Quotas Imposed on Jerusalem Arabs
By Karin Laub
Associated Press Writer
Thursday, June 18, 1998; 2:45 p.m. EDT
JERUSALEM (AP) -- Openly acknowledging a quota for the first time, Israeli government planners said Thursday that their goal is to keep the Palestinian population of disputed Jerusalem to no more than 30 percent.
The quota was described in a plan for Jerusalem's development through 2020, submitted to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by a special committee for Jerusalem.
Palestinian leaders denounced the guidelines.
``This is a racist approach, part of the ethnic cleansing policy Israel is implementing against Arabs in east Jerusalem,'' said Ziad Abu Ziad, a member of the Palestinian legislative council from Jerusalem.
Palestinians accuse Israel of trying to keep down the number of Arab residents in the city by restricting building permits, demolishing homes built without licenses, and revoking Arabs' residency permits.
The future of Jerusalem is to be negotiated in talks on a permanent Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement. The talks have not yet begun, but, according to previous negotiations, are to conclude by May 1999.
The Palestinians want east Jerusalem to be the capital of a future Palestinian state. Israel says it will never relinquish sovereignty over the city, which was captured from Jordan in the 1967 Mideast war.
According to city planners, 174,400 Palestinians and 417,000 Jews lived in the city at the end of 1995. The Palestinians made up 29.5 percent of the population, up from 25.8 percent in 1967.
Citing a higher birthrate among Palestinians and a growing number of Jews leaving Jerusalem, the planners said that by 2020, the Palestinians will make up 40 percent of the city's population -- unless the government intervenes.
Planners said a key development guideline was that the ``relative size of the Jewish and non-Jewish populations in the city should be maintained.''
If Jerusalem is to remain the united capital of Israel, it ``will be necessary to aim for a target in which 70 percent of the population will be Jews and 30 percent will be Arabs in 2020,'' the report said.
The plan, which has been accepted in principle by Netanyahu, calls for an expansion of Jerusalem's boundaries westward to include the city's suburbs. The government would also invest heavily in the city to create more jobs and build an additional 142,000 apartments to lure Jews back to Jerusalem.
Retired city officials have acknowledged in the past that an unofficial quota of 28 percent Palestinians and 72 percent Jews has served as the basis for all city master plans since 1967.
City officials on Thursday defended the quota, saying Jerusalem is different from other cities because it is at the center of a conflict between two peoples.
``New York doesn't have a problem of some people trying to separate from the city,'' said municipal spokesman Hagai Elias.
``It's not a secret that the mayor's priority is to keep a united Jerusalem, and if you don't have a Jewish majority, you don't have a basis for that,'' he said.
© Copyright 1998 The Associated Press
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