Life in the Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem has been getting harder recently. Poor services, a severe housing crunch and rents that are among the highest in Israel - approximately $700 a month for a small two-bedroom apartment. Residents now have police ambushes, roadblocks and separation walls that make passage between neighborhoods a nightmare. Many families have decided to leave. Where can they go? Moving to neighborhoods on the other side of the fence - i.e., inside the boundaries of the West Bank - is out of the question. They are unwelcome in the city's Jewish neighborhoods. So they are moving inside Israel.

The family of Nibin Bakala, for example, moved three years ago from the Old City of Jerusalem to Jaffa. The husband works there in a carpentry shop. One member of the large Zanduka family decided to move to Umm al-Fahm. In the northern Jerusalem Beit Hanina neighborhood, they recall the Rafidi family, which moved to Nazareth. Others have moved to Ramle, Lod, Abu Ghosh and Beit Naquba near the Tel Aviv highway. When they can, they move to West Jerusalem.

Abu Naim of the Abu Tor neighborhood looked for cheap housing in Sur Baher and Isawiyah, Arab neighborhoods inside Jerusalem. Prices were high. In the end, he discovered that distant Eilat was more comfortable. He found a job there and his family is happy, even though the kids are in a regular Israeli (Jewish) school. There are several dozen Arabs from Jerusalem in Eilat.

Sabine Haddad, spokeswoman for the Ministry of the Interior's population registry, checked with registry office directors and confirmed the existence of this trend. According to her, over the last few years there has been a flow of Arab residents from East Jerusalem to other Israeli cities. However, the phenomenon cannot be described as large-scale.

On the other hand, Ahmed al-Sheikh, a garage mechanic who lives in the Shuafat camp, the largest and most densely populated poor neighborhood in East Jerusalem, said he has no doubt that after the separation fence is completed and the residents' dire situation worsens - many more will move to Israel. "The government of Israel is pressuring us in Jerusalem's Arab neighborhoods - and in the end you'll find us outside Tel Aviv," he said.

Withdrawing Residency Rights

How did this phenomenon start? More than 240,000 Arab residents of East Jerusalem have Israeli identity cards (blue), which are the same as regular identity cards, yet they are not Israeli citizens. They are defined as "permanent residents in Israel" and they have almost all the rights and obligations of an Israeli citizen. The fact that they are not citizens means they cannot get Israeli passports - they travel abroad using a travel document they get from the Ministry of the the Interior. They do not have the right to vote in Knesset elections but are eligible to vote in municipal elections.

As permanent residents, Jerusalem Arabs are entitled to receive National Insurance Institute allowances and use the health and welfare services of the state of Israel, and they have freedom of movement throughout the country. This provides them with considerable financial advantages over their brethren in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Because of this, there was for many years intense efforts by residents of the territories to obtain Jerusalem identity cards.

The problem with permanent residency is that Israel can retract it if it becomes apparent that the holder of such a status no longer lives in Israel. Because it was almost impossible for an Arab to obtain a building permit in East Jerusalem, and there was no construction of new neighborhoods by the government, over the years a severe housing shortage has afflicted the Arab neighborhoods.

In the 1970s and 1980s many residents moved to new neighborhoods in the West Bank on the border of Jerusalem's municipal boundary - which is also the official border separating the state of Israel and the West Bank. According to estimates made ten years ago, a third or more of Jerusalem's Arabs had moved to the neighborhoods of a-Ram, Dahiyat al-Barid (the Post Office neighborhood), Bir Naballah and a series of new neighborhoods that are all contiguous with the city's Arab neighborhoods, but are located inside the West Bank.

After the creation of the Palestinian Authority in 1994, the Israeli authorities tried to identify Jerusalem Arabs who had left the city, in order to revoke their residency rights. This effort has intensified. Two government bodies were behind this: the National Insurance Institute, which can end allowances for someone who no longer lives in Israel, and the Ministry of the Interior, then headed by a Shas MK, Eli Suissa.

Although tens of thousands of Arabs with Jerusalem identity cards lived outside the city, the Ministry of the Interior was only able to revoke the identity cards of a few thousand. However, the mere threat of revoking identity cards did the trick. There was a panic in the Arab neighborhoods outside Jerusalem's boundaries. Thousands of Arab families feared losing the benefits provided by having an Israeli identity card and decided to move to Arab neighborhoods inside the city. Large numbers of people moved into the available apartments in Wadi Joz, the Old City, Isawiyah (on the slopes of Mount Scopus), Silwan (Kfar Shiloah), Ras al-Amud, Abu Tor and Jabel Mukaber in the southern part of the city. This was the first wave of Jerusalem Arabs moving further into the city, most of which took place in the late 1990s.

The second wave started in the winter of 2000-2001, after the outbreak of the second intifada. The Israeli defense establishment started encircling East Jerusalem with an array of checkpoints and fences, often not on the municipal border. Anyone living beyond the checkpoints, even if they lived within the city, had trouble sending their children to school or getting to work. What happened in the Shuafat refugee camp can serve to illustrate the situation.

Life in Ghettos

Shuafat is a residential neighborhood defined as a refugee camp, built by Jordan in 1966. It has become the city's most densely populated neighborhood. The reason is simple. Despite its location within the city, residents do not pay municipal housing taxes (arnona), nor is there any organized payment for water. The dense construction, built without permits, has turned the refugee camp into a huge block of dwellings. Ten years ago, the population of the camp was less than 10,000. Today there are close to 20,000 residents. The new residents came from the northern neighborhoods outside Jerusalem's municipal boundary.

Although the camp is inside Jerusalem's municipal boundaries, a checkpoint was set up on the road that connects the camp with the original village of Shuafat. During morning rush hours, the line of cars seeking to drive from the camp to the city stretches a long way. People sometimes wait for hours.

Journalist Muhammed Abd-Rabo, an employee of the Palestinian Broadcasting Authority who lives in the camp, said that at a certain point, he decided he couldn't take it anymore. To take his kids to school, he had to leave the house at around 5:30 A.M., travel via Anata, Hizme and Pisgat Ze'ev and then enter the eastern part of Jerusalem. Some time ago he rented an apartment on the other side of the checkpoint in the village of Shuafat. He pays $700 a month and is accumulating debt.

The third and most problematic wave of Jerusalem Arab migration into the city is now under way. It is being triggered by the construction of the separation fence, which will transform several large neighborhoods in the northeast of the city, such as a-Ram and Bir Naballah, into large ghettos of sorts. Most residents of these neighborhoods have Jerusalem identity cards. Once the fence is completed, they will be cut off from the city's education and health services and they will lose their livelihoods. This wave is the most troublesome because the economic situation of Jerusalem's Arabs has worsened significantly of late. The cuts in National Insurance Institute child allowances affected them just as it affected all those in Israel from the weaker strata and with large families. They are starting to think about where they can go, and some of the possibilities are Jaffa, Haifa, Nazareth, Lod and Ramle - all inside the Green Line.

They have every legal right to make such a move. After finding work and renting an apartment - usually for less than they pay in East Jerusalem - they must go to the Ministry of the Interior branch near their new residence and present documents showing that the focus of their lives has moved to a new location. The ministry will change the address on their identity cards and they will no longer have to suffer the trials and tribulations of high housing costs, checkpoints and fences of East Jerusalem. The Israeli policy that controls their lives in the Shuafat refugee camp and in a-Ram on the outskirts of Ramallah will therefore have pushed them to the outskirts of Tel Aviv.