The Palestinian position

A unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state will mean that even if it is declared as such, east Jerusalem will not be the capital of that entity.

By SETH J. FRANTZMAN
Free Palestine Arab woman 521 (photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem)
Free Palestine Arab woman 521
(photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem)
With the Palestinians seeking to unilaterally declare a state next week, there is some confusion over whether they still want east Jerusalem as their capital. According to leading academic experts and the Palestinian Authority, the Palestinians will be requesting that Jerusalem be the capital of Palestine when they seek to declare statehood.
Dr. Menahem Klein of Bar-Ilan University notes that “the Palestinian Authority never gave up its stand to make east Jerusalem the capital of Palestine… No changes took place in this position since the 1990s. It was suggested by [the late PA chairman Yasser] Arafat at Camp David in 2000... Jerusalem’s Jewish settlements beyond the June 4, 1967, line can be recognized as part of Israel provided that their territory is included in a land swap. The Jewish Quarter, including the Western Wall, will stay under Israeli rule, while the rest of the Old City goes to Palestine. Palestine will enjoy full sovereignty over the Haram al-Sharif [Temple Mount].
The two sides will agree on special visiting arrangements of religious sites and stick to the principle of freedom of worship.”
Klein participated in several discussions regarding the creation of a “special regime” for Jerusalem that might involve its becoming what he calls an “open city.” He notes that at the Annapolis peace conference of 2007, which took place under prime minister Ehud Olmert, “It is not clear what Abu Mazen [PA President Mahmoud Abbas] had in mind. Both sides did not go into details.
I assume the talks were not along the same lines [as before].”
If the UN General Assembly recognizes a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, Klein says “It will not change anything on the ground in favor of the PA. It will even make it more difficult for them to build their capital in east Jerusalem because Israel already began to respond by expanding its settlements in Jerusalem. The PA is going to the UN, in my view, less for achieving statehood on the ground or in international politics but rather to help the current elite to stay in power, to show its public a small achievement and to establish expectations for future ones… Israel will continue to rule the area and makes the two-state solution almost impossible to achieve.
“Generally, the PA demand for Jerusalem is an obstacle to peace because Israelis will not agree to give up Jerusalem and the Temple Mount. All polls show this, and it is clear why. It is the holiest place of the Jews.
Jews have been a majority in Jerusalem for 150 years, and the principle of self-determination indicates that Jerusalem should stay Jewish. I am also in favor of a referendum of Arabs in Jerusalem, and I am sure a majority will vote to stay under Israel,” he argues.
Dr. Efraim Inbar, professor of political studies at Bar-Ilan University and director of the Begin-Sadat (BESA) Center for Strategic Studies, sees the Palestinian position as being unrealistic. “I don’t think there is any softening in the Palestinian position on Jerusalem, the right of return and other issues...
Jerusalem is just one issue where the differences are too big to bridge. What counts is what takes place on the ground. I can also declare that the Vatican will be my capital. The Palestinians lost the battle for Jerusalem, and they are sore losers. I think the plans for the division of Jerusalem are not relevant or practical. The Arabs in the Arab neighborhoods will leave those neighborhoods if they are given to the Palestinian Authority.”
Hillel Cohen, a fellow at the Truman Institute and academic at the Hebrew University who has written a book on east Jerusalem, notes that while the Palestinians cling to Jerusalem, they are also flexible.
“Jerusalem is the heart of Palestinian nationalism and the religious center of the Palestinians since they started to view themselves as a nation. The raison d’etre of Palestinian nationalism is their role as the defenders of the holy places of the city… They have accepted the idea that the Israeli neighborhoods would remain and they would receive land elsewhere. The Clinton framework of Jewish neighborhoods to Jews, Arab neighborhoods to Palestinians [is the current concept]. This is possible, of course, only through negotiation and agreement. This is one problem with [the Palestinian unilateral declaration]. The second is that the [Jewish] settlers’ efforts are directed exactly at preventing this solution. Anyhow, if one talks about a [Palestinian] state without [a final] agreement, and if the resolution in the UN [for a Palestinian state] would speak about the June 4 borders, this will put Israel in a much worse situation regarding the [Jewish] neighborhoods in Jerusalem than the results of any agreement…It will not change reality on the ground immediately, of course.”
