The
issue of Jerusalem
will never go away
By
Jonathan
Power
TFF Associate
since 1991
Comments to JonatPower@aol.com
December 1, 2005
LONDON - The European Union's new
report on the status of Jerusalem may have reminded those
who have forgotten what Yasser Arafat always said, "The
Arab leader has not been born who will give up
Jerusalem."
The EU report, besides highlighting
the long Palestine preoccupation with Jerusalem, also
underlines how central to Israel's strategy of
Palestinian exclusion present day Israeli policy on
Jerusalem is. The report argues that the effort to
establish illegal Jewish settlements in and around East
Jerusalem and to use the route of its separation wall is
"to seal off most of East Jerusalem, with its 230,000
Palestinian residents, from the West Bank" and to create
"a de facto annexation of Palestinian land."
Poets from England's eighteenth
century William Blake to Israel's contemporary Yehuda
Amichai have sung the praises of a heavenly Jerusalem, a
city without strife or rancour, war or bitterness, envy,
acquisitiveness or hatred.
But how do we get there? There can
be no question that at the time of ending the British
mandate Jerusalem belonged to the Palestinians. They lost
West Jerusalem in their ill-judged war with Israel in
1948. And only in 1967 during the Six Day War did Israel
capture and annex East Jerusalem and its Old City. (But
it did allow Islamic authorities to continue to exercise
control over the two ancient mosques and the great stone
plaza atop the Temple Mount.) At one time even the U.S.
itself recognized there would be no peace until this
occupation was reversed, hence its vote for UN Resolution
242 in 1967 that called on Israel to withdraw from
"territories occupied".
Nevertheless, it is obvious that
Jewish identity is now so wound up with the idea of
Jerusalem (a fuzzy concept if ever there was one, since
present day Jerusalem is four times the size of the one
that existed in 1948) that to prise Israel loose by a
process of capitulation is not possible.
But just as obvious was one of
President Bill Clinton's mistakes at the Camp David
negotiations. He was profoundly wrong at its conclusion
to berate Arafat publicly for not compromising on
Jerusalem. Clinton looked at the enormous compromises
Israel's then leader Ehud Barak had made and, in the
detached manner of western diplomacy, assumed this was a
very fair deal. It was, indeed, but it wasn't enough.
Jerusalem, as Arafat said, will never be given up, for
anything.
It is a matter of elemental
historical justice that at the very least the Arab parts
of East Jerusalem be returned to Palestine, as long as
the Jews have free, untrammelled, access to their sacred
site, the Western Wall.
Perhaps the protagonists should
consider internationalising part of East Jerusalem. For
the present, the suggestion of a UN Security Council
fiefdom only extends to the Temple Mount, but once that
principle is accepted the possibilities for geographical
extension to include some of the neighborhoods around
shouldn't be so difficult to swallow.
The issue of the ownership of
Jerusalem and its parts is a popular decision par
excellence. The governments involved cannot go forward on
this issue unless they carry the overwhelming majority of
their people with them. With Prime Minister Ariel
Sharon's decision to leave his rightist party, Likud, and
launch a party more attuned to the centre of the
political spectrum, mainstream Israeli public opinion is
now back in the political picture. Instead of Israel
being hostage to its extremes it can begin to have a more
rational debate on final peace terms.
This is the moment for inspired
religious leadership - to take the steps that will allow
Jerusalem, a city sacred to three monotheistic faiths, to
acquire, at least in some of its aspects, the earthly
prototype of the heavenly Jerusalem of the
poets.
Let us see if the work of imams,
rabbis and priests can bear some fruit. The secular
politicians may be the ones doing the negotiations and
ordering the compromises but it is the teachers of the
three great deistic religions who must exert their
mandate of compassion, goodness, tolerance and
brotherhood.
These traits of virtue, as common
to them all as is their God, will be tested in the
hottest of fires. Have their peoples imbibed the message
of their faiths? Or have they been diverted along life's
way by false principles over true substance and by
nationalistic myth over historic perspective? At the time
of this great new alignment in Israeli politics this must
be the moment to start preaching more earnestly and
convincingly.
Copyright © 2005 By
JONATHAN POWER
I can be reached by
phone +44 7785 351172 and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
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