Lecture Explores Jerusalem Events

Birzeit University’s Deanship of Student Affairs sponsored an October 28, 2014 lecture delivered by History and Archeology professor Nazmi Ju’beh on current events in the city of Jerusalem.

Ju’beh addressed the challenges facing the holy city of Jerusalem from Judaization, occupation policies, and systematic discrimination against Palestinians manifested through land management that seeks to strengthen Jewish dominance in the eastern part of Jerusalem.

"Israeli practices seek to vacate Jerusalem of its Palestinian residents through the application of discriminatory and racist systems and laws using several expulsion tools,” Ju’beh said.

“Jerusalem is today surrounded by several settlements and nobody can enter it without passing through these settlements, which are designed to achieve demographic isolation and organized fragmentation of the Palestinian neighborhoods inside Jerusalem, with the aim of pushing [their residents] to emigrate.”

Ju’beh spoke about the negative social phenomena plaguing the holy city as a result of poverty experienced by the Palestinian citizens, which mainly results from occupation policies of raising taxes on the citizens. Other phenomena that are widespread among Palestinians in Jerusalem is dropping out of school, drugs, domestic violence, and the distortion of their cultural identity.

Ju’beh concluded by emphasizing that Jerusalem is the beginning and the end of any solution to the Palestinian issue, calling for intensifying Arab and Palestinian Investments in Jerusalem to enhance the resilience of its citizens.

The lecture was part of a series entitled "Memory of our Future Generations".