Muslims,” said the foreign ministers of Egypt, Palestine, and Jordan in a joint communique of the Arab Ministerial Committee for International Action Against Illegal Israeli Polices and Measures in Al-Quds on April 21. They affirmed that the old city and its Arab, Islamic and Christian sanctities come under the Jordanian Hashemite Kingdom’s guardianship.

“Jerusalem has total area of more than 144 dunams […] with lengths of 491m west, 462m east, 310m north, and 281m south. Al-Aqsa Mosque includes the Qibli Mosque (al-Jami’ Al-Aqsa), the Marwani Mosque, the Dome of the Rock Mosque, Al-Buraq Mosque, the lower Aqsa, Bab Al-Rahmah, all grounds, prayer halls, corridors with all the historical buildings built on them, elevated platforms, water cisterns and waterways, all that exists above and underneath its space, all the roads and ramps that lead to its gates, and the walls themselves, including Al-Buraq Al-Sharif Wall,” said a report on the State of Conservation of the Old City of Jerusalem and Its Walls by  both Palestine and Jordan, which was submitted to the UNESCO World Heritage Center on March 16, 2015.