it was published in the official sheikh jarrah (neighborhood in east jerusalem where we are struggling to stop more jewish settlers from taking arab houses and to give back the arabs whose houses have already been taken) blog.
a lot has transpired this past week.
i advise going through some of the other posts in the blog but here is what happened on jerusalem day last week.
and i will give a brief intro to what jerusalem day is.
jerusalem day celebrates the union of jerusalem in 67, ie the conquering of the old city/western wall, and the consequent illegal annexation of east jerusalem as an official part of israel, an annexation that has not been recognized by any country in the world. in fact israel is the only country whose capital is not recognized by any other country.
since then jerusalem has been known as a unified city, but the facts are that it is not. while west jerusalem (the jewish part) continues to thrive and gain international acclaim and tourism, east jerusalem is a complete slum. over 30% of jerusalem's some 800,000 residents live in the east part, but east (or the arab parts of east jerusalem) receive only 10% of the cities funding.
there has never been any urban building plan for east jerusalem, in the 43 years that israel has conquered it. that means that most of the houses have no real sewage system. in addition the municipality because of the intentional lack of urban plans, do not let any arabs build houses. this results in illegal house building which results in regular house demolitions.
in a country that has a mandatory education until the age of 17 i think, there is a lack of over 1000 classrooms in east Jerusalem. i believe that the high school dropout rate is over 50% (but im not sure)
these are just a few facts on how jerusalem is not unified. and for that reason we protested the unification holiday last Wednesday. and for that reason i was arrested.
as i promised earlier, here is my somewhat long report of that day.
http://www.en.justjlm.org/?p=109