In a new article (“Mount of Olives becomes latest target in fight for control of Jerusalem”, April 3), the Guardian Jerusalem correspondent repeats a variation of the lie we’ve refuted over the years at the outlet suggesting that Palestinians are being ethnically cleansed from Jerusalem.
Here’s the relevant passage:
The erosion of the Islamic and Christian presence in Jerusalem – the two Palestinian faiths – is not happening by accident. Palestinians are being pushed out of the Old City and East Jerusalem neighbourhoods by settlers, while the Israeli government is demolishing increasing numbers of Palestinian homes on the grounds that they lack building permits and displacing the community with development projects that do little to address the needs of Palestinian residents.
If, as McKernan suggests, there’s an Israeli plan to depopulate non-Jews from Jerusalem, the state has failed miserably, as there has been no erosion of the (Muslim and Christian) Palestinian population in the city.
First, as the following statistics alone – from the Jerusalem Institute for Policy Research (JIPR) – show, the proportion of Palestinians and Jews in east Jerusalem has remained fairly steady over the last 40 years – at a 3:2 ratio.
If you look at the entire city (both east and west), stats from the JIPR show again that there’s been no erosion of the Palestinian population in the holy city. The Jewish population of Jerusalem declined proportionately from 74% in 1967, to 72% in 1990, to 68% in 2000, and to 61% in 2020. Concurrently, the Palestinian population increased proportionately from 26% in 1967, to 28% in 1990, to 32% in 2000, and to 39% in 2020.
Here are some more revealing graphs from the JIPR:
However you want to characterise demographic changes in Jerusalem over the years, McKernan’s charge that there’s been an erosion of non-Jews from the city is the opposite of the truth.
It is really pathetic the depth of lies and myths perpetuated by these obvious antisemites. By ignoring the all important 1920 San Remo agreement, by the League of Nations where Israel was granted the area governed by the British Mandate and 27 years later actually being granted 23% of that area by UN resolution 181 history is actually being rewritten by both the BBC and the UN let alone the Grauniad. Rotten to the core all three of them #defundthebbc