Ahead of the 52nd annual Jerusalem Day to mark the reunification of the city after the 1967 Six-Day War and moments before U.S. President Donald Trump's "deal of the century" lands on both sides of the table, few people are aware that for the first time in years, there has been nearly no increase in the number of Jewish residents of the new neighborhoods constructed in Jerusalem since 1967.
According to the annual statistical review put out by the Jerusalem Institute for Policy Research every year ahead of Jerusalem Day, the areas added to the city in 1967 are currently home to 216,000 Jews, compared to 215,000 last year – an increase of only half a percent compared to the growth of 1.8% seen in the city's Jewish population as a whole, and the 2.7% increase in the city's Arab population.
The latest figure is just the tip of the iceberg of a years-long trend that is rarely discussed – namely, that the Jewish population in east Jerusalem is declining steadily. In the first two decades after 1967, those neighborhoods became home to about 50% of the city's Jewish population, but since then, the number has been dropping, and now stands at only 39%.
These two trends – the near-freeze in growth in the Jewish population in east Jerusalem and the comparative drop in the total population there – are the result of years of a construction freeze and low construction (as opposed to high-rises) in these parts of the city. For the eight years former U.S. President Barack Obama was in office and pressured Israel to free construction in Jerusalem and the settlements, the Netanyahu governments built only 550 housing units per year for Jews in east Jerusalem. In comparison, some 1,500 housing units per year were built in the western half of the city. In neither east nor west Jerusalem does the average availability of new housing units meet the enormous demand, which has doubled.
Even after two years with U.S. President Donald Trump in office, there have been no dramatic changes in what the Netanyahu government is doing in east Jerusalem. In 2017, the government doubled the number of east Jerusalem housing units for Jews to 1,081, but concentrated construction in two neighborhoods – Ramot and Gilo, with near-zero construction in the 10 other Jewish neighborhoods in the east of the city. In 2018, the numbers reverted back to what they were in Obama's time – only 661 new apartments for Jews were built in east Jerusalem, 500 in Ramat Shlomo, which was frozen during Obama's terms, and the rest scattered around the other Jewish neighborhoods. The number of residents of Gilo and East Talpiot did not increase this past year, and the large Pisgat Zeev neighborhood in the northeast has grown by only 1% in the past 11 years!
Government officials explain the drastic decline in construction for Jews in east Jerusalem by pointing to the decrease in available zoned land there, but that's only partly true. A report by Israel Kimchi draws a different picture. Kimchi, current head of the Jerusalem studies desk at the JIPR and former head of the city's planning policy department, looked into the construction plans for Jewish settlements in Jerusalem that have been currently shelved. He used data from the Jerusalem Municipality, the Interior Ministry, the Israel Land Authority, and the Construction and Housing Ministry. Kimchi's report revealed potential for 25,000 more housing units for Jews in east Jerusalem, which the national and city governments barely utilize: by 2040, some 4,000 housing units could be built in Atarot; 1,800 in Pisgat Zeev; over 2,000 in Ramat Shlomo; more than 4,000 in Ramot; some 2,000 in Har Homa; and 13,000 in Gilo!
But for the most part, these plans are not being given a green light for political reasons. Two "frozen" neighborhoods, Givat Hamatos and a neighborhood in E1, the corridor that connects Jerusalem to Maaleh Adumim, are not the only ones. Little if any construction is permitted in Jewish neighborhoods beyond the Green Line, and additional plans are not being moved through the planning approval stages. When it comes to this point, there is little difference in Netanyahu's action in the Trump era to his actions in the time of Obama.
The JIPR's annual statistical review and a probe by Israel Hayom turned up other surprising numbers. For one, the population of the Muslim Quarter in the Old City is shrinking. In fact, the population of the Old City has dropped by some 10% in the past five years, from 37,710 to 34,140. This is mainly attributable to the loss of some 4,000 residents of the Muslim Quarter, whose population currently stands at 24,500. The Jewish Quarter is home to 3,130; 4,180 people live in the Christian Quarter; and the Armenian Quarter is home to some 2,300.
