Summary
Israel’s former deputy mayor of Jerusalem, quoted by Makdisi on the drawing of the city’s expanded municipal boundaries after 1967: the delineation was explicitly designed to incorporate “a maximum of vacant space with a minimum of Arabs” (Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation, PDF p.110).
Details
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The boundaries were drawn up to the houses of outlying Palestinian towns and villages so that the towns’ orchards, olive groves and pastures fell inside Jerusalem while the houses and people fell outside it; land from Beit Iksa, al-Bireh, Bethlehem and Beit Sahour was included, but their inhabitants were not given Jerusalem residency (PDF p.109-110).
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In part 3, from his book on town planning in Jerusalem: “Every area of the city that is not settled by Jews is in danger of being detached from Israel and transferred to Arab control”; “therefore the administrative decision regarding the area of the city’s municipal jurisdiction must be translated into practice by building in all parts of that area, and, to begin with, in its remotest sections” (Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation, PDF p.153).
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On the 2005 redeployment from Gaza: it amounted to “the confinement of one and a half million persons in a huge holding pen” (PDF p.211).
Related pages
Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation, Judaization, Center of life, Gaza, Bantustans