Opinion: urban planning is being weaponised in Jerusalem

Haim Yacobi - In a piece published by The Conversation, Professor Haim Yacobi (Bartlett Development Planning Unit at UCL) and Dr Irit Katz, from the University of Cambridge, argue that the tools of urban planning are being used to reinforce Israeli dominance of a contested city. One olive in my garden is better than anything material in the whole world. These sad words  were uttered by Mahmoud Salhiya after his home in Sheikh Jarrah was recently  demolished by Israeli forces. Sheikh Jarrah  is a Palestinian neighbourhood of 3,000 inhabitants at the eastern part of Road 1 that runs north to south through Jerusalem and separates Israeli and Palestinian sectors. The neighbourhood has two distinctive sections: the north is the part inhabited by wealthier Palestinians while the poorer, southern part is populated by hundreds of Palestinian refugees from 1948. The Salhiya family house is in Sheikh Jarrah's southern area on land designated by an old urban scheme authorised in the 1980s for the construction of a public building. But part of the house already existed, along with some other structures, when the plan was being prepared.