Divided on a united Jerusalem

Representatives from the Left and Right debate the Holy City’s status.

By ATARA BECK
Divided on a united jerusalem (photo credit: ATARA BECK)
Divided on a united jerusalem
(photo credit: ATARA BECK)
Dr. Jacques Gauthier, Toronto-based international jurist, human rights advocate and founder of the International Alliance for Justice in Jerusalem, a nonprofit organization with branches around the world, concluded – after 25 years of research – that “nothing has happened from a legal point of view to change the fact that the sovereignty rights under international law have been granted to the Jewish people.”
Earlier this month, the Alliance hosted a two-day conference at the King David Hotel on the status of Jerusalem under international law and future options for the city. Featuring renowned academics, educators and politicians, beginning with Mayor Nir Barkat – who declared that Israel’s capital must remain a united city with respect for all religions – the program included a debate among panelists from opposite ends of the political spectrum.
Leading up to the debate, most of the speakers agreed with Gauthier and supported a united Jerusalem, defending their positions on political, moral, historical and religious grounds. Yet Ambassador Alan Baker of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, among others, pointed out that Israel had already agreed to negotiate Jerusalem.
“We should be aware of this and not delude ourselves,” he declared.
Shaul Arieli was among the leading negotiators in the process that resulted in the Geneva Initiative in December 2003. Representing the Left, he began his talk with the premise that “The feasibility of a permanent- status agreement between Israel and the Palestinians without a Palestinian capital city in Jerusalem is slim to none.”
He lamented the end of the peace negotiations, citing former prime minister Ehud Olmert’s claim that the Palestinians never rejected his offer.
“I’m always amazed to hear the self-delusion of people,” stated attorney and Ma’ariv columnist Nadav Haetzni.
He ridiculed attempts “to draw such a pink picture of a divided Jerusalem. Between 1948 and 1967, people were afraid to walk in the city center because Jordanian snipers were shooting directly at people.
Others in various neighborhoods were afraid to go to their roofs. And there were checkpoints. Of course, Jews were prevented from going to their most sacred places.”
“Jerusalem is the essence and the core of the Jewish nation’s return to its land,” he asserted. “Without Jerusalem, without Zion, we have nothing, and especially we don’t have the right to be in Tel Aviv or Kiryat Shmona or any other place in Israel.”
“Haetzni defines it by the national and religious narrative because he prefers to continue with the conflict,” Arieli said.
According to Haetzni, the “conflict cannot be resolved in our lifetime.”
“Barak offered the same map that Olmert presented, and Arafat rejected it,” he added. “The Palestinians want much more than Jerusalem... They want the annihilation of the Jewish state.”
“You don’t know the details,” Arieli retorted, challenging Haetzni to describe the peace deals Israel had offered under Barak and Olmert.
“Herzl, Jabotinsky and even Begin talked about international responsibility for those holy sites,” Arieli continued.
“In 1949, [David] Ben-Gurion, as head of the Jewish Agency, accepted the partition plan and agreed that Jerusalem will not be the capital of the State of Israel. We accepted it because we wanted to establish our independent state with a Jewish majority.”
(Arieli’s last statement is controversial; Ben-Gurion had spoken passionately about Jerusalem, “the eternal capital of the Jewish people.” According to the website of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, “the Jewish Agency for Palestine had accepted the UN Partition Plan of November 1947, even though it called for the establishment of a corpus separatum in Jerusalem and its immediate environs, realizing that the only realistic alternative at the time would have been the failure to decide on the establishment of a Jewish state in any part of Palestine.”)
“The Jewish people didn’t have enough power to get the Old City in 1948; in 1967, they had enough power to correct this mistake of history,” Haetzni said. “Any territory acquired will become a base of operations towards the complete destruction of Israel,” Chaim Silberstein, founder and president of Keep Jerusalem – an organization dedicated to keeping the Holy City united under Israeli sovereignty – had warned earlier. He was supposed to moderate a question-and-answer session after the debate, but time ran out.
He cited the creation of the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1964, “when they already had the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem” and the “Phased Plan” that was initiated in Cairo in 1974 to acquire territory through negotiations and using it as a base for liberating the rest of “Palestine” through military force.
“They are still saying that in the Arab media,” Silberstein told the audience.
In a discussion with In Jerusalem the following day, Arieli acknowledged that true peace is “not for our generation.” Still, “we can sign an agreement like the one that Begin made with Egypt...I prefer to call it a ‘Permanent Status Agreement.’” He sees no security threat and believes that the Palestinians would refrain from attacking Israel for two reasons: “First, because they have an interest in maintaining law and order in their state, and second, according to the agreement, Palestine would be a demilitarized state.”
Reminded about the situation in Gaza following the evacuation of the Jewish community and the withdrawal from Lebanon, which resulted in more terror against the Jewish state, he replied: “It’s not the same. I know they agree [to demilitarization].
They also agreed on an international force. People don’t know the details.”
Arieli said that former prime minister Ehud Barak’s offer to Arafat was “awful. It was something that Arafat could not accept. According to Barak’s proposal, the size of the Palestinian state offered was only 92 percent of the occupied territories, without any land exchange...and it was without east Jerusalem as its capital.”
During the debate, Gauthier said he was “disturbed by a pattern in history where once an area is controlled by Palestinians, all Jewish people in that area must leave. Surely we all agree that peace is a good thing, but why is it supported by the international community that the Arabs in Israel must have all the rights, but in the Palestinian area there can be no Jews? From a human rights perspective, it’s offensive.”
Despite public statements by top Palestinian leaders that no Jew would be permitted to live in a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Arieli, speaking to IJ, insisted that individual Jews could live among the non-Jewish population, although none of the settlements could remain within the boundaries of the state, due to “legal complications.”
According to Silberstein, “there are two aspects to the discussion: first, who has the right to Jerusalem, and second, what will be its future status? Some people, like [former Kadima leader Tzipi] Livni, say yes, we have legal rights, but if we want peace we have to divide it up. Some say we do not have the rights.
Mayor Barkat and others say that we have legal rights, but it is more for moral, ethical and higher reasons than legality that we should not divide Jerusalem.”
In Silberstein’s view, “if we divide up Jerusalem, there definitely will not be peace. It’s a recipe for disaster, increased hostility, and it will embolden enemies, local and elsewhere.
“Everyone wants peace, even the so-called righ-twing religious people. But the formula that the Left is providing today is delusional.”
Despite the acrimony between Left and Right, “we should continue the dialogue,” said Silberstein. “It’s very important to keep a united nation of Israel.”