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Al-Ahram Weekly 3 - 9 August 2000 Issue No. 493 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 3 - 9 August 2000 Issue No. 493
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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 Jerusalem: an unfolding drama
By John Whitbeck *Initial disappointment aside, major, even revolutionary, progress appears to have been made at the Camp David negotiations. Most significantly, the Israeli taboos against any discussion of "sharing" or "dividing" Jerusalem have been shattered. With everyone finally free to consider rationally ways to satisfy the conflicting imperatives regarding the Holy City (which would not have been discussed so intensively at Camp David if the parties had not been at least close to agreement on the other core issues), it is now possible to envision a rapidly unfolding drama leading to a permanent Israeli-Palestinian peace.
Act One: Understanding the status quo. There is a widespread misconception among Israelis (and Americans) that, under the status quo, Israel possesses sovereignty over expanded East Jerusalem. It does not. It possesses administrative control. A country can acquire administrative control by force of arms. It can acquire sovereignty only with the consent of the international community.
Israel has possessed and exercised administrative control over expanded East Jerusalem for more than three decades. To this day, not one of the world's other 192 sovereign states has recognised its claim to sovereignty. Furthermore, since the right of a country to declare any part of its sovereign territory to be its capital is not contested, the refusal of virtually all countries to recognise West Jerusalem as Israel's capital, and the maintenance of all embassies other than those of Costa Rica and El Salvador in Tel Aviv, are striking evidence of the international community's refusal, pending an agreed solution to the status of Jerusalem, to concede that any part of the city is Jerusalem's sovereign territory.
In May 1996, the world's view of the legal status of Jerusalem was concisely summarised by then British Foreign Secretary Malcolm Rifkind: "Britain made clear many years ago, as did the international community, that it considered Israel to be in military occupation of East Jerusalem and to have only de facto authority over West Jerusalem."
More vividly, UN General Assembly Resolution 53/37, adopted in December 1998 by a vote of 149--1 (with the United States abstaining), declared that the "General Assembly ... Determines that the decision of Israel to impose its laws, jurisdiction and administration on the Holy City of Jerusalem is illegal and therefore null and void and has no validity whatsoever."
A clearer understanding of what the legal status quo regarding Jerusalem really is could make Israeli public opinion less reflexively resistant to contemplating any modification of that status quo, even in return for peace.
Act Two: Expanding the city. There is nothing sacred about the current, artificially imposed municipal boundaries of the city, and the parties appear to have agreed to limited, settler-sensitive exchanges of Palestinian territory for Israeli territory in fixing their final borders. It should therefore be possible to agree (in anticipation of acts to come) that "Jerusalem" should be redefined to encompass the three large West Bank settlements of Ma'ale Adumim, Gush Etzion and Givat Ze'ev, as well as Abu Dis and other Palestinian towns close to the current municipal boundaries.
Act Three: Focusing on administration. In seeking a solution to the status of Jerusalem, it is essential to distinguish between sovereignty and municipal administration. Sovereignty is an intensely emotional issue. Municipal administration is not. (Few Israelis are enthusiastic about administering Palestinians, either in Jerusalem or elsewhere). Negotiators should therefore focus on agreeing upon administrative structures for an open, physically undivided and fully demilitarised city. This would entail delineating a certain number of local districts, both Jewish and Arab, to whose elected district councils as many aspects of municipal governance as possible would be devolved, and reserving for coordination by an umbrella municipal council only those major matters which could only be dealt with efficiently at a city-wide level.
The fundamental principle would be that, to the maximum degree possible, Israeli citizens in Jerusalem should be under Israeli administration and Palestinian citizens in Jerusalem should be under Palestinian administration. Since there are currently no integrated neighbourhoods in Jerusalem, delineating the districts should present no practical problems, and apportioning authorities between the district councils and the umbrella municipal council should be relatively non-contentious.
If agreement on the administrative aspects of the future of Jerusalem could be reached, both sides might then recognise that the aspects of the Jerusalem issue with a direct effect on people's lives had been resolved to the satisfaction of both sides and that "sovereignty" (essentially the state-level equivalent of title or ownership) is fundamentally a symbolic and psychological problem which should not be permitted, alone, to prevent peace.
Act Four: Identifying the sovereignty alternatives. There are now three viable sovereignty alternatives which have the potential to be acceptable both to most Israelis and to most Palestinians, as any solution must be:
(i) a pure condominium solution, under which sovereignty over an undivided Jerusalem would be shared, making the city the one, indivisible and inspirational capital of two sovereign states;
(ii) a pure division solution, under which each state would have exclusive sovereignty with respect to those Jerusalem districts in which its own people live; and
(iii) a mixed divide--and--share solution, under which the "condominium" principle would apply only to the contested core of the city (the Old City and the Mount of Olives, which opinion polls have shown to be the only parts of the city considered "important" as parts of "Jerusalem" by a majority of both communities) while the city would otherwise be divided as in alternative (ii).
Act Five: Letting Israel choose. Since Israel currently possesses administrative control over Jerusalem, and since any of these three alternatives would probably be acceptable to most Palestinians if peace depended on it, Palestine should invite Israel to choose the alternative it prefers, agreeing to accept and implement Israel's choice. While the drama could have a happy ending at this point, what if, in the near term, Israel is unable to make up its collective mind?
Act Six: Implementing the rest. If Israel's preference among the identified sovereignty alternatives were the only unsettled issue, a Treaty of Permanent Peace, Friendship and Cooperation could still be signed and its provisions (including those regarding Jerusalem's administration) implemented while the symbolic and psychological issue of Jerusalem's sovereignty was "suspended" for a fixed period (say, three years), which could help to demystify it in a context of peace and reconciliation. At any time during this period, perhaps after a referendum, Israel could declare its choice from among the three identified sovereignty alternatives, with Palestine bound by Israel's choice. What if, by the end of the agreed fixed period, Israel had failed to choose? (The suspense cannot go on forever.)
Act Seven: Palestine's turn? In the unlikely event that Israel failed to choose, the right to choose would pass to Palestine, with Israel bound by Palestine's choice.
Curtain. End of conflict.
* The writer is an international lawyer who writes frequently on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
