Of all the final-status issues to be dealt with by Israeli and
Palestinian negotiators, there is none as difficult as Jerusalem.
The Palestinians claim East Jerusalem as the future capital of a
Palestinian state; the Israelis maintain that they alone will
remain sovereign over the city. Moreover, these do not appear to be
mere negotiating positions. The claims asserted by the PLO and the
government of Israel are expressions of attachments that are rooted
in the aspirations, identifications, and self-understandings of the
two peoples.
For Jews, having Jerusalem is symbolic of the entire project of
"return."
When ancient Israel was conquered by the Babylonians, it was from
Jerusalem that the Israelites were taken into captivity. When they
came back from exile in 538 BCE, their paramount task was to
rebuild the Temple that Solomon had built. When the Israelites
revolted against the Romans in the first century CE, it was
Jerusalem that was the fortress of resistance. And when the Romans
finally defeated them, the symbol of that defeat was again the
destruction of the Temple. Following a second revolt, the city
itself was rebuilt and renamed as a Roman city, Aelia Capitolina,
from which Jews were barred. And when the Roman empire adopted
Christianity, Christian hostility toward Judaism was expressed
through strict adherence to the ban forbidding Jews to live in
Jerusalem. The return to Jerusalem has been throughout the
centuries a central symbol of the attainment of Jewish
self-determination. It is toward Jerusalem that religious Jews
pray. It is Jerusalem that is mentioned three times a day in those
prayers, and it is with the words "Next year in Jerusalem" that
Jews the world over have concluded the Passover Seder.
To Muslims, however, Jerusalem is an Islamic city. For most of the
history of Islam, Jerusalem has had a predominantly Muslim
population, and it has been under Islamic rule for most of the
thirteen centuries since the Christian patriarch surrendered the
city to the Caliph Umar in 638 CE. The primary exceptions were the
12th century, during the 90 years of Crusader rule, and the 20th
century, especially the post-1967 period. It is to Jerusalem that
Mohammad is said to have been transported, and from the rock
beneath the Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount that he is said to
have ascended to Heaven to receive his final revelation. While less
significant to Muslims as a whole than Mecca and Medina, Jerusalem
surely is the most important city for Palestinians, be they Muslim
or Christian. Geographically central, Jerusalem is the heart of
their educational, religious, and cultural life.
Whose Jerusalem is it rightfully? This is an area of moral
indeterminacy. Even if there were agreement on all the facts
(itself highly unlikely), there are no widely shared moral
principles which would be sufficient to assess the relative merit
of the two claims.
Religious Jews believe in a covenant by which the land was given to
Abraham's descendants through Isaac. What weight are we to grant to
these beliefs? Even if one dismisses as religious mythology any
notion of god-givenness with respect to the land, the fact remains
that for thousands of years people have understood their relation
to the land in these terms. Muslims, on the other hand, dispute the
centrality of the Abraham-Isaac relationship and, instead,
emphasize Abraham's relationship to his first son, Ishmael, from
whom they see themselves as descended. Moreover, Palestinians also
claim to be descended from the Jebusites, the pre-Israelite
inhabitants of Jerusalem. How are we to judge between them?
Religion aside, what importance do we assign to the sheer fact of
possession of the land and to issues of dispossession? Does it
matter who possessed the land first? How does the passage of time
strengthen or erode a people's claims to ownership? How much
significance do we give to the dominant Muslim presence in
Jerusalem for most of the last 1,200 years, or to the existence of
a Jewish majority within the Old City for a significant part of the
last century, or to that of a Muslim majority within the Old City
for the last fifty years? The unanswerable questions go on and
on.
Moral Recognitions as Motivation
Given that the achievement of moral agreement is a hopeless quest,
there is a general tendency among those working for peace to put
aside moral issues and to focus instead on arguments of national
interest for both Israelis and Palestinians, hoping to convince
both sides that it is in their interest to compromise. Thus, the
Israeli peace movement almost always couches its argument in terms
of Israel's interest in achieving peace and security. Only rarely
does it raise the issue of Palestinian rights. And if anything,
this same pattern is more dominant among Palestinian
moderates.
However, those seeking to promote a willingness to compromise may
have reached exactly the wrong conclusion from the futility of
efforts to assess who has the stronger claim to Jerusalem. The
complexity of the issue, and the absence of settled principles for
resolving it, actually point to one conclusion that could emerge as
a widely held proposition for both Israelis and Palestinians:
namely, that the other side has some legitimate rights with regard
to the city.
Once said, of course, this proposition appears obviously true to
most outside observers, but of little import. First, it is believed
that among those actually engaged in the conflict, only the
peaceniks would agree that the other side has any rights to
Jerusalem. Second, it is widely doubted that such recognition
carries with it any substantial motivation to compromise. An
individual's intellectual recognition of the rights of another
people tends to be viewed as an epiphenomenon when it conflicts
with the rights and interests of his own people.
