For the first time, details have emerged about how dozens of agencies coordinated to develop alternatives for east Jerusalem residents. Most surprisingly, residents themselves have acknowledged that UNRWA's services were substandard and had fostered a black market in supplies provided by the organization.

Over recent months, numerous agencies worked intensively to establish alternative services for east Jerusalem residents who had partially relied on UNRWA but will now transition to state-provided services. The Minister of Jerusalem Affairs and Heritage announced Wednesday that all preparatory work has been completed.

The initiative traces its origins to April when the ministry received direction from the National Security Council regarding the creation of alternatives to UNRWA services in east Jerusalem. The framework largely built upon Government Resolution 3790 from Israel's 34th government, established in 2018.

That resolution sought to address social and economic disparities in east Jerusalem while promoting substantial economic development. "We learned a great deal from the ongoing process initiated six years ago," a senior ministry official explained, "which informed our approach."

The ministry recognized that success required a grassroots approach rather than "being imposed on residents through a government decision," as the senior official put it. A dedicated team was established to map residents' needs, making unprecedented inroads into the community through meetings with sector leaders and parent committees.

These meetings revealed concerning testimonies, including evidence that UNRWA's services were substandard compared to parallel Israeli services across multiple domains. Moreover, it emerged that the free distribution of medications through UNRWA's health system in east Jerusalem had led to the creation of an unregulated black market in pharmaceuticals.

Introducing teams into east Jerusalem proved highly complex, as most residents expressed aversion to receiving state services and refused to consider state-sponsored alternatives. Furthermore, it's important to note that the organization's institutions are unofficial and maintain no contact with the Jerusalem municipality, complicating efforts to establish current situational assessments through public engagement teams.

However, in private discussions between these teams and east Jerusalem representatives, residents admitted that replacing UNRWA's services was a necessary step. "Think about how receiving services from UNRWA gives east Jerusalem residents a certain status," a member of the implementation team told Israel Hayom. "There's constant concern in the community about whether someone is cooperating with Israel. Sending your children to UNRWA educational institutions or getting vaccinations at the organization's clinics provides cover.

"It's a mixed team, we come with local people," the team member explained. "These people are in a very sensitive position, they're like agents within their own community. Through them, we manage to understand the difficulty families have in joining Israeli schools, for instance, because in private conversations they raise concerns about 'how will I be perceived in my community.'

"That's why we sit down with everyone necessary and explain the importance of receiving higher-quality Israeli services, despite internal and external pressures," the team member continued. "This way, residents understand we want better lives for them, and that mother understands our goal is for her child to integrate optimally into the workforce when they grow up, just as she wants to happen."

As previously revealed in Israel Hayom, the replacement of UNRWA services in the capital initially focuses primarily on education and healthcare. Teams entering east Jerusalem and conducting conversations with residents drew numerous conclusions about these two sectors.

In education, for instance, parents expressed significant dissatisfaction with UNRWA schools' academic standards and felt powerless to influence school operations. This dissatisfaction is reflected in steadily declining enrollment: from approximately 2,900 students in the early 1990s to about 1,800 in 2018, dropping to a record low of roughly 800 students by the end of 2023. This represents a significant loss of trust in the organization's educational frameworks and proves that residents want improved quality of life.

"In the last six years, many parents in east Jerusalem have had an awakening," the team member noted. "They've told us 'enough with this outdated educational system that isn't advancing our children anywhere.' They understand it's an obsolete program that's past its time, and now there's a migration toward the Israeli curriculum."

Statistics from UNRWA's six educational institutions in Jerusalem confirm these concerns: only 3% of male fourth-grade graduates demonstrated age-appropriate literacy levels, with eighth-grade graduates performing even worse at 2.3%. Overall student performance stands at just 8.3%, far below average due to inadequate teacher training and lack of basic educational oversight.

City residents also raised serious concerns about the organization's healthcare operations. It emerged that UNRWA's vaccination program is significantly limited compared to Israeli clinics. While the organization's health facilities provide vaccines for only ten diseases, Israeli clinics offer these plus immunizations for rotavirus, pneumococcal disease, chickenpox, Hepatitis A, and HPV. Furthermore, the organization's well-baby clinics provide only basic primary care, without addressing child development services.

In fact, the operation of UNRWA clinics in east Jerusalem created an absurd situation where most residents hold Health Ministry insurance cards and receive services through both entities simultaneously. Ministry officials explain: "During the COVID period, it was reported that over 93% of vaccine recipients in east Jerusalem were vaccinated at Health Ministry clinics. This means almost everyone registered for UNRWA services trusts the Israeli healthcare system more."

This occurs due to benefits residents are entitled to through the aid organization; by definition, residents classified as refugees are eligible for free medications and dental treatments, leading to their use of dual services.

