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 Raising Awareness on Palestinian urban rights to Jerusalem (MEPI)For the past 40 years, Jerusalem has been at the core of growing tensions that divide the Israeli and Palestinian populations in the city. These tensions appear under various disguises but one particularly felt by the Palestinian community of Jerusalem is the Israeli planning system inside the city that limits the growth of the Palestinian population and aims at reducing its presence in Jerusalem. Indeed, the Palestinian "right to the city" is undermined by the difficulty to obtain a building permit and the complexity of Israeli bureaucratic and administrative procedures regarding the planning and zoning systems, which repel many Palestinians from going through with them. As a result, many see the Israeli planning system as a tool that is ultimately meant to control them and often try to resist it. Thus, the phenomenon of informal and chaotic individual building is growing while Israelis try to control sporadic initiatives by demolishing houses that in turn disturb the community peace and fuel new tensions. The project in itself will consist of a series of lectures given by the IPCC team and professional lecturers to six different Palestinian neighborhoods where house demolitions have increased in recent years. These lectures will cover various topics of awareness such as:  Detailed planning and re-parcelation as a precondition for obtaining building permits Dealing with land registration, re-parcelation and legal issues The procedure of obtaining building permits as obstacles or solutions How to handle demolition orders Criteria of choosing planners/architects and lawyersThe lectures will be followed by discussions and will examine the obstacles raised by the Israeli planning system against Palestinian expansion in the city and will try to give tools to Palestinian communities in order to work with this system. Moreover, the project will aim at consolidating the Palestinian civil society by addressing the possibility of collective action towards the planning system instead of individual survival attempts that are often dashed by Israeli house demolitions. Thus the problems of "fragmented-collective" ownerships of land in the Palestinian neighborhoods will be dealt with, and, with the help of IPCC, it is hoped that Palestinian communities will be empowered to organize themselves with full knowledge of their right to the city, especially in terms of housing and planning rights. At the end of each session, a short publication will be distributed for public use, summarizing the main points discussed in the lectures and providing a small manual on how to deal with Israeli authorities in order to insure the best chance to obtain housing permits. This way, IPCC will be able to transmit its expertise on the ground in a community-proximity experience that will create greater dialogue at all levels and will ultimately empower the Palestinian population to face the planning system with more assertiveness and confidence. This whole project will naturally contribute to the well being of Palestinian communities and empower them with legal tools, thus reducing their feeling of helplessness and lessening the level of tensions in Jerusalem. Palestinians will be encouraged to go through with bureaucratic procedures in spite of their complexity and their chances to get permits will hopefully be increased. In order for the project to be effective and reach as many people as possible, summaries of the lectures will be made available throughout the duration of the project in local mass media and newspapers. |
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