Jerusalem Increasingly Seen as Issue Destroying the Peace Process

By Michael Howard

The status of Jerusalem is of concern to hundreds of millions of adherents of three religions—Islam, Christianity and Judaism. All three faiths lay claim to a voice in the disposition of the city of King David, Jesus Christ and the Prophet Muhammad.

Israeli policies since the occupation of Arab East Jerusalem during the Six-Day War of June 1967 are designed to prejudge the issue. New housing complexes for Jewish residents in the east of the city, the confiscation of Arab-owned land, and the refusal to grant permits for rehabilitation of buildings in Arab quarters are designed to change the demographics of the city.

While carrying out these policies, the Israeli government has sought to put international discussion of Jerusalem on the back burner of the Middle East peace process. But deferring the issue means only that as the peace process stumbles along, the unresolved question of Jerusalem casts its shadow over all of the other efforts of the peacemakers. Should the status of Jerusalem be given priority in the Middle East peace process, as advocated by the Palestinians, or are the Israelis right in deferring any discussion of it until all other issues are settled?

This question was addressed by an 11 person panel, including both Israelis and Palestinians, in Athens earlier this year at an "informal encounter" organized by the United Nations, sponsored by the Greek government, and entitled, "Jerusalem: Visions of Reconciliation."

The meeting was the first at such a level to deal specifically with the issues of sovereignty over the city, municipal responsibilities and tangible confidence-building measures. Israeli Labor Party Knesset member and panelist Yael Dayan pointed out it also was the first such U.N. "informal" discussion to get the blessing of the Israeli Foreign Ministry. That, she insisted, represented a tangible shift by the Labor government from the Likud approach.

Sami Musallam, director of the PLO president's office in Tunis, deplored the change in "the demographic character of the Holy City." He charged Israeli authorities with imposing a 26 percent "lid" on the percentage of Arab inhabitants of Jerusalem in order to "affect elections on the status of the city."

Dayan insisted that a solution to the Jerusalem problem would emerge once an interim framework had been worked out during the planned period of Palestinian self-rule in the West Bank and Gaza.

"No Israeli government is then going to say that Jerusalem is the indivisible capital of Israel," said Dayan. In her outspoken speech she also attributed progress toward peace to a change in Palestinian tactics. "The intifada should have started a lot earlier," she said. "It is resistance, not terror, and has produced some positive results. "

Though she called Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's decision to expel some 400 alleged Hamas supporters a "disastrous decision," Dayan nevertheless insisted there are differences in approach between the current Labor government of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and the former Likud administration of Yitzhak Shamir. She appealed for the Palestinians to stick with the peace process, saying that if it and the Labor government failed, Israel would be plunged into another decade of rightwing rule and any hope for progress on the Palestinian issue would end.

Dayan, the daughter of Gen. Moshe Dayan, who was Israel's minister of defense in 1967 when it occupied East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, angered some of the Palestinian panelists by saying that the overall solution to the Palestinian problem lies in Israeli hands. "The U.N. will not deliver Palestine to the Palestinians, nor will the United States, Russia or Saddam Hussain," she argued.

Sari Nusseibeh, a member of the Palestinian negotiating team steering committee, countered that in the final analysis it was "only the Palestinians that can give legitimization to the Israelis. " Even more angrily, Public Relations Director Albert Aghazarian of Bir Zeit University, an adviser to the Palestinian negotiating team, denounced Dayan's words as "tantamount to an advanced form of terrorism." He vividly described the daily difficulties faced by his students in the occupied territories as they try to negotiate their way to their classes through army checkpoints and roadblocks.

Israeli Moshe Amirav, a Jerusalem city councilman, drew attention to the economic problems faced by the Palestinians in Jerusalem—lack of housing and lack of representation on the commissions that provide city services. He urged Arab East Jerusalemites to "show a sense of practicality" and present a joint list of candidates for Jerusalem municipality elections. He stressed that all of its inhabitants must feel Jerusalem is "our city, not my city." He warned that if Likud wins the municipal elections in November, it will be bad for Palestinians, Israelis and Jerusalem itself.

Some of the Palestinians on the panel, however, doubted whether Arab Jerusalemites would be prepared to turn out in significant numbers for Israeli elections. Said publisher Hanna Siniora of East Jerusalem's Al Fajr newspaper: "Jerusalem is not united. It is divided by a wall of fear." He said Palestinians now are thinking of "rejuvenating" the East Jerusalem municipality with 24 councilors who could be appointed or elected, taking into account "the political and religious balance of the city."

Discussing confidence-building measures, Sami Musallam said an end to the Israeli occupation of Jerusalem would be the best measure to build confidence between Israelis and Palestinians. "But until this happens," Musallam said, "small steps are needed in the right direction to recreate confidence lacking between the Israeli and Palestinian people." He suggested re-establishment of the Arab municipality in Jerusalem, guarantees of religious freedom and access to the holy places, and a lifting of a ban on the movement of Palestinians between the occupied territories.

In reply, Dayan said that "accepting the fact that Israel is here to stay and coming to terms with the reality of the situation is the most important step before proceeding to confidence-building measures . . . We will not give you the keys [to the creation of a Palestinian state] unless you guarantee the sovereignty of the Israeli state."

Summing up, President Robert Keeley of the Middle East Institute in Washington, DC suggested reconsideration of the 1947 U.N. partition plan. It had some merits and dealt with the problems of Jerusalem in some interesting ways, he said.

Sari Nusseibeh commented that worthwhile as the meeting had been, he felt that political rhetoric had at times sidetracked the debaters from the Jerusalem issue they had been invited to discuss.

Other panelists included Ruth Lapidoth, professor of international law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Idith Zertal, columnist, Ha'aretz Network; Valery Kuzmin, Israel and Palestine section of the Middle East Department in the Foreign Ministry of the Russian Federation; and Constantine Prevedourakis, ambassador of Greece to Tunisia and former consul general of Greece in Jerusalem.

Mustapha Tilli, moderator of the encounter and chief of the Decolonization and Palestine programs of the U.N. Department of Public Information, presented the U.N. view on the issue. The Israeli and U.S. embassies in Athens were invited to send representatives but declined the offer.