Occupied Jerusalem- The town of Abu Dis is one of the towns most attached to the city of Jerusalem, and the western lands and houses of the town are only about two kilometers from the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque, but this connection with the city turned from a blessing to a curse when the occupation began building the wall that isolated it from the center of Jerusalem since 2003.
The town and its residents face many challenges, and the occupation army camp established in the “Al Jabal” area is disrupting and complicating the daily lives of the people, and the war on Gaza since last October 7 has created additional difficulties.
Tel Aviv Tribune Net was a guest of the Abu Dis municipality, and held a special interview with its president, Jamal Abu Hilal, who spoke about a “true catastrophe” that the town’s institutions and people have been experiencing since the outbreak of war, and touched on the settlements that have haunted its lands since the occupation of East Jerusalem in 1967.
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First, tell us about Abu Dis in terms of location, area, and population?
Abu Dis is located southeast of Jerusalem, the eternal capital of Palestine, and its total area is 30 square kilometers, which is equivalent to 30 thousand dunums (a dunum is equal to a thousand square metres), but the area on which the residents live does not exceed 4 square kilometers, with 4 thousand dunums, and the remaining All of the lands have been subject to Israeli military orders for decades for the purposes of settlement expansion.
The town’s population is more than 18,000 people who hold an identity card, with “Abu Dis” written below the title clause. To these are added Jerusalemites who hold the Israeli (blue) identity card. These people do not declare their presence in the town because it is classified as an “area belonging to the West Bank” (i.e., governed by the Authority). It is not part of Jerusalem under Israeli rule), and holders of a Jerusalem ID are prohibited from residing there, but they receive services from the Abu Dis municipality.
In “Sawana Salah,” the Jerusalem neighborhood, which geographically belongs to Abu Dis, and administratively, organizationally, and procedurally to the occupation municipality in Jerusalem and the Israeli Ministry of Interior, 3,000 people live in about a thousand residential apartments, most of whom hold the Jerusalem Blue ID card, or at least one of the spouses does.
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What settlements were established on the lands of Abu Dis, and were the town’s lands annihilated in order to establish future settlements on them?
Approximately 5 thousand dunums of Abu Dis land were confiscated for the benefit of the “Maale Adumim” settlement, and a thousand dunums were confiscated for the benefit of the “Kedar” and “Kedar Temporary” settlements.
The remaining lands were either declared confiscated by a “seize control” order or declared “militarily closed” for the purposes of military training, especially in the eastern region located between the town and the Prophet Musa region near Jericho, as our lands extend to that region.
Recently, it was announced that a new settlement would be established on the western lands of Abu Dis, which is “Kadamat Zion.” Once its construction is completed, it will cut off the remaining geographical connection between the town and Jerusalem, the mother capital, of which Abu Dis is one of its suburbs.
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In addition to these settlements, the Israeli army camp penetrates deep into the “Al-Jabal” neighborhood between Palestinian homes. Tell us about its impact on their daily lives?
This camp was established in 1988 and was evacuated in late 1994 after the signing of the Oslo Accords. The occupation army returned to it in 2000 immediately after the outbreak of the second intifada, and for 24 years the residents surrounding it have been suffering.
The camp violates the privacy of all Abu Dis homes, because it was established on the highest spot in the town, and it is part of our geographical surroundings, and as the residents say, “the camp lives with us.”
The residents in the vicinity of the camp are subject to security measures and they and their guests are pursued if they succeed in receiving them, because the soldiers even interfere in the residents’ social relations and prevent the presence of people in the place.
These measures led to the isolation of residents in that area, and many of them were forced to open additional entrances to their homes from the opposite side of the camp to avoid friction with the occupation and harassment of them.
Despite this, the people are not spared from the harsh military security intervention that is carried out by stopping and searching cars and erecting internal checkpoints, which hinders the transportation of some patients, traffic movement, and the normal course of life.
The homes surrounding the camp were not spared from gas bombs, sound bombs, and bullets, and residents were forced to take many protective measures to mitigate the damage. These are dozens of homes inhabited by hundreds of Palestinians.
We, as a municipality, are tasked with transporting waste from this area, and in the event of military activity, our crews are prevented from entering, and maintenance crews are prevented from accessing water, electricity, and internet services, except after certain coordination, and our work there cannot be done without that.
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The separation wall that was built on the lands of Abu Dis, separating them from the city of Jerusalem. What are the most prominent repercussions of its construction on the lives of more than 20 thousand citizens?
The construction of the wall began in 2003 and was completed in 2004. It was built on the western and southwestern borders of the town from the Ras Kabsa area, adjacent to the town of Al-Eizariya, all the way to the lands of Al-Sal’ah and Sheikh Saad in the southwest. This led to the disruption of economic and social life through the uprooting of families, half of whom now live inside the wall (inside The city of Jerusalem) and the other half outside it.
The wall excised approximately one thousand dunams from the private property of the people of Abu Dis, and their owners hold a Jordanian or Ottoman “tapu” (ownership document), but the identification papers are of no help to anyone when it comes to confiscating lands to provide “security for Israel.”
“Abu Al-Masakin, Al-Sawwanah, Umm Al-Zarazir, Khallet Al-Shuja’, Waer Al-Barari, and Khallet Abd” are all names of ponds and areas isolated by the wall from the town, and “Al-Deisa” (named after the people of Abu Dis) knows and memorizes these historical names by heart.