NIDAL FUQAHA, a member of the Geneva Initiative and the head of the Palestinian Peace Coalition, will be in New York when the Palestinians approach the UN. He is optimistic about the future but notes that the Palestinian position on Jerusalem has not changed. “The traditional historical position is that we look to east Jerusalem as the capital of the future state. Now it is becoming a public Palestinian position that it should be the capital.”
He concedes that physically Jerusalem is separated from the Palestinian governing institutions in Ramallah. There was a time, he recalls, when there was some discussion of building institutions in Abu Dis just east of Jerusalem. “We had some institutions there, or in Ramallah, but this doesn’t negate the fact that the seat of the future Palestinian state will be in Jerusalem.”
The desire for the Palestinians to have their capital in Jerusalem is not just historical and religious; it is also based on legal and perceived realities. “Even if you ask an Israeli if they consider Beit Hanina [in north Jerusalem] as Jerusalem, he will tell you that in fact it is something else… East Jerusalem is considered by the UN as an occupied territory. We built on the EU December 2009 statement that looks at it as a capital of our state. We look at it as our capital. Definitely during the bid we will be asking for recognition of Palestine on the basis of the [pre-1967 lines], and east Jerusalem has been occupied since then.”
Fuqaha, 42, grew up in the village of Kirdala near Beit She’an.
Today he resides in Ramallah, where he is closely involved with the Palestinian Authority.
“It is really important for the Jerusalemites and for your readers in the Jewish community to understand that the Palestinian bid for the UN has no violent intentions. It should be done jointly.
There is no reason for Israel to stand against this bid,” says Fuqaha, a long-time believer in peace.
In terms of east Jerusalem, however, “This is something that touches their daily lives. There is coordination, cooperation and consultation [with people in east Jerusalem]. The east Jerusalemites are part of this bid, and they are pro this intention to go to the UN.”
Like other Palestinians that were interviewed, he also contends that any protests after September 20 would be peaceful and that they fear that it is Israelis who will provoke or cause violence.
Saman Khoury, the head of the Peace and Democracy Forum, works out of a small office in Sheikh Jarrah. At the entrance is a photo of the late Palestinian politician Faisal Husseini. Khoury was a journalist for Al-Fajr, an English- language weekly that was published in the 1980s. Since the 1990s he has worked with Israeli politicians on various peace initiatives. He says that the question of east Jerusalem’s status has two sides to it. “There is the political perspective; the people in east Jerusalem are part of a larger [Palestinian] people who adhere to and support the policies of the PLO, of which the PA is a part. Their perspective is more like the national aspirations expressed by the PLO, and this is what they support… The other perspective, which is the day-to-day life, is that Palestinians in east Jerusalem feel they are lost on the tracks of the existing agreements, such as Oslo and other agreements between the PLO and the State of Israel. They were left to the final negotiations, and legally speaking they were left to live under a kind of unknown status. They are not citizens of the State of Israel, the ID given to Palestinians in east Jerusalem states that they are temporary residents of Israel permanently residing in Jerusalem; sometimes they are called Jordanian.”
Khoury thinks that resolving the Jerusalem issue is in the best interest of Israel. “For the last 44 years Jerusalem has not been recognized as the capital of the Jewish state, so actually from that perspective it also helps Israel. But at the same time it also leads to something good for the Palestinians… It is not that what is good for Palestine must be bad for Israel, but to concentrate on what is good for the Palestinian people.”
Khoury supports the ideas that the Geneva Initiative proposed for Jerusalem, “[under our model] what is Arab [in Jerusalem] is part of Palestine, what is Israel is part of Israel, it would be with border lines but not with ugly walls as the case is today. We were thinking of softer borders so that people would understand that life in Jerusalem is not going to be how it was during the war era, which is a dead-end era… Within the Old City itself there would be a special regime, where Israelis come into the [Jewish Quarter that would be part of the] sovereign area of Israel, and the rest would be part of Palestine, within the walls. If you come in from any state, you can walk around in all the Old City [freely].”
He also understands that one issue confronting east Jerusalem is the question of Israeli services, such as health care, the residents have gotten used to. “The Palestinians state would have to take care of its own citizens. How do you move the rights of Jerusalem Palestinians from the rights they receive from Israel to the rights they would receive? This would be negotiated, but it would put an end to the unknown status of these Jerusalem Palestinians. We have to reach an agreement on all issues, including these rights Palestinians paid for into the [Israeli] tax system.”