Prospects for a Shared Jerusalem
April 5, 2001Capitol Hill Conference, co-sponsored by FMEP, Middle East Institute, and American Committee on Jerusalem, with Rashid Khalidi, Alon Ben-Meir, Daniel Seidemann, and Salim Tamari (transcript)
The American Committee on Jerusalem, Foundation for Middle East Peace & The Middle East Institute
Participants
Prof. Alon Ben-Meir, New University of Social Research
Prof. Rashid Khalidi, President, AJC, Director, Center for International Studies, University of Chicago
Daniel Seidemann, Advocate, Director, Pro-Jerusalem Society, Jerusalem
Prof. Salim Tamari, Bir Zeit University, Director, Institute of Jerusalem Studies, Jerusalem, Visiting Professor, New York University
Date/Place:
April 5, 12:00, Rayburn House Office Building, Room 338B
Prof. Alon Ben-Meir, New University of Social Research
Prof. Rashid Khalidi, President, AJC, Director, Center for International Studies, University of Chicago
Daniel Seidemann, Advocate, Director, Pro-Jerusalem Society, Jerusalem
Prof. Salim Tamari, Bir Zeit University, Director, Institute of Jerusalem Studies, Jerusalem, Visiting Professor, New York University
Date/Place:
April 5, 12:00, Rayburn House Office Building, Room 338B
Summary Transcript
Alon Ben-Meir
Jerusalem evokes profound emotional and political trepidation because, unlike any other city, Jerusalem is an aberration of time and place. What makes Jerusalem unique is not only its long and turbulent history but its continued existence in defiance of history's harsh verdicts. No other city has left such an indelible mark on the people that have passed through its gates. In that sense, Jerusalem has long since established an enduring status: a source of biblical truth and symbol of social justice, holy focus of three great religions, city of freedom and hope.
Wherever the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations may lead, Jerusalem's final status cannot simply satisfy the political, religious and territorial claims of Israelis and Palestinians: it must live up to Jerusalem's millennial vocation. The solution must account for and, at the same time, transcend political realism. It must be sensitive to the needs of current inhabitants while also reviving the past and respecting the present religious and cultural diversity. It must address not only the aspirations of its dwellers, but of the hundreds of millions of people of all persuasions who have never set foot in Jerusalem, but feel a deep affinity for its ideals. The solution, finally, must be comprehensive yet creatively tailored to the unique character of a city that has never bowed to conformity.
The conflict over Jerusalem extends beyond territory, time and human experience. In the simplest terms, it is a conflict between two peoples with deep roots in the same space. It has evolved into a multi-dimensional problem involving seemingly irreconcilable religious, demographic and political realities. Ultimately, it is a conflict between Israeli and Palestinian nationalism and Jerusalem stands at the center.
There is a clear and growing consensus among Israelis and Palestinians on a number of key issues relating to the future status of Jerusalem. Most Israelis and Palestinians rule out, though for different reasons, a redivision of the city. Both sides also agree that freedom of worship must be guaranteed and that the free movement of people and goods between east and west Jerusalem must not be hampered. Finally, both sides share the belief that a strong financial base requires the fully integrated economy of a united Jerusalem. While agreement on these issues is fundamental, the rift between the Israelis and Palestinians on the larger question of sovereignty and ultimate control over the eastern part of the city remains wide open. And it is here where national dispositions --historical and psychological--leave very little room for mutual accommodation, grinding any reasonable discourse to a halt.
But the Israelis and Palestinians know that they must accommodate each other. For nearly three and half decades (1967-2000), Jerusalem has served as a microcosm for Israeli and Palestinian cooperation. Even at the peak of the Palestinian uprising known as the Intifada this cooperation prevailed. Jerusalem must take the lead now. Within its walls, the largest concentration of Jews and Palestinians live side by side, and each population is determined to stay in place.
Jerusalem is the only city that can prove the validity of Israeli-Palestinian co-existence. No one should question Jewish historic claim and affinity to Jerusalem which dates back the Canaanite period (3000-1200 BCE). The capture of the old city in 1967 was widely seen by the Israelis as nothing less than the renewal of God's covenant with the Jews. East Jerusalem represents their past and present, a source of religious and cultural continuity without which Israel's very existence could unravel. The hope of returning to Jerusalem has sustained the Jews throughout their dispersion, and centuries of exile have been unable to extinguish it.
However, the Israelis must also recognize Palestinian's right to east Jerusalem based on an Arab-Muslim historical claim dating back to the conquest of the city by the Caliph Omar and the defeat of the Byzantines in 637. For the Palestinians, their political claim to the city is rooted in Islamic tradition: Jerusalem was identified as the mystical destination of Muhammad's night journey to visit God's presence, and both the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aksa mosque, Islam's third holiest shrines, are situated there.
Unlike any other place in Israel and the territories, Jerusalem has the largest interspersed population- nearly 450,000 Jews and over 200,000 Arabs. More than one third of Jerusalem's Jewish population lives in the east side. This interspersal of Israeli and Palestinian population has made the redivision of the city inconceivable. No Israeli government could remove even a few Jews from Jerusalem and stay in power. East and west Jerusalem have now been fully integrated in all aspects of day-to-day life with the social integrity of the city's separate ethnic quarters intact. The future solution must, therefore, fully reflect these realities.
Israel and the Palestinians should institutionalize what has already been functioning on the ground. Both sides should continue to administer their holy places as they have been since Israel captured the old city in 1967. The Palestinians have been exercising de-facto sovereignty over their holy shrines and educational institutions. Israel should now formalize this arrangement by extending extraterritoriality to the Palestinians over the entire area called the Haram al-Sharif, including much of the old city where a majority of Palestinians reside. This solution, fashioned after the Vatican in Rome, could satisfy the Muslim needs without compromising the integrity of a united city.
Free access to all religious and cultural institutions must be maintained along with the free movement of people and goods between east and west at all times. Municipal services, including electricity, water and sewage, must continue to be maintained by a single joint authority. Sustaining the city's infrastructure, building roads and managing city planning must be coordinated.
The Palestinians should establish their own elected local authority in order to run their schools, cultural affairs and health clinics. This Palestinian authority should be represented at greater Jerusalem City Hall to coordinate with long term city planning that may affect east Jerusalem.
All Palestinians in Jerusalem should automatically become citizens of the Palestinian state, and enjoy full rights to vote and travel on Palestinian authority documents. Civil emergency or grave threats to security aside, Israel must grant them freedom of movement and job opportunity in Israel.
All Israelis and Palestinians should maintain their chosen nationalities regardless of place of residence in greater Jerusalem. Thus the city's political status would not be affected by future demographic growth.
Although separate internal security forces will be necessary, a joint contingent of Israeli and Palestinian police force should be formed to deal with crimes that may result from cohabitation. The excavation of historic sites and the purchase or expropriation of any land for public use in east Jerusalem must be determined by mutual agreement.
In the Bible, two universal elements " justice and peace" are consistently associated with Jerusalem. Israel has created the reality of coexistence. It must now grant the Palestinians the right to live their lives with dignity. In turn, the Palestinians will have to create new conditions, consistent with Israel's reality that will enable them to exercise their political independence in part of east Jerusalem as their capital. Thus both Israel and the Palestinians will find that Jerusalem will play its pre-ordained role as the catalyst for an overall settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian discord and for permanent peace.
Salim Tamari
I want to thank ACJ for inviting me here for the second time, and I must say that there’s a sense of déją vu about this meeting. You recall our encounter here with Congress about a year and a half ago. The circumstances have changed very drastically and have framed the present debate in a grim and less hopeful atmosphere, but let us hope that some ideas will be floated here that will contribute to circumventing the situation.
Ambassador Wilcox mentioned that in his view, the failure of the Camp David agreement talks was not exclusively based on the disagreement over Jerusalem. I believe that the reason was certainly Jerusalem. If we look at the embeddedness within Jerusalem of the other outstanding features-- of the territorial claims, control of the holy places and of settlements—then all of them are manifested in the most acute manner in the confiscation of the city of Jerusalem. I believe that the talks collapsed because they failed to reach an agreement on two central aspects of the city’s future. The first is the determination and control of the holy places and the second was the continued presence of some 200,000 Israeli settlers in the Arab section of the city.
When we define the city as open, then we can think of the free floating presence of Israelis, Palestinians, Jews, Muslims, and Christians within the city—but as long as one group is denied access to the other side of the city, then we have to treat the colonial presence of the city on the Arab side as a colonial or settler presence.
Although the issue of sacred geography and worldly problems have become intimately linked in this conflict, I will try in this intervention to disentangle them in order to diffuse the political question that has become destructively religious and therefore not subject to rational discourse. The problem lies, in my view, that while Palestinians claim that Eastern/Arab part of the city is occupied territory and therefore subject to the implementation of UN Security Council resolution 242, Israelis insist that they have a substantial claim to the Arab city while the western part shall remain uncontested.
