What they didn't tell Hillary

Ten years have gone by since Ehud Olmert as mayor of Jerusalem and Shimon Peres as foreign minister tangled over the ring road that was planned to circumvent the city. At that time Olmert succeeded in persuading the government to expropriate the Palestinian lands needed for the road, after warning that within a matter of months dozens of illegal buildings would spring up along the planned route.

The greater part of the road, incidentally, has not been paved to this day for budgetary reasons, but the lands, for the most part, have been expropriated.

The history of planning in Jerusalem is strewn with examples that demonstrate the chaos brought about by building crimes in the eastern part of the city: construction in Issawiya on land on which a school had been planned and roads that have been diverted because of illegal construction. Meanwhile, residents of Arab neighborhoods have asked the municipality to intervene to stop illegal construction on lands that belong to them.

It is doubtful whether U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who has called on Israel to refrain from demolishing houses in East Jerusalem, is aware of this aspect of the issue. Clinton is fed mainly by human rights organizations and leftist Israeli movements. These send her a constant stream of reports concerning the difficulties that Israel has piled on over the years against orderly construction with permits in East Jerusalem, as well as its actions to demolish illegal buildings.

Clinton is apparently also not sufficiently aware that the illegal construction in the eastern part of the city over the years has not been intended only to ease the housing shortage, but rather systematically to close off spaces, block Israeli development plans and achieve what has not been achieved through terror and/or diplomacy. Thus, for example, the open space for building (E1) between Ma'aleh Adumim and Jerusalem has been reduced considerably, and the contiguity between French Hill and Pisgat Ze'ev has been interrupted.

Israel cannot afford to be content with offering data on the dimensions of the criminal building activity in East Jerusalem. It must also tell Clinton - and anyone who accuses us of selectively enforcing the law - about the background and intention of this construction; about the astonishing fact that most of the construction in East Jerusalem since 1967 was carried out without permits, sometimes with funding from the Palestinian Authority; about the legal aid that various organizations are putting at the disposal of the building offenders; and about the Israeli forgiveness and acceptance of this huge phenomenon: the demolishing of only a few dozen illegal structures annually among a public that has become accustomed to constructing hundreds and thousands of illegal buildings every year.

Nevertheless, Israel is not innocent of serious mistakes in its attitude toward the population of East Jerusalem in general, and regarding the issue of illegal construction in particular. The gaps in services and infrastructure between the Jewish and Arab parts of the city - sometimes by thousands of percentage points - cry out to the heavens. Israel is not really making any effort to change this. In the matter of the illegal construction in the eastern part of the city, the Israeli regime has assumed that it is possible to constrain natural Arab development in order to create a Jewish demographic majority. The reality is a slap in the face.

The fact that over so many years the municipality has avoided drawing up a master plan for the Arab sector has led to increased illegal construction and the creation of an urban and planning jungle. It is preferable even today to plan public construction for the inhabitants of East Jerusalem, as has been done in the Jewish sector.

The separation barrier that now surrounds many parts of Jerusalem is also contributing to the acceleration of illegal construction, as a result of the increased pressure by tens of thousands of Palestinians who are not prepared to relinquish residency in the city and the benefits that derive from this.