Jerusalem: Population and Urbanization
From 1850 - 2000
(JMCC, Written by: Dr. Walid Mustafa, pp.123, September 2000)
Contents
Chapter One : Jerusalem prior to 1850 AD
List of Maps
Jerusalem occupies a unique status in the life of Palestinians, not only because of its religious importance, but also because of the historic role the city has played in Palestinian economic, social and cultural life. Regarded as the most important Palestinian city, Jerusalem is held up as the future capital of an independent Palestinian state.
Since the PNC’s 19th term, when it adopted the initiative for a solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict based on a Palestinian and an Israeli state on the lands of Mandate Palestine, Palestinians have been ready to see peace realized through the legitimacy of international resolutions. Resolution 242, issued by the UN Security Council in 1967, was considered a basis for the current peace settlement, stipulated clearly in the Declaration of Principles, signed in Washington on September 13, 1993 (1).
According to international law, Palestinians demand the withdrawal of Israeli troops from the Palestinian lands occupied in 1967, including East Jerusalem. They want to establish an independent state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, an area comprising only 22 percent of Mandate Palestine, next to the state of Israel, established in 1948. They seek a just solution, based on UN resolutions, to the problem of Palestinian refugees, who were evicted from their cities and villages in 1948 and never allowed to return.
Thus, Palestinians recognize the existence of two cities of Jerusalem, separated by the cease-fire line of 1949. There is West Jerusalem, located west of the line, with a total area of 53 square km, and East Jerusalem, located east of the line, with a total area of 70 square km. The issues of Jerusalem and refugees, which have been delayed and put off even during final status talks, have emerged as two of the most complicated issues that threaten to derail the peace process. We believe that the Israeli negotiating mentality still launches its positions based on power and rejects seizing this historical moment to achieve a final settlement between the Palestinian and Israeli peoples, and thus a comprehensive resolution to the Arab-Israeli conflict.
The official Israeli position still refuses the establishment of an independent Palestinian state and rejects the possibility of dividing Jerusalem between the two peoples. The Israelis insist on this position, even though the international community rejects it. They persist in expanding the borders of Jerusalem and declaring it the “eternal” capital of Israel and make their calculations based on the status quo that they are creating and the settlements they have built on Palestinian land. The official Israeli position refuses to recognize any Palestinian sovereignty in Jerusalem, limiting Palestinian rights in the city to religious access.
In the light of the current positions, it is hard to imagine how a permanent peace can evolve in the region and put an end to the Arab-Israeli conflict. The independent Palestinian state is a basic pillar of this peace, of which East Jerusalem is an indispensable part. Jerusalem has always played a central role in Palestinian history, evolving since the first human settlement was formed thousands of years ago.
Since its emergence 4,000 years ago, Jerusalem has constituted an important center for those living in and around it. Some politicians and historians who espouse Zionist thought claim that Jerusalem was never a capital, except during the reign of the two ancient Jewish Kingdoms. Although those kingdoms are part of the Palestinian narrative, history shows that Jerusalem was important even earlier.
The Amourides [Amorites?] founded the city, and the Jebusites maintained and developed it, making it their capital until the arrival of King David, more than 1,000 years later. Under Greek and Roman reign, Jerusalem prospered, especially after Christianity became the Roman Empire’s official religion in 325 AD, and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was established. Jerusalem also prospered after the advent of Islam in 636 AD, especially after Al-Aqsa Mosque was built by Abdul Malek bin Marwan and his son Al-Waleed bin Abdul Malek at the end of the 7th century. During the past thirteen centuries, Jerusalem remained the focus in Palestine during the reign of Ayyubids, Mamluks and Ottomans, who, in 1847, transformed it into the center of a special sanjaq, or administrative district, belonging to the Ottoman sultan. To stress the importance of Jerusalem and the surrounding areas to the Ottoman Empire, Jerusalem became the second city, after Istanbul, to receive municipal reforms. By the end of the 19th century, there were nine foreign consulates in Jerusalem, including the British, Russian, French and US consulates. When Palestine came under the British Mandate in 1917, Jerusalem was announced as the capital of Palestine, where central departments of the Mandate Authority were established. Under the Jordanian rule, Jerusalem became the second capital of Jordan in 1959.