Since its conquest of the Arab cities in 1967, but most notably since the implementation of the Oslo accords in September 1993, Israel has proceeded to alter the demographic, legal and cultural character of the city by a number of key strategic policies. It has imported more than 200,000 Israelis as Jewish settlers and have them strategically in some 20 colonial settlements in expanded areas north, east, and south of the metropolitan area of Jerusalem.
When I say "imported," perhaps people would object to it. I must say here two things: First, the Israeli Jews who settled in the Eastern part of the city, for example in the Jewish quarter, have no historical continuity with the original settlers or the original inhabitants of the Jewish quarter. Many of them are not Jewish, especially former residents of Ukraine, Georgia and the Soviet Union, who used their Israeli identity to settle in cheaper housing in the Eastern part of the city. Why did Israel make it possible for a large number of Jewish residents to move into these settlements? I think for two ostensible reasons.
First, is the plan to reduce the proportion of Arab residents in the city. Indeed in 1985, this plan succeeded and Jews became a majority in the Arab section of the city. They also did it to isolate the Palestinian city from its hinterland, through a belt of adjacent Jewish suburbs that sealed indigenous Arabs from its suburban and rural communities inside the West Bank.
Second, Israel illegally annexed the expanded boundaries of East Jerusalem and administered Israeli law, while applying military law to the rest of the Occupied Territories except for the Golan Heights that was subjected to the same process. This allows for the strict regulation of residency and work rights in the city. The strict and selective building codes allow Jewish residents to build inside the city boundaries while encouraging the Arab residents to relocate to the periphery of the city and in outlying areas of the West Bank and where many of them eventually lost their residency rights.
Third, Israel established a blockade on the expanded municipal boundaries of the city. Initially in 1991 after the Gulf War, regulating the entrance of Palestinians to the city by a system of passes, permits and then totally excluding West Bankers from entering, working, or even passing through the city, which is the situation today. And this happens not only during periods of violence, but through periods of, let’s say, regulated normality, following the agreements between the two sides. They were certainly intensified during these agreements, which is the punishing part of the situation.
The ostensible reason for this horrific blockade is to maintain the security of Israeli citizens from potential acts of violence and sabotage. However, the blockade is clearly political, since the checkpoints preventing access for Palestinians are not placed between Arab and Jewish neighborhoods, but within Arab occupied territories, thus separating Palestinians from gaining entry to the Arab neighborhoods of the city. The net result of this blockade has been to strangle the economy of the city by denying access to its educational, health, employment, market, and cultural facilities to all West Bankers as well as to Gazans.
In doing so, the West Bank lost its main metropolitan center and commercial marketing outlet. The city was denied the benefit of some half million commuters who used its facilities. The blockade also divided the West Bank into two main zones: the North and the South, disrupting trade routes, access and geographic continuity of the country as a whole. Such a situation cannot be sustained and is untenable. It is the breeding ground of violence and uncontrollable rage and I think that the beginning of it, if a situation like this continues.
Israel and the Palestinians began to seriously examine alternate solutions at Camp David to determine the final status of the city. They moved forward on some issues, such as territorial continuity and the settlements, but they moved backwards on the question of control of the holy sites and the continued presence of colonial settlements inside the city. Mr. Barak’s team in those negotiations over Jerusalem can be summarized by the following dictum: "What is ours will remain ours and let us have compromises over sharing your part of the city." Jews were settled by right in the Arab city, but Palestinians have no right to move to the Jewish part or to even claim their property rights within it—and I agree with my colleague’s (Ben-Meir) comments about the right of people to move freely everywhere but hereby contrasting harsh reality with projected image of what the city could and should be.
Such a proposal cannot go very far and certainly needs to refocus on the issues. Expand on the consensual arenas and rethink the contested territory. A good beginning would be treat to the religious sites within the context of the status quo acceptable to all parties except extremists on all sides and deal with the issue of sovereign control over territory within the context of an application of UN resolution 242, mutual respect and mutual recognition. Once agreed on, the two sides could proceed to delineate the boundaries of sharing the old city on the basis of separate sovereignty and shared administration. A city that is peaceful, accessible, and open to all.
Rashid Khalidi
I want to thank you all for coming, in my capacity as President of the American Committee on Jerusalem, one of the co-sponsors of this event. We may seem naively optimistic in even talking about a shared Jerusalem in a situation where there are 20- or so people being killed or maimed every week across Palestine and Israel. I’m afraid that it’s true that a shared Jerusalem, or indeed any kind of progress towards a settlement is less likely today, or in the near future, than it has been for most of the past 10 years.
Were we not focusing on Jerusalem, I would try to spend a little bit of time talking about how the Oslo process in my view has in fact involved a detour from having a real impact on the two sides. If only in terms of two things: By preventing, for the better part of 10 years, any discussion of any important issues between the two sides—Jerusalem, refugees, borders, sovereignty, settlements, water—anything of any importance while allowing at the same time the continuation of settlements, the continuation of land expropriation, a consecration of occupation. Oslo left us much worse off than we were when we went to Madrid in the fall of 1991.
We are in a much worse situation in terms of peace, reconciliation, justice, implementation of international law-- anything, any standard you choose to use, unless your standard is the absorption of occupied territory into Israel. By that standard, things are much better than they were then.
The same principles apply in Jerusalem. We have settlements, like Har Homa, Abu Ghneim, which were not even a twinkle in the eye of the planners a decade ago. The first residents are going to be taking up their brand new apartments sometime in the near future, unless someone does something to stop them. Now, having said all that, I think it is a fact that the media was no more correct in saying that the Camp David and subsequent negotiations broke down over Jerusalem, than they were in describing Barak’s proposals as "generous."
Again, I don’t have time to go over why they were not very generous at all, but it is the case that on Jerusalem, Barak did actually bring something different to the table. Insufficient perhaps, but certainly the Barak proposals and the later proposals from president Clinton in December and the negotiations that continued in Taba, right at the eve of the Israeli elections did involve some very important new elements. They certainly were not close to an agreement in Taba on Jerusalem. There were a couple of issues where there still were some serious differences. One of them, as Professor Tamari said, was the holy places. But in fact there was something new discussed by the two sides and part of it was the results of Barak’s proposals.
This brings me to what I want to talk about, which is: How do we share Jerusalem? Whenever Palestinians and Israelis are able to come to the table to negotiate sometime in the future. I suggest that those negotiations as far as Jerusalem was concerned would have to proceed from a principle of equality and on the basis of international law. I don’t really think that saying that "well, here we are, with an unequal playing field, one very powerful and one very weak partner…We’ve bridged the gaps." That pragmatic approach, which has been the hallmark of Israeli diplomacy for the last decade or so is not going to bring us a solution in Jerusalem and the stubbornness of the Palestinians on Jerusalem is going to be more and more apparent if this operating on non-level playing field without the principles of equality and equity and international law being brought in to prevail.
Both sides have rights in Jerusalem. Professor Ben Meir is right. Both sides have aspirations in Jerusalem just as Palestinians are going to have to sooner or later understand Jewish and Israeli aspirations in Jerusalem so will Israel have to recognize publicly, as it never has done, in fact as it has constantly and systematically denigrated for decades, the fact that Palestinians have rights and aspirations in Jerusalem and that Palestinians don’t see themselves solely in some Islamic, or even some Christian narrative. They see themselves in terms of some continuity with the land and with the city, which goes back several millennia. The fact that these narratives may not be shared does not mean that they do not have to be respected. The Jewish narrative, if we are expected to respect it, should be matched by similar respect for Palestinian own merit.
And so both sides, I think, have rights, aspirations, both hold it sacred. Neither, I think, can trump the other, or claim to trump the other in this regard. "We have more mentions of Jerusalem in our holy book than you do," that’s not the way to make an agreement on Jerusalem. Jerusalem clearly has to be a capital for both, where people clearly have to have unfettered access to and through Jerusalem, a situation that clearly has not now prevailed for the better part of a decade as far as Palestinians are concerned. Palestinians cannot enter from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip as Professor Tamari has laid out for us.
The second thing that’s going to have to be at the basis of this is that East Jerusalem is occupied territory and by the Fourth Geneva Convention, the occupying power does not have the right to settle its population in occupied territory. Therefore, neighborhoods, housing units, whatever you want to call them are illegal: Har Homa, French Hill, Gilo are illegal. The Arab population has communal rights, collective rights, and a variety of other rights, which cannot be violated for the convenience of a population that has settled illegally in this part of occupied territory, East Jerusalem.