Yet recent studies of Israelis and Palestinians suggest that this
"realist" vision is wrong on both counts. For instance, 39 percent
of Israeli Jews answered affirmatively when asked, "In your
opinion, do the Palestinians have any sort of legitimate rights
with regard to Jerusalem?" Among those who identify with the Labor
party, the figure rises to 55 percent. Some recognition of
Palestinian rights with regard to Jerusalem was also affirmed by 27
percent of those who belong to the Likud party, and by more than 20
percent of those who identify with the far-right parties. Among
those Israeli Jews who believe that Palestinians have some rights
to Jerusalem, 41 percent belong to the right or far-right parties.
So it is not the case that only peaceniks can see some validity in
the claims of the other side.
Willingness to Compromise
A stranger to Israeli politics might draw a discouraging lesson
from these findings. Since many Israeli Jews who acknowledge some
legitimate Palestinian rights with regard to Jerusalem nonetheless
vote for the Likud, one might conclude that moral recognition does
not affect willingness to compromise. But this would be a mistake.
People identify with Israeli political parties for many reasons,
some having little to do with the Israeli¬Palestinian
conflict. Moreover, supporters of the Likud are not necessarily
averse to compromise. For instance, 35 percent are willing to
seriously consider Palestinian sovereignty over peripheral areas of
Jerusalem such as Urn Tuba and Sur Baher, and 26 percent would
seriously consider joint administration of the Old City, provided
that Israel did not yield its claim to sovereignty.
To ascertain the motivational force of believing that Palestinians
have some legitimate rights with regard to Jerusalem, one recent
study divided Israeli Jews into four groups, depending on their
views as to a) whether Palestinians have any legitimate rights with
regard to Jerusalem; and b) whether a peace agreement with the
Palestinians will lead to long-term peace. The first group takes a
positive view of both questions; the fourth group, a negative view
of both questions. As one might expect, the first group is very
open to various compromise proposals, while the fourth group is
strongly opposed to compromise. Our interest lies mainly in the
other two groups: those who believe that Palestinians have rights
but don't believe real peace is possible even if a peace treaty is
signed, and those who believe real peace is possible but don't
believe Palestinians have any legitimate rights with regard to
Jerusalem.
If it were true, as realists assert, that recognition of another
people's rights is little more than a motivational epiphenomenon,
then one would expect to find far greater willingness to compromise
on Jerusalem among those in the second group than among those in
the third group. Belief in the prospects for long-term peace would
be a much more powerful motive for compromise than an
acknowledgment of some legitimacy in the other side's claims. But
in fact, it turns out that for these two groups, the willingness to
compromise is virtually identical, across a wide variety of
compromise proposals. Just as important, holding one or the other
belief appears to make Israeli Jews in these groups significantly
more open to compromise than those who hold neither belief. These
data suggest that recognition of the other side's legitimate rights
is a powerful motivational factor, quite possibly equal in strength
to believing that achieving a peace treaty with the Palestinians
will really lead to long-term peace.
Does the realist view fare any better when Palestinian options are
surveyed? According to one recent study, 70 percent of Palestinians
support genuine peace with Israel, provided that there is a
Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital. The
motivations here are no doubt quite diverse - the realization that
Israel is here to stay, the desire to see a Palestinian state come
into existence, the desire to live normal lives. Recognition of
Jewish rights is clearly not the dominant factor. Indeed, only a
minority of this group (21 percent) recognizes some Jewish rights
with respect to Jerusalem.
Yet it turns out that recognition of these rights does make some
people more inclined to compromise on Jerusalem. For example, among
Palestinians who favor peace with Israel, proposals for divided
sovereignty over the Old City, or joint sovereignty over the entire
city, receive twice as much support from those who recognize some
Jewish rights than from those who do not. However, less forthcoming
proposals, such as giving Palestinians autonomy but not sovereignty
over their neighborhoods, were thoroughly rejected by both
groups.
One must be wary about reading too much into the data, but they do
point to very interesting possibilities. First, regardless of
whether or not people are opposed to compromise, it may be possible
to get them to see that the other side does have some rights.
Though not every Israeli or Palestinian will be brought to this
point of view, an expanded moral discourse might well increase the
number who grant the other side some legitimacy.
Second, the data suggest that if people arrive at such a
recognition, it may indeed affect their willingness to compromise.
Thus, in the effort to promote compromise on Jerusalem, it may make
sense to engage right-wing Israelis in serious discourse with
respect to Palestinian rights, and it may make sense to seriously
engage the Palestinian mainstream in a parallel discourse with
respect to Jewish rights.
What Is Jerusalem?
