200,000 colonizers.116 These practices of inequity become possible due to the exclusion of Palestinians in the planning process as well as by pursuing the main goal of all planning processes: maintaining a Jewish-Israeli majority inside Jerusalem According to the Authority for Developing Jerusalem Law of 1988, non-Israeli citizens are not permitted to serve as council members or as members of the management of the Authority for Developing Jerusalem,117 immediately excluding Palestinian residents of Jerusalem from the planning process of the city. The Master Plan has been devised by three main committees: the Steering Committee, the Professional Planning Committee and the Working Committee,118 none of which have Palestinian members. Furthermore, even though the Professional Planning Committee has focused on public participation and issued a questionnaire regarding the future vision of Jerusalem, community problems and their neighborhood vision, these questionnaires were only available in Hebrew and no meeting regarding public participation in the planning process was held in Palestinian neighborhoods or in cooperation with Palestinian committees.119 Acknowledging the basic principles of zoning and planning, it is crucial to realize that, by rejecting to involve Palestinians within the planning process, Israel clearly violates their participation rights leaving them totally powerless. One of the main aims in the Jerusalem Outline Plan 2000 is maintaining a ‘demographic balance’. However, this phrasing can be misleading insofar as it implies a neutral policy intending to safeguard a balance between the Palestinian and the Jewish-Israeli population inside the Jerusalem Municipality. Since 1967, Israel practically always adopted a policy of ensuring a Palestinian minority in Jerusalem that is no larger than one-third of the city’s inhabitants.120 The same ideology is now explicitly mentioned in the Master Plan, in which ‘keeping a solid Jewish-Israeli majority’ features as a major political objective: In order to preserve the Jewish majority in the city one would have to reduce the number of Jewish residents leaving the city and attract Jewish residents from other parts of the country. 121 The so-called demographic balance, in fact, seeks to maintain a ratio of 70% Jewish-Israelis and 30% Palestinians within the Israeli defined municipal 116 OCHA, Special Focus: East Jerusalem Key Humanitarian Concerns, 33. 117 Alkhalili, Dajani, and Leo, “Shifting Realities: Dislocating Palestinian Jerusalemites from the Capital to the Edge,” 262. 118 Jabareen, “The Politics of State Planning in Achieving Geopolitical Ends,” 33. 119 Ibid. 120 Khamaisi, “Barriers in Achieving Urban Planning Rights in Jerusalem’s Socio-Cultural Conflict,” 8. 121 “Jerusalem Master Plan 2000,” chap. 7. 40