Even if the Palestinians have made a decision, which they have not as far as I know, made, to acquiesce in some Jewish neighborhoods remaining under Jewish sovereignty, under Israeli sovereignty I should say, the continuity of the settlement, this cannot be at the expense of the property rights, or the civil rights, or the communal rights of the indigenous Arab population of East Jerusalem. It has absolute rights, which cannot be violated.
It was in these terms that the Barak proposal was weakest, by not providing contiguity between the northern and southern parts of the West Bank through Jerusalem, by not providing continuity of the various Palestinian neighborhoods in Jerusalem, by saying that areas with Jewish residents have to be connected to one another and Palestinians can basically figure out how they can go around us. This simply will not do. Another thing that neither the status quo in the holy places, nor the Barak proposals, nor anything that the Palestinians put on the table to be fair—what none of these things has succeeded in doing was to put forward what I think is a satisfactory regime for the holy places. Some people argued that we should prolong the status quo. The status quo has led to the killing, on 3 occasions in 10 years of Palestinian worshippers on the Haram al-Sharif. This, to my way of thinking, is not an acceptable status quo. People have been shot down in 1990, 1996, and 2000 in one of the holiest places in Islam. This is not a satisfactory status quo. The status quo is not fine. There has been violence in holy places all over Palestine in both Jewish and Muslim holy places.
Clearly, it is not going to be acceptable for us to extend this into the future the regime that we have today, whether in terms of actual control of the site, but maybe there are some aspects that we do want to preserve. The overall situation, which has involved repeated multiple deaths of worshippers at holy places or of others at holy places simply will not do. For that matter not in Hebron, nor Nablus, nor elsewhere, but certainly not in Jerusalem. It will not be acceptable for the rest of the world let alone the Palestinians and I think it’s also not acceptable to Israel.
Either we’re going to have a situation where the two sides come to an agreement whereby each side controls its own holy places or the two sides are going to have to come to an agreement which involves some kind of third party involvement in a settlement as far as the holy places are concerned.
Let me now focus on things that we all can do in this country, because whenever negotiations do become possible, and by negotiations, I don’t mean the two sides sitting down to discuss security or violence or ending this miserable confrontation. That’s a prerequisite, obviously, but once they’ve done that and even if they manage to talk again, if they don’t start talking about Jerusalem, settlements, borders, sovereignty, water, refugees, they’re not talking about issues between the Palestinians and Israelis, they’re talking about managing the conflict.
Maybe the conflict has to be managed, in fact it has to be but when they negotiate about the real things, which the Camp David/Oslo framework did not do for 9.5 years, at that point I think that the situation will be measurably improved. If our government, the United States government, can manage to hold fast to longstanding traditional elements of US policy, I’m going to state three of them that are particularly relevant in Jerusalem:
The first is that the status of this city cannot be unilaterally determined by any party, certainly neither of the two parties in conflict, the Israelis or the Palestinians, can say "this is the way it will be." They can’t say that in congress, they can’t say that diplomatically, they can’t say that in negotiations. That will not do.
Secondly, no actions should be taken which will preempt or prejudge a final settlement. Now this is not my wording, this is the wording of the invitation to the peace conference. This is Secretary of State Baker’s wording, this is the U.S. government’s wording, this is wording which is in fact ignored in the case of Jerusalem by the constant building of settlements, the constant confiscation of land, the constant or the series of actions which have rendered the Palestinians more and more narrowly hemmed in to smaller and smaller parts of their own cities. These things clearly make a settlement impossible.
If one side is eating the pie that they are supposed to be negotiating about, clearly we have a problem with the negotiations. That process has not been prevented for 10 years, it continues. Nowadays there are no negotiations, but when they start—if there is not a freeze on the situation. If actions that prevent an agreement are not stopped, then you are not going to have an agreement and that’s one reason we did not have an agreement over the past 10 years.
Finally, the city will have to remain, in some sense, a single unit. In some sense there will have to remain some unity to the city, there will have to remain an open city, but for us to take that a step further as some people would like to take it, and say "the city has to remain united", or that "we have to continue to have the coexistence that we have today," in fact distorts reality. It is not a united city, it is an occupied city. It is not a city today that is a beacon of coexistence. It is a city where one people is subjugated by another people.
What we have to have is a situation of coexistence. What we have to have is a situation where all Israelis can come to any part of Jerusalem and all Palestinians can come to any part of Jerusalem. Where people have equal rights in both parts of the city, all parts of the city. And where things like zoning are not decided on the basis of Israeli national objectives, rather than the needs and requirements of the two national communities that are going to have to share the city. Those are the kinds of issues that are going to have to be I think, stressed by the United States if the United States does not do these things. If for some misfortune, our government policy does not stress these principles that I've talked about—the idea that the city’s future cannot be determined by one party, the idea that actions shouldn’t be taken which would prejudge the future, the idea that the city has to remain a whole, that could not be continuation of the status quo.
If, sadly, we don’t do what we should do, I think this would not help Israel. It would in fact further isolate Israel in the world on the Jerusalem issue. Further, it would provoke the Palestinians and simply delay the day, a day which in fact seemed to be coming closer, in terms of Israeli public opinion, before the very sad events of the last 6 or 8 months, when sensible Israelis began to rethink their position. It’s clear both from polls in Israel, and from a number of Israeli data that there was the beginning of an understanding on the part of Israelis that they cannot forever control the largest Arab city in the West Bank, which is East Jerusalem. It is simply unfeasible. And that some how or other, some of the kinds of the ideas that professor Ben-Meir was putting forward are the only way that you can have real coexistence and a real settlement on Jerusalem.
Clearly the United States cannot fashion a settlement, the US cannot force an agreement, the US cannot impose its will, but I think the US can state its’ own position. "It is our view that," or "it has constantly been our position that" or "international law mandates that," or "it is an international consensus that"—there’s no harm to doing that and those positions should be based on principle and on international law. Occupation is occupation, that is the position of the US, and that applies to East Jerusalem. Settlements are illegal; settlements are obstacles to peace and to serious negotiation.
And finally, nothing should be done that makes negotiations between the two sides more difficult and much has been done over the past 10 years in Jerusalem that does make it more difficult.
We’re far away from an agreement; we’re far away from negotiations on substantive issues. The Bush administration certainly cannot do much to get us there, I think however that stressing the violence committed by one side and not stressing the measurably greater violence coming from the other side and not stressing the underlying problem of continued occupation actually gets us further away from a solution. When and if the parties can sit down, I think that stress by our government on the principle traditional positions that the US has held to in Jerusalem will help the parties to devise a solution. They will have to come to that conclusion themselves, and it ultimately will have to be a solution where Jerusalem will be the capital of both the state of Palestine and the state of Israel.
It will have to be a solution whereby the city remains open with access, real, free, unfettered access—not only for Palestinians and Israelis—but for worshippers from far away who will be able without fear, to come to their holy places. Not fear of being shot down, not fear of car bombs, and not fear of the kinds of things that all people residing in Jerusalem, Arab and Israelis now fear.
And finally, it will have to be a Jerusalem in which the holy places are under a mutually acceptable, perhaps internationally guaranteed regime. Perhaps our country will have to have a role in guaranteeing that regime. This is important to the United States. This has a resonance far beyond the narrow confines of Palestine and Israel. This has a resonance which policymakers should understand spreads far into Asia and Africa. This is an important issue for people. It’s important to people who are closer to us than Asia and Africa: The Vatican, European countries, Latin America. People are really concerned about this and I think we have to avoid the parochial and narrow vision which sees American domestic politics and Israeli politics as the boundaries in which we think about Jerusalem. Obviously, they are important. Israel is a powerful country. Israel can’t be forced to do anything, but there are interests that the US has in the world relating to Jerusalem, which I think it behooves this country to pay attention to.
Daniel Seidemann
I would like to limit myself to two brief points from a very Israeli perspective. When I commenced my work in Jerusalem 10 years ago, I took the case of the illegal takeovers of Palestinian properties in Silwan. I was asked to do so because one of the most respected organizations, an organization that I love, the Association of Civil rights in Israel, refused to take on the case. It was too sensitive. Ambassador Wilcox talked about the sensitivity of Jerusalem, he didn’t say that in the State Department for years it was called "the J word," along the lines of the "F word." The explicit name couldn’t be mentioned.
And for many years, I was beyond the pale; I’ve met leaders of Jewish organizations in this city in subbasements, wearing sunglasses, wearing overcoats like it was Watergate. This past summer I got a phone call, one Shabbat, one Saturday from Yossi Beilin. He had received a phone call from within Camp David from Prime Minister Barak, saying "Go out into the field, take a well touted tour of East Jerusalem, preparing public opinion for the compromised that are coming down." And Beilin asked me to advise him what route to take, saying "I really don’t want to be seen with you, it’s a bit of a political liability." An hour later, he called back and said "really, would you be willing to guide this tour for the ministers and the government but please sit back and don’t appear too much in the front of the cameras."
