By Jack E. Friedman

(June 21) - This book, published in 1999 and just released in paperback, is an account of Israel's relations with the Arabs of eastern Jerusalem since the 1967 war. To Order...

Drawing on a rich cache of documents, including "secret" memos and minutes of Jerusalem municipality deliberations and personal recollections, the authors (two of them former mayoral advisers on Arab affairs) argue that Israel's administration of the Arab sectors has been a colossal failure. They charge policy-makers on both the municipal and national levels with bureaucratic ineptitude, deliberate discrimination against the Arabs in providing housing and public services, expropriation of Arab land and missed opportunities to forge understanding with local Arab leaders.

The authors grudgingly acknowledge "several small projects" implemented during the long tenure of Mayor Teddy Kollek, noting that he was "quick to point [these] out to critics who say Israel has done nothing to improve conditions for Arab residents." They credit Kollek with better intentions than most who had a hand in shaping policy, but even he is not excluded from the accusation that Israel has, by and large, been guilty of duplicity.

"To the world, Israel presented itself as an enlightened ruler of a troubled city. In reality, while pursuing what for the Jewish state was the logical goal of fortifying its claims to Jerusalem, the city's non-Jewish residents suffered greatly."

The book maintains that Israel's policies have been driven by "two basic principles" adopted shortly after the Six Day War. "The first was to rapidly increase the Jewish population of east Jerusalem. The second was to hinder the growth of the Arab population and to force Arab residents to make their homes elsewhere."

As one example among many, it includes a table from a 1993 municipality report, "Potential Housing Construction in Jerusalem." The table, the authors insist, delimits "the maximum number of units the Israeli administration had determined could be built in each Arab neighborhood without precipitating a change in the ratio of Arabs to Jews in the city population."

THE INDICTMENT of Israel, while impassioned, is seriously unbalanced. The work plays down or ignores the improvements in public services and quality of life that have taken place in Arab villages that are now part of Jerusalem. Inadequate as this progress may have been, it is in sharp contrast to the neglect these sites suffered under the previous administration of Jordan.

The book also fails to spell out the unique historical and religious imperatives that link Israel to the Old City and its environs beyond the pre-1967 Green Line. Nor does it take note of the wanton destruction and seizures of Jewish property and sacred sites in the years before the city's reunification. For example, it reports that the plan to build Neveh Ya'acov in northern Jerusalem called for the expropriation of 3,200 dunams, mostly belonging to Arab residents, but does not mention the Jewish community of that name that existed there before being overrun in 1948.

Running through the litany of Israel's offenses is the assertion that better ties with local Arab leaders across the 1967 boundaries and more equitable treatment of their communities would have enhanced Israel's bargaining position in the post-Oslo negotiations on the city's future. Logical as this sounds, the thesis is difficult to sustain. As the authors themselves amply demonstate, the PLO rode herd on the local leadership and injected its nationalist agenda into virtually every attempt to promote dialogue and cooperation on the local level. In other words, what mattered was how these local initiatives would contribute to the PLO's unwavering objective to reverse the results of 1967.

The study ends before the election of prime minister Ehud Barak, and well before the Palestine Authority's bloody response to the Barak government's unprecedented offer of almost all of the West Bank and large chunks of eastern Jerusalem, including the Temple Mount. Perhaps this sobering outcome would have tempered the book's optimistic conclusion that doing more in earlier years might have reinforced Palestinian readiness to accept Israeli sovereignty in the city. At least one hopes so.

The reviewer, professor emeritus of the City University of New York, is former national chairman of the American Professors for Peace in the Middle East.

