ISRAEL-PALESTINIANS/JERUSALEM Breaking taboo, Jerusalem Palestinians seek Israeli citizenship

Record ID: 145233

  • Title: ISRAEL-PALESTINIANS/JERUSALEM Breaking taboo, Jerusalem Palestinians seek Israeli citizenship
  • Date: 3rd August 2015
  • Summary: PICTURE OF THE DOME OF THE ROCK MOSQUE
  • Embargoed: 18th August 2015 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Jerusalem
  • City:
  • Country: Israel
  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVAA1DSTIJFJORZXSJZD0NGFQJPR
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: "I declare I will be a loyal citizen of the state of Israel," reads the oath that must be sworn by all naturalised Israeli citizens. Increasingly, they are words being uttered by Palestinians.
    In East Jerusalem, which Israel captured from Jordan during the 1967 Middle East war and later annexed, a move not recognised internationally, issues of Palestinian identity are layered with complexity.
    While Israel regards the east of the city as part of Israel, the estimated 300,000 Palestinians that live there do not. They are not Israeli citizens, instead holding Israeli-issued blue IDs that grant them permanent resident status.
    While they can seek citizenship if they wish, the vast majority reject it, not wanting to renounce their own history or be seen to buy into Israel's 48-year occupation.
    And yet over the past decade, an increasing number of East Jerusalem Palestinians have gone through the lengthy process of becoming Israeli citizens, researchers and lawyers say.
    In part it reflects a loss of hope that an independent Palestinian state will ever emerge. But it also reflects a hard-headed pragmatism - an acknowledgement that having Israeli citizenship will make it easier to get or change jobs, buy or move house, travel abroad and receive access to services.
    Palestinians who have applied do not like to talk about it. The loyalty oath is not an easy thing for them to sign up to and becoming a naturalised Israeli is taboo.
    For many East Jerusalemites, part of the fear is that Israel could revoke their blue ID at any time since retaining it depends on maintaining a "centre of life" in Jerusalem. Spend too much time abroad or working elsewhere and the ID could go. That is not the case when it comes to citizenship.
    "It is not about being an Israeli or anything else but because I want to strengthen my presence in Jerusalem. It is my homeland, I was born here, I live here and I want to stay here and if they take my ID that means I can't stay here," said a 46-year-old Palestinian teacher from East Jerusalem who was granted citizenship and took the oath a year ago. Like the other East Jerusalemites interviewed she asked not to be identified.
    "I have a bad feeling because I prefer to have the passport of my country as a Jerusalemite, as a Palestinian, so I should have a Palestinian passport but unfortunately I cannot get one. Instead, I got something that will only connect me more to Jerusalem," she explained her reasoning, while looking at the walled old city and golden dome of the rock.
    Others echoed that sense of a transition that on the one hand feels like a renunciation, but on the other strengthens their ability to keep firm roots in Jerusalem. Some Palestinians fear their community's reaction to breaking the taboo, so keep their decision even from family and friends.
    Israeli officials are reluctant to confirm figures, but data obtained by the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies indicates a jump over the past decade, rising from 114 applications in 2003 to between 800 and 1,000 a year now, around half of which are successful. On top of that, hundreds have made inquiries before the formal application process begins.
    Interior Ministry figures obtained by Reuters show there were 1,434 applications in 2012-13, of which 189 were approved, 1,061 are still being processed and 169 were rejected. The remainder are in limbo.
    "We are indeed witnessing an increase in the number of East Jerusalemites who have permanent residency status in the state of Israel who are seeking Israeli citizenship. The question how big is this increase is debated. The figures we at the Jerusalem institute received point to about 800 to 1000 applicants a year, half of whom are granted Israeli citizenship." said Amnon Ramon, a researcher at the Jerusalem Institute for Israel studies.
    For many Palestinians, East Jerusalem feel likes a twilight zone. They pay Israeli municipal taxes and receive healthcare and insurance benefits, but are often neglected when it comes to basic city services - from trash collection to new playgrounds and resources in schools and clinics.
    Some Palestinians reject the move as insufficient and say it will not help those in need.
    "To us (Palestinians) here, we are living in a difficult situation, the economic situation is very bad. Why would people do such a thing (apply for citizenship), it is because their economic situation is good. For someone that has children, expenses, a house and a shop and all these things, this (the citizenship) could never help me. If they give us a passport or take it (our IDs) it is the same for me," said Jerusalem resident Ghassan Nofal.
    The situation is particularly bad in places like Shuafat, a refugee camp a few minutes away from the Old City. Shuafat lies beyond the concrete barrier built by Israel in the mid-2000s, after a wave of Palestinian suicide bombings.
    To reach the rest of Jerusalem, Shuafat residents must queue to get through a caged-iron walkway that crosses the barrier. About 100,000 Palestinians live beyond the barrier but are still Jerusalemites.
    A lawyer who represents Palestinians in the long application process, Adi Lustigman, said in a statement: "the barrier caused panic, people were afraid that after their homes were put behind the wall that their residency will be stripped and their rights taken away."
    Citizenship is seen as a block against that, said Lustigman, who confirmed that applications have shot up in recent years.
    The fraught decisions over identity come at a time when political and religious tensions are high in Jerusalem, and yet integration has to an extent been rising.
    The most visible sign of that is the city's light-rail system which allows passengers - a mix of ultra-Orthodox Jews, secular Israelis, Palestinians and tourists - quick access to west Jerusalem shopping centres, markets and parks. More Palestinians, albeit in small numbers, have also been moving into predominantly Jewish neighbourhoods and even settlements on occupied land.
    Khalil Tafakji, a map expert and former member of the Palestinian negotiating team, said political deadlock - the sense that years of striving for an independent Palestinian state were going nowhere - was driving numbers up.
    "The main reason behind this is that the political horizon is at a dead end for the Palestinian Authority, which left Jerusalem alone," he said. "There is a big risk regarding this issue, if the situation continues as is what will the Palestinians negotiate about? They want to negotiate on land - they already lost the land. They want to negotiate for the population and the population is being lost."
    Israel, he said, was trying to strengthen its hold on Jerusalem demographically, a process helped by Palestinians taking up Israeli citizenship. Since 1967, around 24,000 Palestinians had made the switch, he said, equivalent to almost 10 percent of the East Jerusalem Palestinian population. The demographic impact is even wider when one considers that the children of those who become Israeli citizens are born Israeli.
    Israeli Interior Minister Silvan Shalom rejected the demographic argument.
    "Not many have the courage to ask for Israeli citizenship but I think this will not affect negotiations between us and the Palestinians, which is a far greater and wider negotiation with many ramifications. But if this phenomenon exists then it is interesting and we should follow it," said Shalom, whose portfolio includes Palestinian affairs.
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