I said "no problem. I’m used to it." Finally the next morning I get into the office and I got a phone call from the general security services saying " We have to consult with you, we like your maps better than hours. Could we plan the route with you?" And they came to my office and I said "doesn’t the Lord work in mysterious ways? You’ve gone from listening into my phone calls, to consulting me on operational matters." Well, in any event, the event took place. It sounds amusing, but it’s not. These were heavy days and we were full of despair and legitimately so. These are really dark times.
But I’d like to point out that for the first time it’s not peripheral people like myself, but the Prime Minister and President Arafat who delve in the glowing, primordial issues. It scared the living daylights out of us, but we survived. And it is today fully legitimate, the positions that I present about the political divisions of Jerusalem, the sharing of sovereignty on the basis of equality and parity and mutual dignity are not beyond the pale, but are mainstream within Israel.
The first point that I would like to make is to describe the despair that exists today within Israel, as it relates to Jerusalem. And I describe this in the dissonance between the historically inevitable and the politically impossible. There have been two seminal events regarding Jerusalem in the Isreali mind. One of them clearly was Camp David and Camp David as perfected in Taba. And it is clear to 60-70% of the Israeli public opinion that Jerusalem is going to be politically divided along the lines of President Clinton’s ideas. That means, full stop, territorial Palestinian sovereignty, with certain modifications because the presidential ideas were drawn with a very very broad brush and are a bit problematic.
And that is seen to be a political, or historical inevitability. Even after 7 months of Intifada, with blood pressure rising and thought processes clouding over, that remains intact. The mantra is dead and cannot be resuscitated. Can’t be revived. All of the kings horses and all of the king’s men, the undivided Jerusalem, Capital of Israel, even Ehud Olmert was willing to concede to the Prime Minster that a number of Palestinian neighborhoods could revert to Palestinian sovereignty. The issue being not whether to divide Jerusalem, but where and under what circumstances.
The Second pull of this, of course, is the Intifada itself, which came as a shock and a surprise to Israelis, less so to those of us who understand that the Oslo process did not deliver its promises and basically was a continuation of various Israeli hegemonic policies. If 8 months ago, it was possible to talk about joint controls along route #1, which is basically the divide between East and West Jerusalem today, it’s almost a hermetic divide today in Jerusalem. And Prime Minister Barak was willing to entertain ideas such as this, to talk in such a way in Jerusalem today. When he talks about allowing the Palestinians today to take Beit Hanina, Sheik Jarrah, Sur Baher, Um Tuba, Palestinian sovereignty—Israelis are asking themselves the questions, will this not be the source of firing on our neighborhoods just like Beit Jala is the source of firing on Gilo.
I’m not saying that Israelis are scared; I’m saying that I’m scared. A week ago I went into Sur Baher to deal with wonderful people about the gross, unjustifiable inadequacies of the educational system there. We coordinated with the Orient House, we were talking the right language, and we understand the delicacies. We’re working together unselfconsciously. We are a living embodiment of the shared Jerusalem before it’s time. On this spirit, I felt irresponsible to my family for going in there because these are times where the centrifugal forces have torn our peoples apart.
And Israelis haven’t the vaguest idea how scared and how humiliated Palestinians are. And it’s an intellectual effort by people of good will--and people are not an export industry, not among Palestinians, not among Israelis.
To understand just how deeply the humiliation that Palestinians feel—Palestinians find it so difficult to understand how we consider ourselves a victimized party. And I understand the limitations and the complexities—and to a certain degree we have been traumatized and we’re like a drowning victim that almost drowned and we haven’t gotten back into the water yet. It is the dissonance between these two, the historically inevitable recognition that we are going to share—and when I’m talking about "share," Rashid, I’m not talking about hegemony—I’m talking about parity.
The tragedy of it all is that sometimes there is a bit of disingenuousness in these conversations. We all know what it looks like. We all know when we sit down and compare notes. We know that Beit Hanina, we know that Sheik Jarrah, is going to be full stop Palestinian. We’re going to have to coordinate matters of infrastructure. We’re going to have to coordinate matters of planning. We share the same skyline. We know, in spite of the injustice. There’s going to be compensation paid in kind, in land, and in money, but we know that Pisgat Ze’ev is staying – it’s there to stay. We all know it.
We Israelis now understand, as a result of the Intifada, how deeply the Palestinians feel about Gilo and that this has to be paid for in-kind. We didn’t understand that before. I didn’t understand that before. Their message got through.
It’s all over but the body counts. How much blood, how much time, how much suffering before we arrive at the inevitable and those of us who are engaged in this process are engaged in the grueling task of narrowing the gap between the impossible and the inevitable. That’s what it’s all about. Message number one.
Message number two. Jerusalem is a city with no status quo. It is remarkable to see how this city has functioned for the last seven months. On the one hand, it was the detonator. I don’t believe that Sharon’s visit was the real cause, it was the spark, and it was inflammatory. It not only could have been perceived in advance as a potential flashpoint, it was. I not only warned my government, I warned THIS government that a conflagration could ensue and for the most part we were successful in the past preventing this.
But Jerusalem is remarkable; it’s like an atomic advice. When it blows, watch out, but it is extremely stable. Jerusalem is quieter today and for the last seven months than not only Ramallah, El-Bireh, and Beit Jala, but also the Galilee in the earlier stages of the Intifada. I make a living at how volatile Jerusalem is. Dirty little secret: It’s a lot more stable than we think.
But please do not be deceived by this. The core, primordial issues of final status, which means the dignified sharing of Jerusalem, has been released. The expectations among the Palestinian sector in East Jerusalem are high. There is an unwillingness to countenance a continuation of Israeli hegemony/conquest.
Six weeks ago, there was an article in the Ha’aretz, by a reporter who is very close to the settlers. And he gave a wish list that had been presented by the extreme settler organizations in East Jerusalem to the Israeli Prime Minster, Sharon. And I looked at the list and I grinned from ear to ear. And I trotted off to my computer, and lo and behold, I found out that I had prepared a document for PM Barak a month or two before he took office—all of things that he should avoid doing in Jerusalem during his first 100 days in office. And lo and behold, my list and their list were identical, except everything that I said not to do, they said to do. OK?
Now, I looked at the list and I felt very proud, because 95% of the items on the list were prevented. During the Netanyahu government, they were prevented by the good offices of this government. I once found myself, during the Wye Plantation agreements, the leader of a Palestinian shabiba street gang, 2am, when settlers were crawling the walls of some building in Silwan. Faisal Husseini turned up and said, "Do you happen to have the mobile phone number of this senior American government official who is negotiating in Camp David?" I dialed, he talked, explosions were prevented out of the White House, and they were prevented from the Secretary of State’s office, the Jerusalem umbrella municipality. There was hands-on micromanagement of crises.
When the Barak government came in, that wasn’t quite necessary. We stopped it. I found myself writing the correspondence of 3 or 4 Ministers in the Israeli government. Sometimes they knew I was writing their letters, sometimes they didn’t. And we stopped these things.
Today, there has been a serious disruption of this delicate ecosystem in Jerusalem. We have nobody within our government who is going to prevent these crises and the new Administration here, has the legitimate position that it is wise for the parties to solve its problems. That might be fine when it comes to the actual negotiations, but unless there is hands-on management of these crises, we are heading for a conflagration.
And I issue a dire warning. I am not talking about the seepage of the Intifada into Jerusalem; I am talking about the gushing of the Intifada into Jerusalem. We are entering an atmosphere of unilateralism. Unilateral separation, unilateral withdrawal, etc. It’s almost like a surgical removal between Israelis and Palestinians. Nothing will motivate the Palestinians in Jerusalem more, if they are going to sealed from their hinterland in Ramallah. Basically what I’m describing is as follows: The first Intifada totally discredited the greater Israel concept. It’s been dead in the water and they just don’t know it.
There is no such thing in this archipeligo, and the attempt to invoke unilateral separation is in the end basically going to bring the Intifada into the city--- something that has not yet happened.
Finally, it is not only the lack of a status quo, or rules of engagement between Israelis and Palestinians, as they exist on the ground— and by the way, we have a list of specifics, of things that are coming. Of things that are already happening. I presented to the administration here a list of 10 or so of them, 2 or 3 that have already happened in the short time that Sharon has been in office. It is not only that. It is the lack of political terms of reference. We’re talking about the cessation of violence. We’re talking about the end of the Intifada. It is critical. The Intifada is discrediting the possibility of political dialogue.