Looking ahead, Liron Yiflach, deputy director general of the Jerusalem and Israeli Heritage Ministry, outlined a three-phase implementation plan. "The second phase is set to begin around September," she explained. "We'll install portable classrooms to save students from traveling outside refugee camps to reach schools. We'll also continue expanding medical services in east Jerusalem.

"In healthcare, we've approved construction of a multipurpose facility providing health, leisure, and welfare services." She added, "If we identify additional needs, we're prepared to address them. Welfare, leisure, sanitation, culture, community services, senior care – we're taking full responsibility."

The initiative currently carries a budget of NIS 60 million ($16.2 million), with flexibility for expansion based on emerging needs. "We're playing the long game," Yiflach emphasized. "We're looking at the next generation, and the one after that. The Hebrew language instruction students will receive, laboratory studies, leisure and cultural activities, sports field breaks – all these create the path to future integration into quality employment rather than dangerous activities. It's a complex process that moves slowly, but it's moving and bearing fruit. If it's complicated in east Jerusalem, it's seven times more complex in the Shuafat refugee camp, but we're not afraid of this challenge."

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Over 1,500 new immigrants from around the world participated in a festive musical prayer service organized by OU Israel to mark the 57th anniversary of Jerusalem's reunification during the Six-Day War. The event was held Wednesday morning on the Haas Promenade in Armon HaNatziv, overlooking the Old City and Temple Mount.

Rabbi Avi Berman, executive director of OU Israel, emphasized the significance of the gathering, stating, "I stand and look at the city of Yerushalayim during this festive prayer and see three things that deeply move me. First, the site of the Temple that we all pray will be rebuilt soon. Second, the skyline of Yerushalayim and all the cranes building the city, remind us of the verse God builds up Yerushalayim; 'He gathers the dispersed of Israel.' Third, to see over 1,500 people in the crowd, including so many recent olim, who all came today to give thanks for this miracle of the ingathering of exiles. This is an uplifting time for me every year."

#WATCH: 1500 new olim from around the world participated in a festive prayer service organized by the @OrthodoxUnion at the Armon Hanatziv promenade overlooking the Old City of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount.

OU Israel pic.twitter.com/SIAjilmnXK

— Israel National News - Arutz Sheva (@ArutzSheva_En) June 5, 2024

 The prayer service was led by Rabbi Noam Koenigsberg. Attendees included OU Executive Vice President Rabbi Moshe Hauer, who traveled from New York, Jerusalem Deputy Mayor Arieh King, and Yehuda Naftali, director of the Jerusalem municipality's Israel Heritage Department.

This marked the ninth year OU Israel has organized this special event aimed at assisting English-speaking immigrants in having a successful integration experience through its various programs.

Rabbi Hauer reflected on the liberation of Jerusalem 57 years ago, saying, "With God's kindness, we merited the return of the Jewish people to the Old City and the Western Wall. Today, we stand here overlooking where the Holy Temple stood, and we thank God for the victory and pray for help in winning this war. May it be that next year we will be able to pray together with those who had been taken hostage and with all of Klal Yisrael at the Holy Temple."

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Tens of thousands of Iranians, some chanting "Death to America" and "Death to Israel," marched in the capital of Tehran on Friday to mark Jerusalem Day, an annual show of support for the Palestinians.

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Senior Iranian officials attended the rally, including President Ebrahim Raisi. Since Iran's Islamic Revolution in 1979, the rallies marking what is also known as al-Quds Day have typically been held on the last Friday of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

Al-Quds is the Arabic name for Jerusalem, the contested city at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israel won east Jerusalem in the 1967 Mideast War and annexed it as its capital. The Palestinians seek the eastern part of Jerusalem as a future capital.

Jerusalem is the home of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest shrine in Islam. The compound, revered by Jews as the Temple Mount, is the most sacred site in Judaism.

Raisi said that Friday's rallies show the "liberation of al-Quds is very close, closer than expected," the official IRNA news agency reported. They also show Palestinian militant groups fighting Israel that "they are not alone," Raisi added. He slammed the normalization of ties between Israel and some Gulf Arab states, saying it would not bring security to the region or Israel.

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A new project by the European Union's agency for the Palestinians might be interfering with Israeli sovereignty in east Jerusalem, Israel Hayom learned Tuesday.

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The agency announced the "housing and infrastructure support" project on Jan. 30 in an Arabic-language post on its official "European Union and the Palestinians" Facebook page, saying it was meant to "preserve Palestinian identity in east Jerusalem."

The post further said that the Palestinian Housing Council had signed an agreement with the EU to develop Palestinian housing and infrastructure in east Jerusalem in order to "strengthen the resilience of its Palestinian population."

It called on residents who need help with infrastructure work to contact the agency for aid. Palestinians with permanent residency, valid building permits, and those in the final stage of construction are eligible.

