Palestinian vendors sell fruit beside Israel's separation wall in the village of Al-Ram, on the edge of Jerusalem. (Moamar Awad, Maan Images)

The view from Mervat Zayeha's balcony is a portrait of Israel's unceasing effort to solidify its control over East Jerusalem since the capture of the city's Arab sector from Jordan 40 years ago.

On the edge of the Palestinian woman's backyard, cranes and laborers are methodically building a big Israeli housing complex that will sit inside the East Jerusalem neighborhood known as Jabel Mukaber.

To the right is the towering concrete security barrier being built by Israel, which is dividing the Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem - traditionally the focus of Palestinian life - from the Palestinian heartland of the West Bank.

Straight ahead, past the construction, the midday sun reflects off the golden stones of the Old City, the most feverishly disputed of all the areas contested between Palestinians and Israel.

Soon after Israel seized East Jerusalem in the lightning-fast 1967 Mideast War, it began a second, more methodical, offensive, which continues to this day. The goal is to unify the city and its holy sites under Jewish control. Instead of rifles, its weapons have been concrete and building stones.

After 40 years of building new neighborhoods, the number of Jews in East Jerusalem now rivals the Arab population.

"Jerusalem is the holiest and most important city for the Jewish people. We want to keep Jerusalem united, but we also need to make sure it retains its historical Jewish character," said Yitzhak Levy, who was the Israeli construction minister in 1999-2000.

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Many Palestinians fear that the city - or at least the ancient section with its sites holy to Jews, Christians and Muslims - now can never be split between Israel and a future Palestinian state, making peace impossible.

"You get angry. But what can we do?" Zayeha asked, looking at the construction. "It is not in our hands."

Almost immediately after Israeli troops routed the Jordanian army and swept over the barbed wire that had divided Jerusalem since the Jewish state’s founding in 1948, Israeli city planners sprang into action.

They were in such a hurry to create Jewish neighborhoods in the captured areas, which were quickly declared annexed, that they grabbed a blueprint for a planned Tel Aviv neighborhood, added some golden stone and arched windows, and built it in Jerusalem, said Israel Kimhi, the former head of long-range planning for the city.

The government began by establishing a string of neighborhoods to connect the Israeli enclave of Mount Scopus, which holds the Hebrew University and Hadassah Hospital, with Jewish populated West Jerusalem.

In a second wave of building from the mid-1970s until the '80s, Israel took the high ground on the periphery of East Jerusalem to create the neighborhoods of Neve Yaakov, Gilo and Ramot Allon.

"All those areas were looking over Jerusalem ... all of them were army positions, so it was quite easy for the government to enter the shoes of the Jordanians that left and expropriate it," said Kimhi, now the head researcher at the Jerusalem Institute think tank.

Israel also expanded the boundaries of East Jerusalem from two square miles to a sprawling area of 27 square miles, incorporating outlying Arab villages.

In the 1980s, the government began building a string of West Bank settlements just outside the city, including the vast hilltop enclave of Maaleh Adumim. This created a ring around East Jerusalem, further solidifying Israeli control, Kimhi said.

Israel swept aside complaints that it was violating international law by moving its own citizens onto occupied territory, arguing that the land was not technically occupied.

During this process, Israel made it difficult for East Jerusalem’s Arabs to obtain building permits, forcing many to move from the city, Palestinian officials and human-rights activists said.

"The plan was very simple: to get hold of the area and to consolidate control over the area, creating urban facts," said Meron Benvenisti, the deputy mayor of Jerusalem in the 1970s. "It was exactly like a military strategic plan to take hold of the high ground, empty land and build there."

Israeli officials at the time promised to never give up the area, which includes the Western Wall, the last remnant of the biblical Second Temple compound and the holiest site in Judaism. The wall sits below the Al-Aqsa compound, where Muslims believe that the Prophet Muhammad made his night journey to heaven.

Today, construction continues. Extensions are being developed for Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, and only the finishing touches remain for a police station in an area known as E1, where plans - currently frozen under U.S. pressure - envision a major new settlement between Jerusalem and Maaleh Adumim.

To read the full article please visit The Winston-Salem Journal.