In order for that to take place, there has to be terms of reference and terms of reference that will engage Sharon are certainly going to be different. And this administration not only has to take an active role in the management, the preemptive management, the successes of an administration, the successes of a government minister, or my successes as somebody who kibitzes on the outside are those thing that you will never hear about—but they are happening now.
The second is to develop terms of political engagement, and if one believes that we will be able to enter any kind of political process, without dealing with the political ultimates of Jerusalem, I believe is going to be disabused of this very quickly. Basically, what this means, I see no short way, in which things are going to get better. I very much fear for the stability, not only—for the worst is ahead of us, and the worst is ahead of us specifically in Jerusalem—even though, we all know that at the end of the day, we’re going to go back to the table and we know more or less what the results are going to be at the end of the day.
Jerusalem evokes profound emotional and political trepidation because, unlike any other city, Jerusalem is an aberration of time and place. What makes Jerusalem unique is not only its long and turbulent history but its continued existence in defiance of history's harsh verdicts. No other city has left such an indelible mark on the people that have passed through its gates. In that sense, Jerusalem has long since established an enduring status: a source of biblical truth and symbol of social justice, holy focus of three great religions, city of freedom and hope.
Wherever the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations may lead, Jerusalem's final status cannot simply satisfy the political, religious and territorial claims of Israelis and Palestinians: it must live up to Jerusalem's millennial vocation. The solution must account for and, at the same time, transcend political realism. It must be sensitive to the needs of current inhabitants while also reviving the past and respecting the present religious and cultural diversity. It must address not only the aspirations of its dwellers, but of the hundreds of millions of people of all persuasions who have never set foot in Jerusalem, but feel a deep affinity for its ideals. The solution, finally, must be comprehensive yet creatively tailored to the unique character of a city that has never bowed to conformity.
The conflict over Jerusalem extends beyond territory, time and human experience. In the simplest terms, it is a conflict between two peoples with deep roots in the same space. It has evolved into a multi-dimensional problem involving seemingly irreconcilable religious, demographic and political realities. Ultimately, it is a conflict between Israeli and Palestinian nationalism and Jerusalem stands at the center.
There is a clear and growing consensus among Israelis and Palestinians on a number of key issues relating to the future status of Jerusalem. Most Israelis and Palestinians rule out, though for different reasons, a redivision of the city. Both sides also agree that freedom of worship must be guaranteed and that the free movement of people and goods between east and west Jerusalem must not be hampered. Finally, both sides share the belief that a strong financial base requires the fully integrated economy of a united Jerusalem. While agreement on these issues is fundamental, the rift between the Israelis and Palestinians on the larger question of sovereignty and ultimate control over the eastern part of the city remains wide open. And it is here where national dispositions --historical and psychological--leave very little room for mutual accommodation, grinding any reasonable discourse to a halt.
But the Israelis and Palestinians know that they must accommodate each other. For nearly three and half decades (1967-2000), Jerusalem has served as a microcosm for Israeli and Palestinian cooperation. Even at the peak of the Palestinian uprising known as the Intifada this cooperation prevailed. Jerusalem must take the lead now. Within its walls, the largest concentration of Jews and Palestinians live side by side, and each population is determined to stay in place.
Jerusalem is the only city that can prove the validity of Israeli-Palestinian co-existence. No one should question Jewish historic claim and affinity to Jerusalem which dates back the Canaanite period (3000-1200 BCE). The capture of the old city in 1967 was widely seen by the Israelis as nothing less than the renewal of God's covenant with the Jews. East Jerusalem represents their past and present, a source of religious and cultural continuity without which Israel's very existence could unravel. The hope of returning to Jerusalem has sustained the Jews throughout their dispersion, and centuries of exile have been unable to extinguish it.
However, the Israelis must also recognize Palestinian's right to east Jerusalem based on an Arab-Muslim historical claim dating back to the conquest of the city by the Caliph Omar and the defeat of the Byzantines in 637. For the Palestinians, their political claim to the city is rooted in Islamic tradition: Jerusalem was identified as the mystical destination of Muhammad's night journey to visit God's presence, and both the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aksa mosque, Islam's third holiest shrines, are situated there.
Unlike any other place in Israel and the territories, Jerusalem has the largest interspersed population- nearly 450,000 Jews and over 200,000 Arabs. More than one third of Jerusalem's Jewish population lives in the east side. This interspersal of Israeli and Palestinian population has made the redivision of the city inconceivable. No Israeli government could remove even a few Jews from Jerusalem and stay in power. East and west Jerusalem have now been fully integrated in all aspects of day-to-day life with the social integrity of the city's separate ethnic quarters intact. The future solution must, therefore, fully reflect these realities.
Israel and the Palestinians should institutionalize what has already been functioning on the ground. Both sides should continue to administer their holy places as they have been since Israel captured the old city in 1967. The Palestinians have been exercising de-facto sovereignty over their holy shrines and educational institutions. Israel should now formalize this arrangement by extending extraterritoriality to the Palestinians over the entire area called the Haram al-Sharif, including much of the old city where a majority of Palestinians reside. This solution, fashioned after the Vatican in Rome, could satisfy the Muslim needs without compromising the integrity of a united city.
Free access to all religious and cultural institutions must be maintained along with the free movement of people and goods between east and west at all times. Municipal services, including electricity, water and sewage, must continue to be maintained by a single joint authority. Sustaining the city's infrastructure, building roads and managing city planning must be coordinated.
The Palestinians should establish their own elected local authority in order to run their schools, cultural affairs and health clinics. This Palestinian authority should be represented at greater Jerusalem City Hall to coordinate with long term city planning that may affect east Jerusalem.
All Palestinians in Jerusalem should automatically become citizens of the Palestinian state, and enjoy full rights to vote and travel on Palestinian authority documents. Civil emergency or grave threats to security aside, Israel must grant them freedom of movement and job opportunity in Israel.
All Israelis and Palestinians should maintain their chosen nationalities regardless of place of residence in greater Jerusalem. Thus the city's political status would not be affected by future demographic growth.
Although separate internal security forces will be necessary, a joint contingent of Israeli and Palestinian police force should be formed to deal with crimes that may result from cohabitation. The excavation of historic sites and the purchase or expropriation of any land for public use in east Jerusalem must be determined by mutual agreement.
In the Bible, two universal elements " justice and peace" are consistently associated with Jerusalem. Israel has created the reality of coexistence. It must now grant the Palestinians the right to live their lives with dignity. In turn, the Palestinians will have to create new conditions, consistent with Israel's reality that will enable them to exercise their political independence in part of east Jerusalem as their capital. Thus both Israel and the Palestinians will find that Jerusalem will play its pre-ordained role as the catalyst for an overall settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian discord and for permanent peace.
Salim Tamari
I want to thank ACJ for inviting me here for the second time, and I must say that there’s a sense of déją vu about this meeting. You recall our encounter here with Congress about a year and a half ago. The circumstances have changed very drastically and have framed the present debate in a grim and less hopeful atmosphere, but let us hope that some ideas will be floated here that will contribute to circumventing the situation.
Ambassador Wilcox mentioned that in his view, the failure of the Camp David agreement talks was not exclusively based on the disagreement over Jerusalem. I believe that the reason was certainly Jerusalem. If we look at the embeddedness within Jerusalem of the other outstanding features-- of the territorial claims, control of the holy places and of settlements—then all of them are manifested in the most acute manner in the confiscation of the city of Jerusalem. I believe that the talks collapsed because they failed to reach an agreement on two central aspects of the city’s future. The first is the determination and control of the holy places and the second was the continued presence of some 200,000 Israeli settlers in the Arab section of the city.
When we define the city as open, then we can think of the free floating presence of Israelis, Palestinians, Jews, Muslims, and Christians within the city—but as long as one group is denied access to the other side of the city, then we have to treat the colonial presence of the city on the Arab side as a colonial or settler presence.
Although the issue of sacred geography and worldly problems have become intimately linked in this conflict, I will try in this intervention to disentangle them in order to diffuse the political question that has become destructively religious and therefore not subject to rational discourse. The problem lies, in my view, that while Palestinians claim that Eastern/Arab part of the city is occupied territory and therefore subject to the implementation of UN Security Council resolution 242, Israelis insist that they have a substantial claim to the Arab city while the western part shall remain uncontested.
Since its conquest of the Arab cities in 1967, but most notably since the implementation of the Oslo accords in September 1993, Israel has proceeded to alter the demographic, legal and cultural character of the city by a number of key strategic policies. It has imported more than 200,000 Israelis as Jewish settlers and have them strategically in some 20 colonial settlements in expanded areas north, east, and south of the metropolitan area of Jerusalem.