The project – worth 3 million euros ($3.4 million) – is carried out in cooperation with the Palestinian Authority's "Housing and Construction" and "Jerusalem Affairs" ministries. 

However, right-wing groups have called on the Israeli government to intervene.  

"In recent days, the European Union has increased its involvement in what is happening in the Israeli capital," Matan Peleg, head of the right-wing Im Tirtzu movement, and Maor Tzemach, chairman of Lach Yerushalayim ("For You, Jerusalem") advocacy group, said in a joint statement. 

"This involvement is reflected in the funding of radical organizations, who led to tensions in the area and caused clashes between Jews and Arabs. We are witnesses to a serious and inconceivable escalation, and so far the political echelon has done nothing."

Only a few months ago, the European Union funded Palestinian heritage organizations in Jerusalem, and now it is at the forefront of the struggle against Jerusalem, without even hiding it, they added, calling on the government to take immediate action. 

"Unless we wake up, we will also lose Jerusalem," the statement warned. 

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The Israel Police assisted the city of Jerusalem in executing an eviction order overnight between Tuesday and Wednesday for a home in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood that was the site of a tense standoff earlier Tuesday, which members of the family living in the house taking gas canisters onto the roof and threatening to blow themselves up.

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Channel 13 News reported Wednesday morning that 25 protesters were arrested. The police said some were detained for questioning on suspicion of interfering with the execution of a court order, carrying out a violent blockade, and disturbing the peace.

The Israel Police stressed that despite what it called false reports on Arab social media, there were no unusual incidents during the protests.

The Salhiya family has been facing the threat of eviction from their home in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of east Jerusalem since 2017, when the land where their home sits was allocated to build a school for children with special needs.

When police arrived to execute the eviction order on Monday, Salhiya family members went up to the building's roof with gas canisters, threatening to use them on themselves if they were forced out of their home.

By Tuesday, police sent for the eviction were already removed, but children of the Salhiya family remained on the roof with the gas canisters, their father, Mahmud, told AFP.

According to him, no agreements or understandings were reached, but lawyers for the family filed a petition to the High Court of Justice on Tuesday to cancel the eviction order.

In a statement to AFP on Tuesday, the municipality of Jerusalem stressed the Salhiya family had numerous opportunities to move out of their home and the city had every intention of taking the plot under a district court decision.

Hundreds of Palestinians are facing evictions from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah and other east Jerusalem neighborhoods. Circumstances surrounding the eviction threats vary.

In some cases, Jewish Israelis have mounted legal challenges to claim the plots they say were illegally taken during the 1940 War of Independence.

Palestinians say their homes were legally purchased from the Jordanian authorities who controlled east Jerusalem between 1948 and 1967.

i24NEWS contributed to this report

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An overwhelming majority – some 93% -- of Arab residents of east Jerusalem prefer to live under Israeli governance than that of the Palestinian Authority, a new poll from the Palestine News Network shows.

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The survey asked respondents whether they supported continued Israeli control of the city or a transfer of it to the Palestinian Authority.

Of the 1,200 Arab residents queried, 1,116 said that they preferred the former. Only 84 respondents answered that they would prefer the city to be under the responsibility of the PA, although they also noted that they would refuse to give up their Israeli identity cards and/or residency documents.

Only five respondents said they would prefer to carry PA identity cards.

The result of the survey contrast markedly with a poll conducted in May 2020 that indicated that a majority of Arab residents of east Jerusalem would prefer Palestinian citizenship over Israeli.

In the 2020 survey, conducted by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy in conjunction with Palestinian pollsters, only about 15% of people asked said they preferred Israeli citizenship over Palestinian citizenship, compared to 52% who said they would rather be "Israeli" and not "Palestinian" when questioned on the matter in polls conducted between the years 2010-2015.

Responding to the findings of the 2020 poll, researcher Dr. David Pollock explained that while most Palestinians still believe Israel is an illegitimate state and yearn for control over all of "'historic Palestine," they are "realistic enough to tell pollsters this is 'a dream' and that 'Israel is here to stay.'"

Nadav Shragai contributed to this report.

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org. Nadav Shragai contributed to this report.

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Palestinian families on Tuesday rejected an offer that would have delayed their eviction from the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah.

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The four families said their decision springs from "our belief in the justice of our cause and our right to our homes and our homeland." They said that rather than submit to an "unjust agreement" they would rely on the "Palestinian street" to raise international awareness of their plight.

The proposal floated by the Supreme Court last month would have made them "protected tenants," blocking any eviction and demolition order for at least the next 15 years, according to Ir Amim, an Israeli rights group that closely follows developments in the city.

The families would have been able to continue arguing their case in Israeli courts. But it would have forced them to at least temporarily attest to the Jewish families' ownership of the properties, which could weaken the families' case going forward, and pay rent to the Israelis.

