A Decade Behind the Wall: Jerusalem’s 100,000 Outcasts
Israeli civil rights NGO sends letter to Netanyahu saying state has violated basic rights of an entire population, and that government’s policy ’constitutes criminal negligence’ and ’abandonment’ of residents beyond separation wall.
Nir Hasson Aug 13, 2015
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Ten years after the separation wall was built in Jerusalem, it transpires that the state and municipality have broken almost all their promises to the tens of thousands of Israelis left on the eastern side of the fence.
The decade that has passed since Ariel Sharon’s cabinet decided to minimize the disruption in the lives of the residents east of the fence “was marked by systematically breaking all the government’s commitments,” the Association for Civil Rights in Israel wrote in a letter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The association accuses the state of violating the basic rights of an entire population, and says the government’s policy “constitutes criminal negligence” and the “abandonment” of the residents beyond the wall.
“The government’s policy has turned the neighborhoods into a no man’s land, in which nobody is interested and for which nobody is responsible,” wrote attorneys Nasrin Alian and Ronit Sela.
In July 2005 Sharon’s cabinet issued a detailed decision, intended to satisfy the Supreme Court that the wall would not disrupt the lives of the Palestinians residents, most of them Israeli citizens, on the eastern side of it. The cabinet tasked the government ministries and Jerusalem municipality to ensure continued health, education, infrastructure, municipal and government services to the people beyond the wall, in the neighborhoods of Ras Khamis, Ras Skhada, Hashalom, Kfar Akav, Semiramis and the Shoafat refugee camp. But practically none of this was carried out.
For example, no new schools, clinics or hospital branches opened beyond the wall, no branches of the transportation, labor or interior ministries operate there, no roads or infrastructure were built, no access for emergency vehicles was provided into the neighborhoods, no hotline for municipal services was set up at the roadblocks as promised, the waiting time at the roadblocks wasn’t shortened, and on and on.
In addition, the garbage in the neighborhoods beyond the wall is only partially collected and there is no supervision on construction, which has led to rampant illegal building. These buildings were quickly inhabited by poor people who couldn’t afford to live anywhere else and the population has multiplied. As a result, the water and sewage systems have collapsed, there is a severe shortage of public buildings, schools and classrooms and the traffic is clogged.