The history of Jerusalem, in particular, and Palestine, in general, has been subjected to distortion, in order to deprive Palestinians of their history. In order to justify today’s realities, these historians manipulate ancient history to make it match the present-day state of affairs. Palestinians, who have been rooted in the land for thousands of years, are made to look like intruders, while Israelis, who were formed as a nation only after the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, are painted as the land’s original inhabitants. This process is conducted through gaps in the research methodology that can be summarized as follows:
1- The attempt to transform legend into history by interpreting the Old Testament literally, and without validating those assumptions with historical or archeological evidence. Biblical legends and stories have been dealt with as if they were written history.
2- Separating the history of the tribes that embraced Judaism from the history of the tribes that lived in Palestine and nearby. This is an attempt to show that what is happening now is an extension of a history that goes back 3,000 years. These are attempts that have no relation with the objective history of Palestine. For example, the history of Palestine in the Iron Age is an extension of the history in the Bronze Age and so on, throughout the Greek, Roman and Islamic eras. Thus, Jewish history in Palestine is part of the heritage of the Palestinian people who have always been on this land.
3- Therefore, the attempts to distinguish the ancient Israelite era from eras coming before or after it appear feeble. According to our interpretation, the process of writing the history of Palestine through the Israelite era and what came before and after (2) has no justification. David’s Kingdom and, later, Solomon’s and the North and South Kingdoms (after Solomon's Kingdom was divided) were not distinct from other contemporary kingdoms, such as the Philistines, Adoumayds, Amounides and Mouabs, either in production or in the level of civilization. All were the products of one phase in the history of civilization. We can even say that the Jewish kingdoms were even more backward due to their tribal structures. David and Solomon maintained the Jebusite civilization and administrative apparatus, (3) and when King Solomon thought of building the Temple, he looked to the representative of Phoenician civilization, Hiram, the King of Sour (4).
4- The attempt to separate the ancient history of Palestine from Arab Islamic history, by the use of the term, Early Arab Period (5). This term obscures the close ties that existed between the two histories, as seen in the migrations from the Arabian Peninsula to the Fertile Crescent that took place over thousands of years as well as the trade routes that sprung up.
5- The claim that Jews in Jerusalem and Palestine were oppressed under Arab rule. This contradicts the historical fact that the Arabs allowed the Jews to come to Jerusalem, especially under Sultan Salah ad-Din Al-Ayyoubi and during the Mamluk and Ottoman rule, after the expulsion of the Jews from Spain and Portugal 1492 and 1495, respectively. Any of Jews during the Islamic Era was part of the oppression inflicted upon people in general and was not directed at Jews specifically, as was the case in Europe, for example.
6- The inflation of statistical data, particularly the number of Jews in Jerusalem during the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, to create the impression that they were the city’s majority (6) and that Jerusalem was a Jewish city prior to the major waves of Jewish immigration. This study will show that those approaches and trends were not accurate.
This study, which I prepared with the assistance of Palestinian researcher Khalil Tufakji, who helped in collecting the initial material and preparing the maps—expertly prepared by Bshara Ghazaleh—aims to review the housing and population situation in Jerusalem, as two major landmarks crucial to the city’s identity. We divided the study into several sections. The first section reviews housing and population prior to 1850, the period when Jerusalem was confined within the Old City walls. The second section, 1850 - 1914, explores the final phase of the Ottoman period. The third section, 1917 - 1948, the period of the British Mandate, was followed by the fourth, 1949 - 1967, which witnessed the partition of Palestine, the establishment of the State of Israel and the partition of Jerusalem. The final section, 1967 - 1996, shows the most recent period of history, from the Israeli aggression of June 1967 to the present.
Jerusalem, as a lively city, has been affected by what has happened around it, and, thus, its features have changed over the years. Each of the above-mentioned sections describes a different Jerusalem, in terms of area, borders and population. The Jerusalem of 1996, for example, has an area 141 times the area of the Jerusalem of 1850, which was entirely within the Old City walls. The population over this period increased by 48 times.
Finally, I would like to thank all those who helped me complete this study; they are many. I would like to pay special tribute to the Jordanian Geographical Center, which gave me access to its rich reserve of maps of Palestine and Jerusalem. I also would like to thank the researcher Dr. Adel Mana’ for his reading and revision of a draft of this study, and for his valuable comments, most of which were heeded. I would like to express my gratitude to the Moroccan photographer and researcher Itto Barardah, who provided the photos of Jerusalem through the eye of her smart lens. I would like also to thank my friend Ghassan Khatib, the director of Jerusalem Media and Communication Center, for assigning me the study. I hope that I was successful in achieving the goals we set about to accomplish when we first thought about conducting a study of Jerusalem.
Dr. Waleed Mustapha
June 7, 2000