Israel's police force had a novel new mission in Jerusalem yesterday: keeping a lookout for Palestinian census-takers. Under hurriedly-drafted legislation, pushed through the Knesset at midnight on Wednesday, the form-wielding census officials are breaking Israeli law, and the Israeli Minister of Justice, Mr Tsachi Hanegbi, is threatening jail terms "of up to two years" for any East Jerusalem Arab who holds Israeli citizenship and has the temerity to fill out the questionnaire.
Even before the new amendment had won its parliamentary approval, the police on Wednesday night had made their first arrest, a 23-year-old census-taker detained on the northern outskirts of Jerusalem. There were no more reports of arrests yesterday. Instead, there is talk of forms being faxed out to East Jerusalem Palestinians, or quietly distributed by students.
Mr Hassan Abu Libdeh, director of the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, was adamant that the Palestinian Authority would not be deterred by the new law from extending the census beyond the West Bank and Gaza and into Jerusalem, the city claimed by both Israel and the Palestinians as their capital.
The dispute over the census is indicative of the pitiful state of relations between the purported Israeli and Palestinian peace partners. The Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, has characterised the Authority's efforts to obtain statistical information on Arabs in East Jerusalem as an intolerable effort to undermine Israel's claims to sovereignty there.
In January of 1996, when the Labour Party was still in power, East Jerusalem Arabs were allowed to vote in elections for the Palestine Authority's legislative council.
Authority officials are describing the census as an essential step on the path to independent statehood. The forms require Palestinians to list all family members at home and abroad, their employment and education, as well as stating whether they have running water in their homes, what electrical appliances they use, and so on.
According to 1996 Palestinian statistics, there are just over 1.5 million Palestinians in the West Bank, 942,000 in the Gaza Strip and 200,000 in East Jerusalem. Those statistics also showed 47 per cent of Palestinians to be aged under 15, and an annual population growth of 6.2 per cent.
While the census-takers went about their business yesterday - openly in the West Bank and Gaza, more secretively in Jerusalem - Mr Netanyahu and three senior ministers were meeting, and failing to agree, on how much West Bank land to relinquish to the Palestinians in a further troop withdrawal. More talks are scheduled for early next week.
Mr Netanyahu has been asked by the US Secretary of State, Ms Madeleine Albright, for a detailed decision when the two meet on December 17th. The Israeli media report that he is ready in principle to improve his original offer of 8 per cent of the West Bank to 10 or even 13 per cent, but there has been no confirmation of this.
David Horovitz is the Managing Editor of the Jerusalem Report