Jerusalem, May 10; Most Palestinians in occupied East Jerusalem, including three out of four children, live below the poverty line, an Israeli rights group said on Monday, accusing Israel of neglect and discrimination.
“A unified Jerusalem does not exist,” the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) said in a report released as the Jewish state begins celebrations to mark the 43rd anniversary of its 1967 occupation of Palestinian East Jerusalem.
“The truth is, two cities exist side by side,” the report said, challenging Israel’s claim that it unified the Holy City after occupying the Palestinian territory in a move slammed by the international community.
Seventy-five percent of Palestinian children in occupied East Jerusalem live in poverty compared with 45 percent of the city’s Jewish children, the report said.
“Over 95,000 children in East Jerusalem live in a perpetual state of poverty,” ACRI said.
Despite the rampant poverty, only 10 percent of occupied East Jerusalem’s 300,000 Palestinians have access to social services, it added.
The neglect extends to just about every sector of life in the Palestinian sector, and ACRI blamed this on the authorities.
“Israel’s policy for the past four decades has taken concrete form as discrimination in planning and construction, expropriation of land, and minimal investment in physical infrastructure and government and municipal services,” the report said.
The office of Nir Barkat, the Israeli mayor of Jerusalem, said it had no immediate comment on the report.
Israel has expropriated more than one-third of occupied East Jerusalem land which was privately owned by Palestinians, on which it has built more than 50,000 units for illegal Jewish setlers.
Virtually no permits for Palestinian housing construction have been issued for decades, there is a shortage of about 1,000 classrooms and rubbish collection is sporadic at best, as are postal services, the report said.
The annual budget allocation per elementary school child in occupied East Jerusalem was 577 shekels (152 dollars) compared with 2,372 shekels (627 dollars) in west Jerusalem.
About 160,000 Palestinian residents have no suitable and legal connection to the water network and 50 kilometres (30 miles) of main sewage lines are lacking, the report said.
At the end of 2009 approximately 303,429 Palestinians lived in East Jerusalem, which has been under illegal Israeli occupation since 1967.
—Agencies