The status of Jerusalem as a demilitarized city under the aegis of the United Nations Trusteeship Council was an integral element of the UN’s 1947 partition. The IDF gained control of western Jerusalem in the ensuing war, and seized control of East Jerusalem in 1967. Neither act changed the international status of Jerusalem. Now a federal court has upheld the right of the President to affirm the neutrality of Jerusalem. This means Americans born in Jerusalem can no longer go on declaring themselves to be Israeli-born.

The mayor of Jerusalem, Nir Barkat, said this week that Palestinians should rename Ramallah ‘northern Jerusalem’ and leave actual Jerusalem to sole Jewish rule. Two fifths of the population of Jerusalem are Palestinians.

The official – if barely legal – policy of the mayor of Jerusalem is simple and brutal: keep the ratio of Jews to Arabs at 70 to 30. Ben White describes the measures taken to ensure this result. An extract from Israel’s founding declaration, on equality for all, is included at the end.

There is no doubting the increase in applications for Israeli citizenship by Arabs living in Jerusalem. The question is why. Here Yehudit Oppenheimer (1st) of Ir Amim argues that it is a survival strategy while Khaled Abu Toameh, 2nd, suggests Israeli citizenship confers more rights than the impotent PA is able to provide.

There has been a mosque on Temple Mount since the eighth century. It is the third holiest centre in Islam, as well as having religious significance for Jews and Christians. For the last month it has been under attack by Jewish zealots who claim the right to pray and practise Jewish rituals there – endorsed last week by a Jerusalem magistrate. Calls are growing for an Arab summit to protect the Muslim site.

The Arab residents of Jerusalem have been confined behind a wall in the eastern part of the city where they lack most amenities. To enter the main city, where the services are, they have to have a permit. Now the director-general of the municipality has asked the IDF to take control of providing sanitation and supervising construction in what is becoming a cramped and unhygienic ghetto. Ben White reports.

Unlike EU countries and the USA, it appears quite OK for political figures in Israel to issue hate speech against black people and Muslims. The violent attacks on a poor district in Tel Aviv last month broke out in Jerusalem this week with an arson attack on Eritreans. Quotes from +972, Ynet on Ministerial incitement, Netanyahu’s plan for mass expulsions, Harriet Sherwood on growing intolerance

At huge expene Israel is creating a new map of the West Bank through separate Israeli/Paleinian roads and checkpoints. The hub of the new lines of division is Jerusalem whose Palestinian residents will now come under the authority of the Civil Administration instead of the Jerusalem muicipality.

Jerusalem, sprawling metropolis, split into two unequal parts – store the factsheet if only for the figures which speak of the tremendous inequality between East and West. First an account of the continuing demolition by the Israeli authorities of Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem.

This seems a skimpy story: men in Jerusalem demand a shield against the sight of dancers’ feet but, like the fulminations of the Taliban and Iranian police who want all women enclosed in cloth bags, it signifies what sort of society the (increasingly powerful and numerous) ultra-religious want in Israel

Lost for meaningful words, the Israeli government – like the settlers – resorts to physical force. Over 50,000 new homes for Jews and Israeli citizens are to be bult in occupied East Jerusalem 1), on Beit Zala (Palestinian Christians) land 2). Ancient sites are threatened by Israeli claims that all belongs to ‘their heritage’ (3

Long Netanyahu’s best ally in Europe in blocking UN recognition of Palestine , Angela Merkel is very angry that all her moves to get talks restarted have been thwarted by the announcement of a new 1,100-home Jewish settlement in Jerusalem

Documentary maker Eli Ungar-Sargon, aware that Palestinians are seen in the US and srael as very anti-Semitic, set out to investigate racism amongst Israelis – and found a disturbingly high level of anti-Arab feeling – and ignorance of the political options – which, unlike the ‘marginal’ anti-semitism of Palestinians, is ‘mainstream’ in Israel

In the name of ‘our biblical heritage’ right-wng Israelis are trying to eradicate all evidence of Arab habitation and culture in the land , including from maps and road signs

A march in Jerusalem last Friday attracted 1500 supporters – watch it on youtube,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWZaq_o7e6g&feature=player_embedded.
They marched for Palestinian statehood – or freedom. Jerry Haber’s blog is followed by a critical, but hopeful, blog by Jalal Abukhater

Take an area where traditional heads of household have been dispossessed of all political and economic authority, add guns and drugs, take away any police authority and you are left with the violent chaos that is the Palestinian village in Area B

Reuters has produced this brief history of who supported which borders, when

The renowned Palestinian intellectual Eward Said (1932-2003) first delivered this paper in London in 1995. It is a passionate account of Jerusalem’s actual history of many faiths and cultures and deplores the failure of Palestinian leaders to provide their own history and vision of the city. Now reprinted by Jerusalem Quarterly

A fence has been built on a West Jerusalem playground to keep children from a secular nursery school from playing with peers at an ultra-Orthodox one. Ultra-Orthodox parents said they were displeased that the secular school was so close, and their representatives lobbied the municipality for a fence, completed last week…

Bradley Burston’s writes about the proposed Museum of “Tolerance” which he characterises as a settlement being built in West Jerusalem: on disputed land, causing direct and prolonged damage between Palestinians and Israelis, tarnishing Israel’s image as a democratic state – and more…