Opening Gun of Negotiations on Jerusalem: 100 Attend CNI Seminar

By Jon Van Camp

The Council for the National Interest opened the debate on Jerusalem on Capitol Hill in late June with a forum chaired by former Congressman Paul Findley. The panel included Professor Ian Lustick of the University of Pennsylvania, and Professor Walid Khalidi, whose forthcoming book on the subject will undoubtedly reflect the Palestinian and American interest in seeing to it that Jerusalem is not dominated by only one ethnic or religious group.

Entitled "U.S. Policy Perspectives on Jerusalem," the panel was held in the U.S. Capitol Building in a room arranged by Senator John Chaffee (R-RI). Israeli-Palestinian negotiations on Jerusalem, slated to begin in May 1996, are expected to be long and contentious. Unless some arrangement to share Jerusalem is devised, Middle East specialists believe the entire issue has the potential to destroy the peace process.

Among the 100 persons who attended the panel were congressional staff members and members of organizations concerned with the Middle East from both the Arab and Jewish perspectives. The BBC World Service and the Arab News Network covered the three-hour effort to inform members of Congress and their staffers about the genuine American interests in Jerusalem issues. Maps, charts and historical material were presented by all of the speakers, who also included Dr. Eugene Fisher of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops and John Tyler of Challenge magazine in Jerusalem. Tyler had just finished a six-state speaking tour of the Northeast during which he used slides to show what had happened to Jerusalem since the signing of the Oslo agreement in September 1993. Partners for Peace, a Washington-based group educating the American public on various Middle East issues, plans to make some of this material available in the course of six video programs on Jerusalem starting in September.

Discussing the future of Jerusalem under the current Oslo framework, Professor Khalidi was critical of Israeli intentions and asserted that the current U.S. policy in support of Israel will, in the end, be disastrous for U.S. allies in the region and U.S. interests in general. Similarly, throughout his slide show, Tyler described the burgeoning Jewish settlement activity and the Israeli demolitions of Palestinian homes that have continued since the signing of the Oslo agreement. Professor Lustick, however, was more optimistic about prospects for a peaceful Jerusalem solution, citing the many possibilities for compromise on the status of the city.

Despite their disagreements, every one of the speakers agreed that any peace treaty must assure the religious and secular rights of non-Jews in the city, and that Israeli expansion of Jerusalem's borders clouded the notion of an undivided city, making it subject to change in the course of negotiations. Full access to the city for Palestinians from both the West Bank and Gaza was essential, all speakers agreed.

Changing Borders

The changing definitions of Jerusalem were illustrated by Harvard Professor Walid Khalidi's presentation of a series of maps showing how the borders of the city have shifted with political events. He first showed how, in 1946, a proposed map of Jerusalem submitted by the Jewish Agency excluded not only East Jerusalem, but large areas of West Jerusalem as well. The 1947 U.N. Partition Plan allowed for a much larger, internationalized Jerusalem which would have had an Arab majority. Then, after 1948, West Jerusalem was extended further westward to encompass several destroyed Arab villages. Finally, after the 1967 war, Israel annexed to the city an area nearly triple the size of the pre-1967 municipality of East Jerusalem, making sure to include as much unoccupied land as possible, and the least possible number of Arab villages. Professor Khalidi pointed out that there now is talk among Israelis of a "metropolitan Jerusalem," including areas that have been annexed de facto through creation of Jewish settlements. This area now extends from the Arab towns of Ramallah in the north to Bethlehem in the south, and nearly to Jericho in the east.

Which Jerusalem is Indivisible?

To Professor Ian Lustick, author of Unsettled States, Disputed Lands, these ill-defined borders of Jerusalem present an opportunity for compromise on the future status of the city. Although both Labor and Likud are committed to an undivided Jerusalem, it is unclear which Jerusalem is undivided. The Rabin government could give Palestinians sovereignty over part of what is now Jerusalem, he said, and still claim Jerusalem is undivided under Israeli rule, simply by moving the present borders of the city. This is possible, Prof. Lustick said, because the borders of Jerusalem need only an order from the Interior Ministry to be changed.

