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Last update - 04:28 21/11/2006
Trash, crime and roadblocks abound outside J'lem 'envelope'
By Jonathan Lis, Haaretz Correspondent

An absence of police officers in the Jerusalem neighborhoods outside the separation fence has led to an increase in crime and drug-dealing, and thousands of schoolchildren who live beyond the fence are forced to pass through roadblocks every morning to get to school, according to a report by several members of the Jerusalem association of community councils and centers, who are founding a community council for the area neighborhoods.

The report also found that the Jerusalem municipality only removes garbage from some of the neighborhoods outside the separation fence; that some roads there have no streetlamps; that no new hospitals have been established in the area; that there are too few well-baby clinics or facilities for the elderly and not a single playground.

The Jerusalem envelope community council, whose establishment has received government approval, plans to attempt to resolve some of these problems. The council will represent nine villages and neighborhoods, including Shuafat and Kafr Akeb, which are located within the municipal boundaries of Jerusalem but outside the fence.
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The council will probably begin operating in about a month, said Rivka Shraga, the media adviser for the Jerusalem association of community councils and centers.

"The community center was established out of a feeling that those who have remained beyond the envelope are facing the problem, which is not simple, of getting services from the Israeli authorities," she said.

The Jerusalem municipality said that only a government decision and the accompanying funds could enable "a drastic change of the kind necessary for the eastern part of the city." The municipality blamed security constraints for problems related to infrastructure development in the city. It said schools in the area are funded by the Education Ministry and that most of the green spaces where playgrounds could be built are on private land.

The compilers of the report say the fence construction has generated feelings of isolation from Jerusalem. Many people who used to live in those areas have moved so they will be within the fence boundaries, fearing that if they remain on the outside, they could be neglected or lose their rights. The neglect is already underway: Jerusalem police don't patrol the neighborhoods beyond the fence unless they are trying to prevent a terror attack. According to the report, this has led to a vacuum of authority that paves the way for crime, drugs and illegal construction.

It is not clear how extensive the crime is in these areas, since residents often don't file reports with the police. Police do send officers in to deal with extreme cases, like a clan dispute in Shuafat that involved death and arson. But even in that case, according to the report, the police preferred mediation over classic policing activity.

Police did not respond, saying they had yet to see the report.

"The report has not reached us yet, and when it arrives, the police will deal with it," the Jerusalem police said in a statement.

Passing roadblocks

In addition to problems with police protection, residents in the outlying Jerusalem areas say they don't have enough classrooms. Jerusalem municipality statistics indicate that to get to school every day, some 3,000 pupils in the area must get from one side of the separation fence to the other through one of the 11 so-called "humanitarian crossings." Some kindergartens have also been established in the area without permits, which could endanger the safety or health of the children sent to those facilities.

Public services off limits

Another difficulty facing these residents is access to municipal and public services such as the postal service, which has only recently renewed delivery to Kafr Akeb through a subcontractor, after several months in which mail delivery was completely halted. There is no postal service at all in the Ras Hamis neighborhood.

The infrastructure in the area was described in the report as "poor, verging on disgraceful." For instance, the municipal garbage truck doesn't get to the southern section of Ras Hamis, so no garbage is collected there. And the rest of the neighborhood is brimming over with trash since the municipality removes the garbage only three times a week. The municipality has not allocated enough garbage bins to Kafr Akeb, and the village streets are dirty, with rubble from construction sites thrown into the streets. The streetlamps there aren't maintained properly either: Half the streets in Kafr Akeb are unlit. In another neighborhood, the residents took the initiative to light the streets themselves, but the municipality cut off the lights because the residents hadn't received the necessary permits.
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