When I say "imported," perhaps people would object to it. I must say here two things: First, the Israeli Jews who settled in the Eastern part of the city, for example in the Jewish quarter, have no historical continuity with the original settlers or the original inhabitants of the Jewish quarter. Many of them are not Jewish, especially former residents of Ukraine, Georgia and the Soviet Union, who used their Israeli identity to settle in cheaper housing in the Eastern part of the city. Why did Israel make it possible for a large number of Jewish residents to move into these settlements? I think for two ostensible reasons.
First, is the plan to reduce the proportion of Arab residents in the city. Indeed in 1985, this plan succeeded and Jews became a majority in the Arab section of the city. They also did it to isolate the Palestinian city from its hinterland, through a belt of adjacent Jewish suburbs that sealed indigenous Arabs from its suburban and rural communities inside the West Bank.
Second, Israel illegally annexed the expanded boundaries of East Jerusalem and administered Israeli law, while applying military law to the rest of the Occupied Territories except for the Golan Heights that was subjected to the same process. This allows for the strict regulation of residency and work rights in the city. The strict and selective building codes allow Jewish residents to build inside the city boundaries while encouraging the Arab residents to relocate to the periphery of the city and in outlying areas of the West Bank and where many of them eventually lost their residency rights.
Third, Israel established a blockade on the expanded municipal boundaries of the city. Initially in 1991 after the Gulf War, regulating the entrance of Palestinians to the city by a system of passes, permits and then totally excluding West Bankers from entering, working, or even passing through the city, which is the situation today. And this happens not only during periods of violence, but through periods of, let’s say, regulated normality, following the agreements between the two sides. They were certainly intensified during these agreements, which is the punishing part of the situation.
The ostensible reason for this horrific blockade is to maintain the security of Israeli citizens from potential acts of violence and sabotage. However, the blockade is clearly political, since the checkpoints preventing access for Palestinians are not placed between Arab and Jewish neighborhoods, but within Arab occupied territories, thus separating Palestinians from gaining entry to the Arab neighborhoods of the city. The net result of this blockade has been to strangle the economy of the city by denying access to its educational, health, employment, market, and cultural facilities to all West Bankers as well as to Gazans.
In doing so, the West Bank lost its main metropolitan center and commercial marketing outlet. The city was denied the benefit of some half million commuters who used its facilities. The blockade also divided the West Bank into two main zones: the North and the South, disrupting trade routes, access and geographic continuity of the country as a whole. Such a situation cannot be sustained and is untenable. It is the breeding ground of violence and uncontrollable rage and I think that the beginning of it, if a situation like this continues.
Israel and the Palestinians began to seriously examine alternate solutions at Camp David to determine the final status of the city. They moved forward on some issues, such as territorial continuity and the settlements, but they moved backwards on the question of control of the holy sites and the continued presence of colonial settlements inside the city. Mr. Barak’s team in those negotiations over Jerusalem can be summarized by the following dictum: "What is ours will remain ours and let us have compromises over sharing your part of the city." Jews were settled by right in the Arab city, but Palestinians have no right to move to the Jewish part or to even claim their property rights within it—and I agree with my colleague’s (Ben-Meir) comments about the right of people to move freely everywhere but hereby contrasting harsh reality with projected image of what the city could and should be.
Such a proposal cannot go very far and certainly needs to refocus on the issues. Expand on the consensual arenas and rethink the contested territory. A good beginning would be treat to the religious sites within the context of the status quo acceptable to all parties except extremists on all sides and deal with the issue of sovereign control over territory within the context of an application of UN resolution 242, mutual respect and mutual recognition. Once agreed on, the two sides could proceed to delineate the boundaries of sharing the old city on the basis of separate sovereignty and shared administration. A city that is peaceful, accessible, and open to all.
Rashid Khalidi
I want to thank you all for coming, in my capacity as President of the American Committee on Jerusalem, one of the co-sponsors of this event. We may seem naively optimistic in even talking about a shared Jerusalem in a situation where there are 20- or so people being killed or maimed every week across Palestine and Israel. I’m afraid that it’s true that a shared Jerusalem, or indeed any kind of progress towards a settlement is less likely today, or in the near future, than it has been for most of the past 10 years.
Were we not focusing on Jerusalem, I would try to spend a little bit of time talking about how the Oslo process in my view has in fact involved a detour from having a real impact on the two sides. If only in terms of two things: By preventing, for the better part of 10 years, any discussion of any important issues between the two sides—Jerusalem, refugees, borders, sovereignty, settlements, water—anything of any importance while allowing at the same time the continuation of settlements, the continuation of land expropriation, a consecration of occupation. Oslo left us much worse off than we were when we went to Madrid in the fall of 1991.
We are in a much worse situation in terms of peace, reconciliation, justice, implementation of international law-- anything, any standard you choose to use, unless your standard is the absorption of occupied territory into Israel. By that standard, things are much better than they were then.
The same principles apply in Jerusalem. We have settlements, like Har Homa, Abu Ghneim, which were not even a twinkle in the eye of the planners a decade ago. The first residents are going to be taking up their brand new apartments sometime in the near future, unless someone does something to stop them. Now, having said all that, I think it is a fact that the media was no more correct in saying that the Camp David and subsequent negotiations broke down over Jerusalem, than they were in describing Barak’s proposals as "generous."
Again, I don’t have time to go over why they were not very generous at all, but it is the case that on Jerusalem, Barak did actually bring something different to the table. Insufficient perhaps, but certainly the Barak proposals and the later proposals from president Clinton in December and the negotiations that continued in Taba, right at the eve of the Israeli elections did involve some very important new elements. They certainly were not close to an agreement in Taba on Jerusalem. There were a couple of issues where there still were some serious differences. One of them, as Professor Tamari said, was the holy places. But in fact there was something new discussed by the two sides and part of it was the results of Barak’s proposals.
This brings me to what I want to talk about, which is: How do we share Jerusalem? Whenever Palestinians and Israelis are able to come to the table to negotiate sometime in the future. I suggest that those negotiations as far as Jerusalem was concerned would have to proceed from a principle of equality and on the basis of international law. I don’t really think that saying that "well, here we are, with an unequal playing field, one very powerful and one very weak partner…We’ve bridged the gaps." That pragmatic approach, which has been the hallmark of Israeli diplomacy for the last decade or so is not going to bring us a solution in Jerusalem and the stubbornness of the Palestinians on Jerusalem is going to be more and more apparent if this operating on non-level playing field without the principles of equality and equity and international law being brought in to prevail.
Both sides have rights in Jerusalem. Professor Ben Meir is right. Both sides have aspirations in Jerusalem just as Palestinians are going to have to sooner or later understand Jewish and Israeli aspirations in Jerusalem so will Israel have to recognize publicly, as it never has done, in fact as it has constantly and systematically denigrated for decades, the fact that Palestinians have rights and aspirations in Jerusalem and that Palestinians don’t see themselves solely in some Islamic, or even some Christian narrative. They see themselves in terms of some continuity with the land and with the city, which goes back several millennia. The fact that these narratives may not be shared does not mean that they do not have to be respected. The Jewish narrative, if we are expected to respect it, should be matched by similar respect for Palestinian own merit.
And so both sides, I think, have rights, aspirations, both hold it sacred. Neither, I think, can trump the other, or claim to trump the other in this regard. "We have more mentions of Jerusalem in our holy book than you do," that’s not the way to make an agreement on Jerusalem. Jerusalem clearly has to be a capital for both, where people clearly have to have unfettered access to and through Jerusalem, a situation that clearly has not now prevailed for the better part of a decade as far as Palestinians are concerned. Palestinians cannot enter from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip as Professor Tamari has laid out for us.
The second thing that’s going to have to be at the basis of this is that East Jerusalem is occupied territory and by the Fourth Geneva Convention, the occupying power does not have the right to settle its population in occupied territory. Therefore, neighborhoods, housing units, whatever you want to call them are illegal: Har Homa, French Hill, Gilo are illegal. The Arab population has communal rights, collective rights, and a variety of other rights, which cannot be violated for the convenience of a population that has settled illegally in this part of occupied territory, East Jerusalem.
Even if the Palestinians have made a decision, which they have not as far as I know, made, to acquiesce in some Jewish neighborhoods remaining under Jewish sovereignty, under Israeli sovereignty I should say, the continuity of the settlement, this cannot be at the expense of the property rights, or the civil rights, or the communal rights of the indigenous Arab population of East Jerusalem. It has absolute rights, which cannot be violated.
