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’s parents, lifetime residents of the Old City, sat down their five children for a family meeting.
“My mom doesn’t usually follow politics,” Ansari, 23, a recent university graduate and administrative assistant at a local development agency, told media.
“But she is really scared about my 13-year-old brother walking to school alone right now. I’ve never seen her that worried before. It used to be normal for us to go to school by foot.”
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.
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.
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.
“We don’t feel safe. Going out for simple things [in the Old City] has become super dangerous, especially walking alone at night.”
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.
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.
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”.
aljazeera
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