What Does Judaization Mean and How is it Implemented

What is Judaization?

Judaization is a policy through which the Israeli government aims to drive out any non-Jewish religious influences in Jerusalem in order to reinforce the Israeli claim to the area.

This policy includes the significant alteration or destruction of various landmarks that are holy, historical, or cultural in nature.^[1]

Judaization policy has been recognized by international community represented by the UN which usually refers to the policy either by its name as in the “International Conference on the Question of Jerusalem” organized regularly by UN Palestinian Rights Committee, a subsidiary organ of the UN General Assembly,^[2] or by the statement “changing the legal, physical, demographic and institutional status and characteristics of Jerusalem” which is entirely or partly used by the UN General Assembly and Security Council resolutions related to East Jerusalem.^[3] This extensive policy has included attempts to international support, issuing local laws, changing the city’s geography and demography, and presenting goals as a fait accompli and finally declare the city Israel’s Capital.^[4]

Judaizing Jerusalem’s population occurs through a systematic change in demographics by which Arab inhabitants are replaced with Israeli Jews and includes the following methods:

• Confiscation of Arab lands in the city. For example, the Israeli government confiscated more than 700 buildings and facilities in the old city of Jerusalem most of which belong to the Islamic endowment,^[5] especially the lands of absentee Palestinians.^[6]
• Expelling Palestinians from their neighborhoods and displacing them. More than 6 thousand Palestinian were expelled from the old city of Jerusalem to build the Jewish neighborhood there.^[7] on June 10th, 1967 just after the six day war, Israel demolished 130 Palestinian houses that formed what was known as the Moroccan Quarter in the old city of Jerusalem. the 700 year old neighborhood of Mughrabi was demolished to maintain a huge open area in front of the Buraq Wall, wailing wall according to Israelis, to make a center for the Jewish life in the old city.^[8]
• Narrowing the screws on Arab Jerusalemites and reducing employment opportunities to push them to emigrate.^[9] this comes as a result of a systematic discriminatory policy against Jerusalemite Palestinians who are merely considered residents of Jerusalem but not citizens of Palestine nor of Israel. This case of statelessness is depriving them from many rights including the economic ones and pushing them to flee Jerusalem to Ramallah or even abroad. ^[10]
• Building Jewish settlements in the city and around it. Hundreds of housing units were built in the old city for Israeli Jews along with houses of worship, public facilities, and commercial centers only for Jews, whereas Palestinians were forbidden to live or own houses in the original Jewish neighborhood in the old city.^[11] Settlements built on Arab lands such as Har Homa on Mount Abu Ghneim lands, Maali Adumim on Abu Dees lands, Zeev Pisgat on Hizma and Bait Hanina lands, Riches Shafat on Shua’fat lands strengthened the Jewish presence in the city at the expense of the Arab one.^[12]
• Isolating a number of the city’s neighborhoods, like Al-Ram, Abu Dees, Al-Aizareiah, from the city with the Israeli West Bank Barrier, known also as Apartheid wall or Wall of Separation, and considering them seperate areas whose inhabitants are forbidden from entering Jerusalem except under Israeli surveillance.,^[13]
• Revoking and denying the residency rights of Arab Jerusalemites: More than 14,595 Jerusalemite identity cards were revoked between the years 1967 and 2007 in Jerusalem.^[14]