These lands are now located inside the wall on the side of the city of Jerusalem, and are controlled by the occupation municipality, which classifies most of them as green lands on which building or presence is prohibited. Their owners are prevented from harvesting olives during the harvest season and are prevented from caring for them throughout the year.
It is considered the first college of Al-Quds University to be established.. Pictures of the building of the College of Da’wah and Fundamentals of Religion affiliated with Al-Quds University in the Ras Kabsa area, formerly Abu Dis, in occupied Jerusalem. It was founded in 1979 AD. The building includes the Heritage Revival and Islamic Research Foundation affiliated with the Palestinian Ministry of Endowments and Religious Affairs. pic.twitter.com/EPlbxUZtYw
– Tel Aviv Tribune Net | Jerusalem (@Aljazeeraquds) May 27, 2024
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East Jerusalem hospitals were an address for the people of Abu Dis, but the construction of the wall completely hindered their access to them. How did you manage the health sector in the absence of a hospital serving your area?
After the wall was erected, national and social activities, institutions and municipalities began working to try to find immediate solutions to this problem in light of the lack of many medical specialties and our reliance primarily on the “Abu Dis Medical Center”, which was a small clinic affiliated with the Al-Maqasid Charitable Hospital.
The center was restored, rehabilitated and expanded, and an additional floor was built from donors from the people of Abu Dis. After its expansion, the emergency department was opened with 4 beds to accommodate serious medical cases and injuries sustained by bullets from the occupation army.
But this is not sufficient to solve the problem because there is no medical bed for any citizen in the area where more than 100,000 people live in Abu Dis, Al-Eizariya, Sheikh Saad, Al-Sawahra Al-Sharqiya, and the Arab Al-Jahalin Bedouin communities, in addition to the students and employees of Al-Quds University.
Medical teams were forced to transport patients to Jerusalem hospitals, requiring coordination with the occupation, which takes between 4 and 8 hours. We lost the lives of many citizens as a result of these complications. Women also gave birth at the military checkpoint, and some of them gave birth to their fetuses in the emergency center, which lacks the least capabilities.
Views of the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque as seen from the town of Abu Dis in occupied Jerusalem pic.twitter.com/E27r7d7o3k
– Al-Qastal News (@AlQastalps) May 30, 2024
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Let us address the water crisis, which is one of the dilemmas you face throughout the year. What is the cause of this crisis in Abu Dis and how do you deal with it?
Our water problem is very complex because the daily quota allocated to an individual in the West Bank is small, and what determines these quotas is the water agreement signed between the Palestinian Authority and Israel.
The occupation follows a clear racist system in individuals’ quotas of water according to their population classification. The Jew has an open share, and the Palestinians of the interior have between 148 and 150 liters per person per day, and between 115 to 120 liters per day for the Jerusalemite, and 75 liters per day for the Palestinian in the West Bank.
75 liters is an absolutely insufficient share, and in addition there is a natural loss in the networks between 15 and 25%, and thus the per capita share decreases, and here crises arise as there is no justice in distribution despite our attempts to spread justice to all high and low-lying areas.
We have an additional problem that Jerusalemites with blue ID cards who live in the area belonging to the occupation municipality do not receive services from it, and thus they take from our per capita share without being included in the amounts of water pumped to us.
Despite all the obstacles, there is a program developed by the Abu Dis Water Cooperative Society, whereby water is pumped 3 days a week to high-altitude areas, and 4 days a week to low-lying areas because they are larger in terms of population density.
Water for the town comes from two main sources: the Israeli “Gihon” company and from the artesian well located in Abu Dis, but it also serves the towns of Al-Eizariya and Al-Sawahra Al-Sharqiya.
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Finally, how has the current war in Gaza affected the economic life in the town of Abu Dis?
In the first days of the war, all aspects of life in the West Bank were disrupted due to the closure of roads and daily raids on cities, villages and towns, in addition to preventing Palestinian workers from heading inside the Green Line.
A good number of our townspeople work within the settlements, and a large number of them also work in restaurants, hospitals, and hotels in East Jerusalem, and all of them were prevented from going to their workplaces after their “entry into Israel” permits were withdrawn.
Added to this major disconnection from the labor market is the conversion of education from face-to-face to electronic at Al-Quds University, whose main campus is in the town of Abu Dis. Its students and academic staff were guests who refreshed the town by staying in apartments and hotel towers that were built specifically for them and are now empty, and their owners have been severely affected economically. Deep negative.
Another segment that is considered one of the large groups of society in Abu Dis is the category of public employees (the category of Palestinian Authority employees) who have faced interruption and difficulty in obtaining their salaries since the beginning of the war, and this has affected the purchasing movement in the town, and it can be said that the commercial sector and small business owners are the categories Most affected in the war, the town’s economy has been damaged by 60% since the outbreak of the aggression.
All of this naturally affected the collection and collection rate for service providers, including the municipality, because the citizen is unable to pay his financial obligations, and thus our ability as service providers to fulfill our financial obligations to the entities that provide us with resources, for example, fuel, maintenance, etc., declined. This prompted us to raise the degree of emergency. Red because we have no possibility to continue if the economic situation remains as it is now.