It was in these terms that the Barak proposal was weakest, by not providing contiguity between the northern and southern parts of the West Bank through Jerusalem, by not providing continuity of the various Palestinian neighborhoods in Jerusalem, by saying that areas with Jewish residents have to be connected to one another and Palestinians can basically figure out how they can go around us. This simply will not do. Another thing that neither the status quo in the holy places, nor the Barak proposals, nor anything that the Palestinians put on the table to be fair—what none of these things has succeeded in doing was to put forward what I think is a satisfactory regime for the holy places. Some people argued that we should prolong the status quo. The status quo has led to the killing, on 3 occasions in 10 years of Palestinian worshippers on the Haram al-Sharif. This, to my way of thinking, is not an acceptable status quo. People have been shot down in 1990, 1996, and 2000 in one of the holiest places in Islam. This is not a satisfactory status quo. The status quo is not fine. There has been violence in holy places all over Palestine in both Jewish and Muslim holy places.
Clearly, it is not going to be acceptable for us to extend this into the future the regime that we have today, whether in terms of actual control of the site, but maybe there are some aspects that we do want to preserve. The overall situation, which has involved repeated multiple deaths of worshippers at holy places or of others at holy places simply will not do. For that matter not in Hebron, nor Nablus, nor elsewhere, but certainly not in Jerusalem. It will not be acceptable for the rest of the world let alone the Palestinians and I think it’s also not acceptable to Israel.
Either we’re going to have a situation where the two sides come to an agreement whereby each side controls its own holy places or the two sides are going to have to come to an agreement which involves some kind of third party involvement in a settlement as far as the holy places are concerned.
Let me now focus on things that we all can do in this country, because whenever negotiations do become possible, and by negotiations, I don’t mean the two sides sitting down to discuss security or violence or ending this miserable confrontation. That’s a prerequisite, obviously, but once they’ve done that and even if they manage to talk again, if they don’t start talking about Jerusalem, settlements, borders, sovereignty, water, refugees, they’re not talking about issues between the Palestinians and Israelis, they’re talking about managing the conflict.
Maybe the conflict has to be managed, in fact it has to be but when they negotiate about the real things, which the Camp David/Oslo framework did not do for 9.5 years, at that point I think that the situation will be measurably improved. If our government, the United States government, can manage to hold fast to longstanding traditional elements of US policy, I’m going to state three of them that are particularly relevant in Jerusalem:
The first is that the status of this city cannot be unilaterally determined by any party, certainly neither of the two parties in conflict, the Israelis or the Palestinians, can say "this is the way it will be." They can’t say that in congress, they can’t say that diplomatically, they can’t say that in negotiations. That will not do.
Secondly, no actions should be taken which will preempt or prejudge a final settlement. Now this is not my wording, this is the wording of the invitation to the peace conference. This is Secretary of State Baker’s wording, this is the U.S. government’s wording, this is wording which is in fact ignored in the case of Jerusalem by the constant building of settlements, the constant confiscation of land, the constant or the series of actions which have rendered the Palestinians more and more narrowly hemmed in to smaller and smaller parts of their own cities. These things clearly make a settlement impossible.
If one side is eating the pie that they are supposed to be negotiating about, clearly we have a problem with the negotiations. That process has not been prevented for 10 years, it continues. Nowadays there are no negotiations, but when they start—if there is not a freeze on the situation. If actions that prevent an agreement are not stopped, then you are not going to have an agreement and that’s one reason we did not have an agreement over the past 10 years.
Finally, the city will have to remain, in some sense, a single unit. In some sense there will have to remain some unity to the city, there will have to remain an open city, but for us to take that a step further as some people would like to take it, and say "the city has to remain united", or that "we have to continue to have the coexistence that we have today," in fact distorts reality. It is not a united city, it is an occupied city. It is not a city today that is a beacon of coexistence. It is a city where one people is subjugated by another people.
What we have to have is a situation of coexistence. What we have to have is a situation where all Israelis can come to any part of Jerusalem and all Palestinians can come to any part of Jerusalem. Where people have equal rights in both parts of the city, all parts of the city. And where things like zoning are not decided on the basis of Israeli national objectives, rather than the needs and requirements of the two national communities that are going to have to share the city. Those are the kinds of issues that are going to have to be I think, stressed by the United States if the United States does not do these things. If for some misfortune, our government policy does not stress these principles that I've talked about—the idea that the city’s future cannot be determined by one party, the idea that actions shouldn’t be taken which would prejudge the future, the idea that the city has to remain a whole, that could not be continuation of the status quo.
If, sadly, we don’t do what we should do, I think this would not help Israel. It would in fact further isolate Israel in the world on the Jerusalem issue. Further, it would provoke the Palestinians and simply delay the day, a day which in fact seemed to be coming closer, in terms of Israeli public opinion, before the very sad events of the last 6 or 8 months, when sensible Israelis began to rethink their position. It’s clear both from polls in Israel, and from a number of Israeli data that there was the beginning of an understanding on the part of Israelis that they cannot forever control the largest Arab city in the West Bank, which is East Jerusalem. It is simply unfeasible. And that some how or other, some of the kinds of the ideas that professor Ben-Meir was putting forward are the only way that you can have real coexistence and a real settlement on Jerusalem.
Clearly the United States cannot fashion a settlement, the US cannot force an agreement, the US cannot impose its will, but I think the US can state its’ own position. "It is our view that," or "it has constantly been our position that" or "international law mandates that," or "it is an international consensus that"—there’s no harm to doing that and those positions should be based on principle and on international law. Occupation is occupation, that is the position of the US, and that applies to East Jerusalem. Settlements are illegal; settlements are obstacles to peace and to serious negotiation.
And finally, nothing should be done that makes negotiations between the two sides more difficult and much has been done over the past 10 years in Jerusalem that does make it more difficult.
We’re far away from an agreement; we’re far away from negotiations on substantive issues. The Bush administration certainly cannot do much to get us there, I think however that stressing the violence committed by one side and not stressing the measurably greater violence coming from the other side and not stressing the underlying problem of continued occupation actually gets us further away from a solution. When and if the parties can sit down, I think that stress by our government on the principle traditional positions that the US has held to in Jerusalem will help the parties to devise a solution. They will have to come to that conclusion themselves, and it ultimately will have to be a solution where Jerusalem will be the capital of both the state of Palestine and the state of Israel.
It will have to be a solution whereby the city remains open with access, real, free, unfettered access—not only for Palestinians and Israelis—but for worshippers from far away who will be able without fear, to come to their holy places. Not fear of being shot down, not fear of car bombs, and not fear of the kinds of things that all people residing in Jerusalem, Arab and Israelis now fear.
And finally, it will have to be a Jerusalem in which the holy places are under a mutually acceptable, perhaps internationally guaranteed regime. Perhaps our country will have to have a role in guaranteeing that regime. This is important to the United States. This has a resonance far beyond the narrow confines of Palestine and Israel. This has a resonance which policymakers should understand spreads far into Asia and Africa. This is an important issue for people. It’s important to people who are closer to us than Asia and Africa: The Vatican, European countries, Latin America. People are really concerned about this and I think we have to avoid the parochial and narrow vision which sees American domestic politics and Israeli politics as the boundaries in which we think about Jerusalem. Obviously, they are important. Israel is a powerful country. Israel can’t be forced to do anything, but there are interests that the US has in the world relating to Jerusalem, which I think it behooves this country to pay attention to.
Daniel Seidemann
I would like to limit myself to two brief points from a very Israeli perspective. When I commenced my work in Jerusalem 10 years ago, I took the case of the illegal takeovers of Palestinian properties in Silwan. I was asked to do so because one of the most respected organizations, an organization that I love, the Association of Civil rights in Israel, refused to take on the case. It was too sensitive. Ambassador Wilcox talked about the sensitivity of Jerusalem, he didn’t say that in the State Department for years it was called "the J word," along the lines of the "F word." The explicit name couldn’t be mentioned.
And for many years, I was beyond the pale; I’ve met leaders of Jewish organizations in this city in subbasements, wearing sunglasses, wearing overcoats like it was Watergate. This past summer I got a phone call, one Shabbat, one Saturday from Yossi Beilin. He had received a phone call from within Camp David from Prime Minister Barak, saying "Go out into the field, take a well touted tour of East Jerusalem, preparing public opinion for the compromised that are coming down." And Beilin asked me to advise him what route to take, saying "I really don’t want to be seen with you, it’s a bit of a political liability." An hour later, he called back and said "really, would you be willing to guide this tour for the ministers and the government but please sit back and don’t appear too much in the front of the cameras."
I said "no problem. I’m used to it." Finally the next morning I get into the office and I got a phone call from the general security services saying " We have to consult with you, we like your maps better than hours. Could we plan the route with you?" And they came to my office and I said "doesn’t the Lord work in mysterious ways? You’ve gone from listening into my phone calls, to consulting me on operational matters." Well, in any event, the event took place. It sounds amusing, but it’s not. These were heavy days and we were full of despair and legitimately so. These are really dark times.
