Israel Matzav

'Palestinian Authority' to increase activities in Jerusalem

In his 'weekly radio address,' soon-to-be-ousted, unelected 'Palestinian Prime Minister' Salam Fayyad announced that the 'Palestinian Authority' plans to increase its activities in 'east' Jerusalem.

Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said in his weekly radio address that in the past two years the Palestinian Authority activity in eastern Jerusalem had advanced, in resisting the policy of the occupation in the city and in strengthening its residents.

He said that from now on, its activity would focus on advancing the transformation of the city into the capital of the soon-to-be-established Palestinian state and into a symbol of peace and interfaith and intercultural coexistence.

He said that the PA was determined to step up its involvement in eastern Jerusalem in order to improve services to residents of that part of the city, and in order to aid the institutions operating within it, primarily in the areas of health, justice, and education. This, he said, was in order to stop Israel's attempts to eliminate the nationalist dimension of the curricula in the city's Arab schools.

But is that really what the 'Palestinians' of 'east' Jerusalem want? On Thursday, I attended a conference at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs at which Dr. David Pollock, the former chief of Near East/South Asia/Africa research at the US Information Agency, presented the results of a poll that he supervised in which for the first time, 'Palestinians' residing in 'east' Jerusalem were asked whether they would rather live in Israel or 'Palestine.' At least a plurality of them would rather live in Israel.

Dr. Pollock's presentation will eventually be online (it was taped) and I hope to post it then, but in the meantime, you can find the full poll results here and here. The poll results raise an obvious question: Whom does Dr. Fayyad think he is representing? Certainly not the Arabs of 'east' Jerusalem.

Labels: David Pollock, East Jerusalem, Pechter poll

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 9:31 AM