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Who Are the Arabs of Jerusalem?

(Jerusalem Post) Peggy Cidor - Jerusalem Arabs numbered 70,000 on the eve of the Six-Day War (according to a Jordanian census from 1966) and today, they are 380,000, while 120,000 live in the neighborhoods under Jerusalem Municipality jurisdiction but beyond the security fence. Prof. Itzhak Reiter, an expert on Islam and the Middle East at Ashkelon Academic College, describes the different parts of Arab society in the city. "About 50% of the present Arab residents of Jerusalem originally came from Hebron and...took over and developed their careers at the expense of the old locals, like the Nusseibeh, the Nashashibi and the El Khatib families." Another group are educated Israeli Arabs who moved to Jerusalem from villages in the Galilee. The Christian community has shrunk to 13,000. Inside the Muslim population there are Sufis, identified with a mystical approach to Islam, as well as Salafists, who are much more extremist both in religious and political terms. There are also those identified with Hamas, which is quite strong in eastern Jerusalem, and those identified with Fatah and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
2022-02-14 00:00:00
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