The four families are among dozens in Jerusalem who face eviction in several cases that have been working their way through the Israeli court system for decades.

The families say the Jordanian government granted them the land on which their homes were later built in exchange for their refugee status after it assumed control of the West Bank and east Jerusalem in 1948. They have been living there ever since.

Israel has portrayed the matter as a private real-estate dispute, but the Palestinians and human rights groups view it as a coordinated attempt to push Palestinian residents out of Jerusalem and change the city's identity. The US has spoken out against the evictions, saying it undermines efforts to eventually revive the long-dormant peace process.

Israel captured east Jerusalem, along with the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, in the 1967 Six-Day War. The Palestinians want all three territories to form their future state and consider east Jerusalem their capital. Jordan supports their claims.

Israel annexed east Jerusalem shortly after the 1967 war and considers the entire city to be its capital, a claim not recognized by most of the international community.

The potential evictions were one of the main drivers of protests that erupted in Jerusalem in April and May. The city, with major holy sites sacred to Jews, Christians, and Muslims, has been the epicenter of several waves of unrest over the years.

The families' decision to reject the offer sends the matter back to the Supreme Court, which could approve the evictions and pave the way for them to be carried out in the coming weeks.

Ir Amim says the Israeli government has various tools at its disposal to delay or halt the evictions, but so far it has shown no indication it plans to do so.

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Besides reopening a diplomatic mission to the Palestinians in west Jerusalem, the Biden administration is also looking to open a consulate branch in east Jerusalem, Israel Hayom found out Wednesday from sources involved in the matter. 

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According to reports, Washington has already held talks with Palestinian leaders with regard to this. 

The US consulate used to be located on Nablus Road in east Jerusalem but was moved to the western part of the capital in 2010. The mission operated from there until its closure by former US President Donald Trump in 2019. 

For years, it assisted the Palestinian Authority in establishing governing bodies and security services and liaised with the Palestinian leadership in east Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza Strip. It also provided the US State Department with information on Israeli building of settlements in Judea and Samaria, a move Washington opposed for many years, except during the Trump administration. 

According to Al-Quds daily, the Biden administration plans to reopen the consulate – despite pushback from Israel – within the next few weeks. 

The move was commended by PA Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh who expressed hope it would "lay the foundation for a future US embassy in the Palestinian state."

According to the Palestinian Media Watch, he also said that by reopening its diplomatic mission to the Palestinians "the US administration is sending a message that Jerusalem is not a united Israeli city and that it does not recognize the annexation of Arab Jerusalem by the Israeli side."

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Just ahead of his departure for Washington on Tuesday for his first meeting with US President Joe Biden, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett spoke to the New York Times and stressed that the Bennett-Lapid government would neither annex nor form a Palestinian state.

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Peace talks would not happen partly because the Palestinian leadership is "fractured and rudderless," he told the Times.

"I'm prime minister of all Israelis, and what I'm doing now is finding the middle ground – how we can focus on what we agree upon," Bennett said.

"Israel will continue the standard policy of natural growth," Bennett said, adding that his government would expand construction in Judea and Samaria, but declining to discuss American pressure to open a reopen a consulate in east Jerusalem to provide services to the Palestinian population.

"Jerusalem is the capital of Israel," Bennett said. "It's not the capital of other nations."

As far as the escalating security situation on Israel's southern border with the Gaza Strip, Bennett declared he was prepared to continue fighting Hamas, even if coalition partner Ra'am opposed this approach.

"I will do what's necessary to secure my people," Bennett said. "I will not and never involve political considerations in defense- and security-related decisions."

Bennett also said that it would be a mistake for the US to rejoin the 2015 JCPOA nuclear deal with Iran and that he planned to present Biden with a "new strategy" on Tehran that would include an axis of opposition revolving around the "reasonable" Arab nations that refuse to cooperate with Iran's policies.

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Mk Nir Barkat (Likud) is accusing Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid of having agreed in principle to the Biden administration opening a US consulate in east Jerusalem.

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In a letter to Bennett and Lapid ahead of Bennett's scheduled meeting with US President Joe Biden on Thursday, Barkat writes that he has already reached out to them both on the matter, but "neither you nor any cabinet member have bothered to make an announcement saying you will oppose the move."

Barkat is demanding that Bennett and Lapid make it clear that they reject the US request to open a consulate in east Jerusalem and "put an immediate stop to the intent to question the status of Jerusalem and establish an American consulate that will serve the Palestinians in it. There is an American Embassy in Jerusalem that opened in 2018, so there is no need for another diplomatic mission in addition to the embassy."

The Prime Minister's Office responded to Barkat's claims with a short message: "It never happened." Lapid's office also denied the claims.

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