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Al-Ahram Weekly 27 July - 2 August 2000 Issue No. 492 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 27 July - 2 August 2000 Issue No. 492
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters America's Jerusalem
By Graham UsherOn 23 July, Israel's Justice Minister, Yossi Beilin, led a troupe of Israeli journalists and peace-lovers on a trek to what for most was the unknown and forbidden territory of Arab East Jerusalem. The aim of the sortie was to proclaim to the world that villages like Beit Hanina and refugee camps like Shufat "belong to Israel in our dreams only".
Beilin was of course stating the obvious. Indeed, he did not have to open his mouth for all to see Israel's lack of control over and concern for the dozens of Palestinian villages annexed to "united Jerusalem" following its occupation of the eastern part of the city in the 1967 war. The Justice Minister was warned by his own intelligence service not to set foot in Shufat refugee camp for fear of the risk involved. And his entourage could not even find an Israeli bus company willing to transport it to the nether regions of Kalandia camp in north Jerusalem. They had to make do with a Palestinian company.
Two days later, the negotiations at Camp David collapsed and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak admitted that Beilin's "shattering of the Israeli taboo on Jerusalem" were consistent with American proposals submitted on the city at the summit. Barak said that he had supported these proposals at Camp David but that with the collapse of the negotiations these ideas were now "null and void". Yasser Arafat refused them from the outset or, in Barak's description, "hesitated to take the necessary historical decisions". A glance at the Beilin-American formula for Jerusalem makes clear why any authentic Arab leader would have "hesitated".
This is because the effect of the American "bridges" would be to consolidate Israel's hold on the heart of Arab Jerusalem by simultaneously expanding and reducing its borders. On the one hand, they proposed enlarging Jerusalem by annexing to it the vast settlement blocs of Maale Adumim to the east, Givat Zeev to the north and Gush Etzion to the south. On the other, they also wanted to return Jerusalem's present municipal borders to those that obtained between 1948 and 1967 under the Jordanian administration, an area covering a mere 6.5 square kilometres.
There is a clear logic behind this apparent contradiction, says Palestinian geographer and former negotiator, Khalil Tufakji. By returning to the Jordanian boundaries Israel rids itself of 28 Palestinian villages that it annexed in 1967, but which now have grown so populous as to become a burden and a threat to Israel's political hold on the city. These villages, said Beilin on 23 July, "should now be handed over to the full control of the Palestinian Authority", a "concession" endorsed by Barak at Camp David.
Palestinian districts like Sheikh Jarrar and Wadi Joz that fell within the old Jordanian municipality could enjoy what some Israelis are calling "shared sovereignty". Nobody knows what this means. But - on the experience of past and present Israeli practice in East Jerusalem - Tufakji suspects the "sharing" would be one where Israel is sovereign on matters to do with zoning and security while the Palestinian "state" would foot the bill for schools and hospitals.
In the Old City, the Palestinians would be granted "religious sovereignty" over the Haram al-Sharif and "broad civilian and administrative autonomy" for the 37,000 Palestinians residing in the Muslim and Christian quarters. In exchange, Israel would "retain" full sovereignty over the Old City as a whole and administrative control over the 3,000 residents of the Jewish quarter as well as the Armenian quarter to enable "safe access" to the Western Wall. It is a Hebron-like division solution that, very easily, could become a Hebron-like partition.
The American proposals betray Israel's penchant of submitting demographic "solutions" to problems that are essentially territorial. Demographically the aim is not only to increase the Jewish majority in West Jerusalem by annexing to it settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. It is also to secure this majority for years to come by separating these from the most densely populated Palestinians areas in East Jerusalem. Territorially, the Beilin-American solution creates "a mumbo jumbo of overlapping sovereignty, shared sovereignty and separation," in the apt description of one Arab diplomat. "There'll be tension every day of the year".
There surely will, which is presumably one reason Arafat rejected them. What - asks PLO executive member for Jerusalem, Faisal Husseini - would be the fate under these various "sovereignties" of those thousands of Palestinians who live in Beit Hanina but who have properties and businesses in or near the Old City? Under which kind of government would they live and how many permits (or passports) would be needed to go from "home" in one state to "work" in another?
As for the 1200 or so Armenians in the Old City, the prospect of unalloyed Israeli rule over their lives, property and history is just about the worst future imaginable. "Since 1967, the Armenians here have been forcibly isolated from their natural communities in Lebanon and Syria," says one local of the Old City, who describes himself as "legally" Palestinian but "ethnically" Armenian. "If we now come under Israeli sovereignty, we will become further isolated from our Christian milieu in Jerusalem". It was fear of this severance that caused the three Christian Patriarchs in Jerusalem on 17 July to dispatch a letter to Camp David demanding "international guarantees" for the rights of all religious communities in Jerusalem and "representation" for their faiths at the talks.
Their fears are justified, as are those of every Palestinian, Arab, Muslim and Christian, whether inside Jerusalem or beyond. For however crazy may look the patchwork of sovereignties proposed by the Americans and Barak at Camp David and advocated by Beilin in Israel, the nationalist (some would say racist) ambition behind them is clear and sure, says Husseini.
"There are 233,000 Palestinians living in Jerusalem today, 33 percent of the city's overall population, east and west," he says. "If Israel releases to us the outer ring [of the Palestinian villages] and keeps for itself the inner ring and the Old City, the Palestinian population is reduced to 60,000 or ten percent of the population".
In short, the American proposals are the last throw at solving Israel's "demographic problem" in Jerusalem. Very simply, says Husseini, "they want to resolve it by swallowing us". And, for now, Arafat refused to be swallowed.
Related stories:
The great divides 20 - 26 July 2000
Demons no longer deferred 13 - 19 July 2000
Focus: Camp David II 13 - 19 July 2000