The authors claim that Israeli administration of the eastern half of Jerusalem has been a failure, and that it has been the the Israeli government's policy to not only stifle the growth of Jerusalem's Arab population, but to also drive out as many of Jerusalem's Arabs as possible. There is ample evidence to show their thesis wrong. Not to say that they are lying, but simply that the things they missed and or left out totally alter the picture. For example, in an article reviewing this book in the Jerusalem Post the following is written,

"Nor does [the book] take note of the wanton destruction and seizures of Jewish property and sacred sites in the years before the city's reunification. For example, [the book] reports that the plan to build Neveh Ya'acov in northern Jerusalem called for the expropriation of 3,200 dunams, mostly belonging to Arab residents, but does not mention the Jewish community of that name that existed there before being overrun in 1948." *1

The authors ignore the fact that Israeli expropriations were in many cases the reclaiming of lands that were Jewishly owned prior to their being confiscated / taken over after being conquered by the Arabs in 1948. It should also be noted that, as in all modern countries, owners of expropriated land are compensated at market value.

While the Israeli government has surely not encouraged Arab population growth, the hard numbers show that they have done virtually nothing to discourage it also. Some examples:

"Arabs have received substantial numbers of permits. In the 1974-1995 period, for example, Jerusalem's Arab community received building permits for more square meters of residential construction than did the demographically similar (in terms of total numbers and family size) Jewish ultra-Orthodox community. Likewise, in 1998, 79% of Arab permit requests were granted as opposed to just 73% of Jewish requests. " *2

For even more specific data take a look at this:

"In 1967, there were 68,600 Arabs living in Jerusalem, whereas in 1995, there were 174,400, a rise of 154%. By contrast, the Jewish population rose by 111%, from 197,700 in 1967 to 417,000 in 1995. ... In 1967, the city's population consisted of 74.2% Jews and 25.8% Arabs. Currently, Jews comprise 70.5% of the population, a drop of 3.7%. ... When the city was under Jordanian control, the number of Arab residents substantially diminished. ... Over the past 30 years, the number of Arab-owned apartments in Jerusalem has risen significantly. In 1967, there were 12,200 Arab-owned apartments in eastern Jerusalem, whereas in 1995 there were 27,066 apartments, an increase of 15,000 or 122%. In the Jewish sector, there were 57,500 apartments in 1967 and 122,780 in 1995, an increase of 113.5%. " *3

And this only accounts for legal construction and legal residents. Since 1967 large numbers of Arabs who are not Israeli citizens have immigrated illegally to the city, and massive illegal construction has occured, to the tune of 20,000 (*4) illegally built structures.

The numbers are clear. This book's thesis simple doesn't hold.

1. Jerusalem Post: Was Israel's Jerusalem policy really asinine? By Jack E. Friedman

2. CAMERA: Truth Demolition in an Anti-Israel Road Show, by Andrea Levin

3. A FACTUAL LOOK AT: ARAB DEVELOPMENT IN JERUSALEM /97.03.18 (Communicated by Israeli Government Press Office)

4. Ha'aretz: Palestinians opt for illegal construction in Jerusalem, many empty buildings, By Nadav Shragai

I know Amir Cheshin well, as a friend and a colleague, He and I mostly don't see eye to eye in our political view. But Cheshin is a true Jerusalemite to the core, and above all from a family that made justice their goal in life. He is above all an honest and loyal man and he was there in 1967 as a soldier, after as spokesman for the Army, and then an adviser to the Mayor, so he speaks first hand about the subject, and you gather that is telling the true. As I said he is a loyal man so I tend to believe his true, even if it's not the true that I would like to hear, I know Amir would never have been disloyal to Teddy Kollek.

Yes we did miss the boat when it came to Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria as well, I case could be made for the dog that run away from it's original owner over and over, only to be returned to it's original owner only to run away again over and over, one would finally ask why...? May be because its original owner was mistreating the dog to begin with, as Chosen People we owe it to be different, specially in social issues.

The book makes you think above all. It makes you wonder what did we do in Lebanon war, should that energy not have being used to built a better Jerusalem and etc... I just got back from visiting Israel, after a 15 years absence, what have we done not only to Jerusalem, but also to the whole country??? Let remember why we exist as nation, ...to be the people of the Book and the Law (Torah). As Isaiah said... " Zion shall be redeemed by justice... by righteousness. (Isaiah 1:27) "

Amir I don't agree with you from time to time, but I'm proud to be your friend and to see that Israel got true hero as you're, above all not scared to speak the true, even if the true hurts.