JERUSALEM (AFP) - Three in four of Jerusalems Arab children live in poverty, a civic rights group said on Tuesday, partly blaming Israeli discrimination aimed at securing a Jewish majority in the city. A total of 74 percent of Arab children in Jerusalem live below the poverty line, as compared with 47.7 percent of the Jewish children in the city, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) said. It said 66.8 percent of families in predominantly Arab east Jerusalem live in poverty as compared with 23.3 percent of the citys Jewish families, but that only 22 percent of the population receives social services. In its State of Human Rights in East Jerusalem report, the group said residents of annexed east Jerusalem faced discrimination in planning and building, expropriation of lands, minimal investment in physical infrastructure, government and municipal services. These are concrete expressions of an Israeli policy designed to secure a Jewish majority in Jerusalem and push Palestinian residents outside the citys borders, it said.Life in Jerusalem can be described as a continuing cycle of neglect, discrimination, poverty and shortages. These, compounded by construction of the separation barrier cutting Jerusalem off from the West Bank, have led to the social and economic collapse of this part of the city. A large majority of east Jerusalem residents do not receive, and cannot afford to buy, the most basic services. The primary victims are the vulnerable populations, the aged, the disabled and children. Since Israel occupied east Jerusalem in 1967, later annexing the city, it expropriated 6,000 acres (2,430 hectares), or over one third of the area, which were privately owned by Arabs, the group said. By the end of 2007, a total 50,197 homes had been built for the Jewish population on the expropriated land and none for Palestinians, ACRI said. Bureaucratic red tape and costly fees some charged only to Palestinians make it almost impossible for Palestinians to obtain building permits in east Jerusalem, it said. So far this year, the municipality tore down 17 homes and issued 1,052 demolition orders to homes and other structures in east Jerusalem for lacking the necessary permits, ACRI said. The Israeli group also reported a shortage of 1,700 classrooms in east Jerusalem and a school dropout rate of about 50 percent. It further said there was blatant discrimination in sanitation, postal services, sidewalk infrastructure and public parks. After annexation following the Six-Day War of 1967, Israel declared the city its eternal, undivided capital in a move not recognised by the international community. Palestinians want to make east Jerusalem the capital of their promised state. East Jerusalem Palestinians make up an estimated 34 percent of the citys total population of 747,621.