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, 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 fact that 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 is 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 measureably 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 3 of them that are particularly relevant in Jeursalem:
The first is that the status of this city cannot be unilaterally determined by any party, certainly neither of the two parties in conflict, nor 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 which 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. Now adays there are no negotiations, but when they start—if there is not a freeze on the situation. If actions which 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 which 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 which 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 which 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, 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 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.
Source:http://www.acj.org/briefings/4_05_2001.htm#khalidi