But I’d like to point out that for the first time it’s not peripheral people like myself, but the Prime Minister and President Arafat who delve in the glowing, primordial issues. It scared the living daylights out of us, but we survived. And it is today fully legitimate, the positions that I present about the political divisions of Jerusalem, the sharing of sovereignty on the basis of equality and parity and mutual dignity are not beyond the pale, but are mainstream within Israel.
The first point that I would like to make is to describe the despair that exists today within Israel, as it relates to Jerusalem. And I describe this in the dissonance between the historically inevitable and the politically impossible. There have been two seminal events regarding Jerusalem in the Isreali mind. One of them clearly was Camp David and Camp David as perfected in Taba. And it is clear to 60-70% of the Israeli public opinion that Jerusalem is going to be politically divided along the lines of President Clinton’s ideas. That means, full stop, territorial Palestinian sovereignty, with certain modifications because the presidential ideas were drawn with a very very broad brush and are a bit problematic.
And that is seen to be a political, or historical inevitability. Even after 7 months of Intifada, with blood pressure rising and thought processes clouding over, that remains intact. The mantra is dead and cannot be resuscitated. Can’t be revived. All of the kings horses and all of the king’s men, the undivided Jerusalem, Capital of Israel, even Ehud Olmert was willing to concede to the Prime Minster that a number of Palestinian neighborhoods could revert to Palestinian sovereignty. The issue being not whether to divide Jerusalem, but where and under what circumstances.
The Second pull of this, of course, is the Intifada itself, which came as a shock and a surprise to Israelis, less so to those of us who understand that the Oslo process did not deliver its promises and basically was a continuation of various Israeli hegemonic policies. If 8 months ago, it was possible to talk about joint controls along route #1, which is basically the divide between East and West Jerusalem today, it’s almost a hermetic divide today in Jerusalem. And Prime Minister Barak was willing to entertain ideas such as this, to talk in such a way in Jerusalem today. When he talks about allowing the Palestinians today to take Beit Hanina, Sheik Jarrah, Sur Baher, Um Tuba, Palestinian sovereignty—Israelis are asking themselves the questions, will this not be the source of firing on our neighborhoods just like Beit Jala is the source of firing on Gilo.
I’m not saying that Israelis are scared; I’m saying that I’m scared. A week ago I went into Sur Baher to deal with wonderful people about the gross, unjustifiable inadequacies of the educational system there. We coordinated with the Orient House, we were talking the right language, and we understand the delicacies. We’re working together unselfconsciously. We are a living embodiment of the shared Jerusalem before it’s time. On this spirit, I felt irresponsible to my family for going in there because these are times where the centrifugal forces have torn our peoples apart.
And Israelis haven’t the vaguest idea how scared and how humiliated Palestinians are. And it’s an intellectual effort by people of good will--and people are not an export industry, not among Palestinians, not among Israelis.
To understand just how deeply the humiliation that Palestinians feel—Palestinians find it so difficult to understand how we consider ourselves a victimized party. And I understand the limitations and the complexities—and to a certain degree we have been traumatized and we’re like a drowning victim that almost drowned and we haven’t gotten back into the water yet. It is the dissonance between these two, the historically inevitable recognition that we are going to share—and when I’m talking about "share," Rashid, I’m not talking about hegemony—I’m talking about parity.
The tragedy of it all is that sometimes there is a bit of disingenuousness in these conversations. We all know what it looks like. We all know when we sit down and compare notes. We know that Beit Hanina, we know that Sheik Jarrah, is going to be full stop Palestinian. We’re going to have to coordinate matters of infrastructure. We’re going to have to coordinate matters of planning. We share the same skyline. We know, in spite of the injustice. There’s going to be compensation paid in kind, in land, and in money, but we know that Pisgat Ze’ev is staying – it’s there to stay. We all know it.
We Israelis now understand, as a result of the Intifada, how deeply the Palestinians feel about Gilo and that this has to be paid for in-kind. We didn’t understand that before. I didn’t understand that before. Their message got through.
It’s all over but the body counts. How much blood, how much time, how much suffering before we arrive at the inevitable and those of us who are engaged in this process are engaged in the grueling task of narrowing the gap between the impossible and the inevitable. That’s what it’s all about. Message number one.
Message number two. Jerusalem is a city with no status quo. It is remarkable to see how this city has functioned for the last seven months. On the one hand, it was the detonator. I don’t believe that Sharon’s visit was the real cause, it was the spark, and it was inflammatory. It not only could have been perceived in advance as a potential flashpoint, it was. I not only warned my government, I warned THIS government that a conflagration could ensue and for the most part we were successful in the past preventing this.
But Jerusalem is remarkable; it’s like an atomic advice. When it blows, watch out, but it is extremely stable. Jerusalem is quieter today and for the last seven months than not only Ramallah, El-Bireh, and Beit Jala, but also the Galilee in the earlier stages of the Intifada. I make a living at how volatile Jerusalem is. Dirty little secret: It’s a lot more stable than we think.
But please do not be deceived by this. The core, primordial issues of final status, which means the dignified sharing of Jerusalem, has been released. The expectations among the Palestinian sector in East Jerusalem are high. There is an unwillingness to countenance a continuation of Israeli hegemony/conquest.
Six weeks ago, there was an article in the Ha’aretz, by a reporter who is very close to the settlers. And he gave a wish list that had been presented by the extreme settler organizations in East Jerusalem to the Israeli Prime Minster, Sharon. And I looked at the list and I grinned from ear to ear. And I trotted off to my computer, and lo and behold, I found out that I had prepared a document for PM Barak a month or two before he took office—all of things that he should avoid doing in Jerusalem during his first 100 days in office. And lo and behold, my list and their list were identical, except everything that I said not to do, they said to do. OK?
Now, I looked at the list and I felt very proud, because 95% of the items on the list were prevented. During the Netanyahu government, they were prevented by the good offices of this government. I once found myself, during the Wye Plantation agreements, the leader of a Palestinian shabiba street gang, 2am, when settlers were crawling the walls of some building in Silwan. Faisal Husseini turned up and said, "Do you happen to have the mobile phone number of this senior American government official who is negotiating in Camp David?" I dialed, he talked, explosions were prevented out of the White House, and they were prevented from the Secretary of State’s office, the Jerusalem umbrella municipality. There was hands-on micromanagement of crises.
When the Barak government came in, that wasn’t quite necessary. We stopped it. I found myself writing the correspondence of 3 or 4 Ministers in the Israeli government. Sometimes they knew I was writing their letters, sometimes they didn’t. And we stopped these things.
Today, there has been a serious disruption of this delicate ecosystem in Jerusalem. We have nobody within our government who is going to prevent these crises and the new Administration here, has the legitimate position that it is wise for the parties to solve its problems. That might be fine when it comes to the actual negotiations, but unless there is hands-on management of these crises, we are heading for a conflagration.
And I issue a dire warning. I am not talking about the seepage of the Intifada into Jerusalem; I am talking about the gushing of the Intifada into Jerusalem. We are entering an atmosphere of unilateralism. Unilateral separation, unilateral withdrawal, etc. It’s almost like a surgical removal between Israelis and Palestinians. Nothing will motivate the Palestinians in Jerusalem more, if they are going to sealed from their hinterland in Ramallah. Basically what I’m describing is as follows: The first Intifada totally discredited the greater Israel concept. It’s been dead in the water and they just don’t know it.
There is no such thing in this archipeligo, and the attempt to invoke unilateral separation is in the end basically going to bring the Intifada into the city--- something that has not yet happened.
Finally, it is not only the lack of a status quo, or rules of engagement between Israelis and Palestinians, as they exist on the ground— and by the way, we have a list of specifics, of things that are coming. Of things that are already happening. I presented to the administration here a list of 10 or so of them, 2 or 3 that have already happened in the short time that Sharon has been in office. It is not only that. It is the lack of political terms of reference. We’re talking about the cessation of violence. We’re talking about the end of the Intifada. It is critical. The Intifada is discrediting the possibility of political dialogue.
In order for that to take place, there has to be terms of reference and terms of reference that will engage Sharon are certainly going to be different. And this administration not only has to take an active role in the management, the preemptive management, the successes of an administration, the successes of a government minister, or my successes as somebody who kibitzes on the outside are those thing that you will never hear about—but they are happening now.
The second is to develop terms of political engagement, and if one believes that we will be able to enter any kind of political process, without dealing with the political ultimates of Jerusalem, I believe is going to be disabused of this very quickly. Basically, what this means, I see no short way, in which things are going to get better. I very much fear for the stability, not only—for the worst is ahead of us, and the worst is ahead of us specifically in Jerusalem—even though, we all know that at the end of the day, we’re going to go back to the table and we know more or less what the results are going to be at the end of the day.