{"id":16049,"date":"2014-08-29T03:47:11","date_gmt":"2014-08-29T03:47:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/palestinians-suffocating-in-jerusalem\/"},"modified":"2014-08-29T03:46:42","modified_gmt":"2014-08-29T03:46:42","slug":"palestinians-suffocating-in-jerusalem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/palestinians-suffocating-in-jerusalem\/","title":{"rendered":"Palestinians ‘Suffocating’ in Jerusalem"},"content":{"rendered":"

{{Jerusalem – After local media reports broke that Israeli settlers had attempted to kidnap a Palestinian childin the East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Beit Hanina last Wednesday, Mirna Ansari\u2019s parents, lifetime residents of the Old City, sat down their five children for a family meeting.}}<\/p>\n

“My mom doesn\u2019t usually follow politics,” Ansari, 23, a recent university graduate and administrative assistant at a local development agency, told media. <\/p>\n

“But she is really scared about my 13-year-old brother walking to school alone right now. I\u2019ve never seen her that worried before. It used to be normal for us to go to school by foot.”<\/p>\n

Last month, Palestinian teenager Mohammad Abu Khdair was kidnapped by Israeli settlers in the Shuafat area of the city and his body was later found in a nearby forest, burned alive. <\/p>\n

Only a few days later, Israel launched its ongoing military offensive against the Gaza Strip which has killed more than 2,100 Palestinians in the coastal enclave.<\/p>\n

Since that time Palestinians in Jerusalem have reported a sharp uptick in Israeli settler violence and police harassment alike. “Life has become miserable and is getting worse every day,” Ansari said. <\/p>\n

“We don\u2019t feel safe. Going out for simple things [in the Old City] has become super dangerous, especially walking alone at night.”<\/p>\n

The situation has always been tense in Jerusalem: after Israel annexed the eastern half of the city in 1967, a move still unrecognised by the international community, Israel has promoted the expansion of Jewish-only settlements in Palestinian areas, while Palestinian neighbourhoods are severely under-funded and lack basic resources.<\/p>\n

Jerusalem’s Palestinian residents – who hold residency rights, but who do not have Israeli citizenship – suffer from invasive restrictions that limit their access to land and ability to build homes, restrict their movement and stifle political expression, according to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem.<\/p>\n

Speaking to media, Israeli police spokesperson Micky Rosenfeld said Jerusalem has seen “a small increase in incidents of violence against Palestinians, but nothing significant,” adding that “[Israeli] police in Arab neighbourhoods are there to prevent such incidents if necessary”.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n

aljazeera<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

{{Jerusalem – After local media reports broke that Israeli settlers had attempted to kidnap a Palestinian childin the East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Beit Hanina last Wednesday, Mirna Ansari\u2019s parents, lifetime residents of the Old City, sat down their five children for a family meeting.}} “My mom doesn\u2019t usually follow politics,” Ansari, 23, a recent university […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2000053714,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[101],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-16049","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-people","tag-internationl","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":{"id":2000053714,"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton16049.jpg","alt":"","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","width":0,"height":0,"sizes":{"thumbnail":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton16049.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton16049.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium_large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton16049.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton16049.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"full":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton16049.jpg","width":0,"height":0}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16049","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16049"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16049\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2000053714"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16049"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=16049"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=16049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}