Professor Khalidi, on the other hand, remarked that the city's mutable boundaries may mean that the borders of Jerusalem will expand rather than contract. Israel may take the notion of an undivided Jerusalem to mean what it is calling metropolitan Jerusalem, "which would be disastrous for Arab aspirations both in Jerusalem itself and in a large portion of the West Bank as well."

Oslo and Jerusalem

Similar differences were reflected in the views of the speakers toward the Oslo process as a whole. Professor Lustick believed that although Israeli politicians from Labor and Likud all have been saying that the unity of Jerusalem under Israeli control is non-negotiable, right-wing protests against Labor's "selling-out" of the city are proof that the issue of Jerusalem actually is up for debate. Israelis would be willing to compromise on their capital, he said, if it were not for the rhetoric which has obscured the issue. When Israelis say that Jerusalem must remain Israeli and united, they think of the Western Wall, not the Arab populated Sheikh Jarrah quarter. In reality, Professor Lustick claimed, Israelis care very little about the Arab portions of the city. Although they may not want to compromise on the Western Wall, they may compromise on Sheikh Jarrah or the Muslim Quarter of the Old City. Parts of the city may be holy to each of three religions, he reasoned, but the whole of Jerusalem inside its present borders is sacred to no one.

In contrast, Professor Khalidi harshly criticized the Oslo accords for deferring the question of Jerusalem to final status talks, but allowing the continuation of what he called "colonization" or settlement activity. He said the Oslo accords fit perfectly with Rabin's plan to create "facts on the ground" which will make negotiation on the status of the city "an exercise in emptiness," as Professor Khalidi put it.

He concluded that there can be peace in Jerusalem only when there no longer is: 1) a monopoly of sovereignty; 2) an aristocracy of religious rights; 3) a master-serf relationship between nations; and 4) a non-recognition of religious and secular rights of both peoples.

"Jerusalem plays the key strategic role, not only of isolating the Palestinians within East Jerusalem...but also of depriving the Palestinians of a viable political entity on the West Bank," he said. "This is being done through settlement activity in metropolitan Jerusalem, which is creating an Israeli entity which would effectively split the West Bank into two isolated 'bantustans.'"

Perhaps the most stirring condemnation of the Oslo accords came from John Tyler in his slide presentation entitled "Jerusalem Since Oslo: No Justice, No Peace." Mr. Tyler questioned whether Israel is negotiating in good faith. He then argued that it is not, through a series of photographs illustrating the settlement construction and house demolitions Arab Jerusalemites have faced in the past two years. Particularly painful has been the closure of East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank, which has made travel through the West Bank difficult and travel to Jerusalem and Israel virtually impossible. As a result, Arab business in Jerusalem has atrophied to only 20 percent of its pre-closure level. Tyler also pointed out that, because of these problems, Palestinian residents of Jerusalem are becoming increasingly disillusioned with the negotiating process begun in Oslo.

The U.S. Role

The contribution of the United States to this deteriorating situation was spelled out by several of the speakers. Dr. Fisher echoed the Catholic Church's opinion that the issue of Jerusalem should be placed higher on the U.S. agenda, in order to protect the interests of all faiths and peoples in the city, as well as the sanctity of the holy sites. Similarly, Professor Lustick criticized the United States for saying "as little as possible" about Jerusalem until the conclusion of final status negotiations.

But it was Professor Walid Khalidi who had the strongest criticism of U.S. policy. The Harvard professor called the U.S. claim that it has withdrawn from the process in order to let the two sides negotiate directly a "shabby alibi." He furthermore termed the U.S. assertion that it is actually disengaged from this process "disingenuous and misleading," due to the fact that the U.S. has refused to deduct settlement expenditures in Jerusalem from its aid to Israel as required by Congress; effectively frozen U.N. resolutions on Jerusalem; and actively blocked the U.N. Security Council from ruling on actions in Jerusalem. The Clinton administration has come out in favor of a "united Jerusalem," Professor Khalidi pointed out, but it is unclear which borders Jerusalem is to remain united within. In conclusion, he warned that current U.S. policy on Jerusalem will only lead to a coerced peace, one which will explode in the faces of Arab leaders who are friendly to the U.S. If the Clinton administration wishes to create stability in the region, he believes, it needs to change its policy on Jerusalem.

Jon Van Camp is program director for Partners for Peace in Washington, DC. He recently spent almost three years in the Middle East.