Just as it may be worthwhile to draw people into the moral
complexity of the question "Whose Jerusalem is it rightfully?" so
too it may be worthwhile to wrestle with a second question: "What
is Jerusalem?" To see why, one must understand a bit about the
geography of the city.
For the moment, I mean by "Jerusalem" that territory lying within
the municipal boundaries set by the Israeli government. Jerusalem
consists of two parts, East and West. This distinction dates from
the end of the 1948-49 war, when the armistice line - known as the
Green Line - divided the city into two sectors. In the eastern half
was included the Old City - the one square kilometer of walled city
that includes the Western Wall and the Temple Mount. During the
1948-67 period, Israel was cut off from East Jerusalem; the city
was physically divided by barricades and barbed wire. Then, during
the Six-Day War of 1967, Israeli forces "reunified" the city. Not
only did they conquer East Jerusalem; they also routed the
Jordanians and captured all of the West Bank. Within weeks of the
reunification, Israel went on to expand Jerusalem. In particular,
it redrew the municipal boundaries to include within the city a
large tract of land from the West Bank that had surrounded East
Jerusalem. This "expanded East Jerusalem" was roughly ten times the
size of what might be termed "Jordanian-controlled East Jerusalem."
In drawing the new boundaries, the Israeli government sought to
include as much land as possible, but as few Palestinians as
possible. Thus the boundary lines were highly gerrymandered,
weaving in, around, and sometimes through numerous Palestinian
villages which lay near Jerusalem. These territories of expanded
East Jerusalem are the only parts of the West Bank that the
government has actually incorporated into Israel. And it is within
this area that Israel launched a massive series of housing
projects, creating large Jewish hilltop neighborhoods, referred to
as "settlements" by the Palestinians.
Within East Jerusalem as a whole there are roughly equal numbers of
Israelis and Palestinians. But almost all of the Israelis in East
Jerusalem live within the areas added to the city in 1967; about
half of the total 172,000 Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem
also live within these areas. Within the Old City the population is
approximately 90 percent Palestinian, and the urbanized areas of
what had been Jordanian-controlled East Jerusalem (but not
including the Old City) are almost entirely Palestinian.
In 1993 Israel again changed the boundaries, this time expanding
West Jerusalem, and there are bills pending in the Knesset to
expand East Jerusalem again as well, to include the large West Bank
settlements of Ma'ale Adumim and Givat Zeev, which lie a few
kilometers outside the present boundaries.
In all this, what is Jerusalem? Meron Benvenisti, an Israeli expert
on the city who was once deputy mayor of Jerusalem, described the
halachic perspective (that is, the perspective of Jewish religious
law) as follows:
Modem-day halacha follows in the wake of administrative decisions
and extends the city's sanctity accordingly. All of the territory
within its municipal boundaries is regarded as "the Holy City" by
the religious establishment.
If this is the halachic point of view, it seems to have its secular
analogue in the government's ability to extend the symbolic power
of ''Jerusalem'' to any area that by administrative fiat gets
called ''Jerusalem.'' Thus, for instance, the recent Israeli
decision to build a new Jewish neighborhood at Jabal Abu Ghneim/Har
Homa is presented by the government as a matter of principle:
Israel's right to build anywhere within its capital, Jerusalem. Yet
Jabal Abu Ghneim/Har Homa had never been "inside" Jerusalem until
it was scooped up in the 1967 expansion. (In fact, it is an
isolated, rural hill on the outskirts of Bethlehem.) Even
Palestinians, it often appears, construe as "Jerusalem" any area
that Israeli authorities so identify. Thus the planned construction
at Jabal Abu Ghneim/Har Homa is characterized by the Palestinian
leadership as "the Judaization of Jerusalem."
A Transformed Attachment
Does any of this make sense? How might a rational Israeli or
Palestinian reflecting on his or her own attachment to Jerusalem
determine the geographic content of that commitment?
Until the latter part of the 19th century, Jerusalem did not extend
beyond the Old City. During almost: all those centuries of Jewish
Diaspora, in which there was prayer to and about Jerusalem, the
city constituted an area comprising only one percent of what is
presently Jerusalem. By what process can the object of attachment
be so thoroughly transformed and yet retain its power to inspire
loyalty and territorial claims?
Indeed, ancient Jerusalem cannot even be identified with the walled
city. The current walls were built by the Ottoman rulers in the
16th century. The ancient city of David - the Jerusalem that the
Bible tells us was conquered by King David from the Jebusites - was
not the Old City; it was a small area less than a quarter of the
size of the Old City. Today, this area, mostly ignored, lies just
south of the walled city. Even the Western Wall, for Jews the most
revered site in Jerusalem, is often misunderstood. It was not a
wall
of the ancient Jewish Temple, but rather a retaining wall for the
plateau on which the Temple stood. But archaeologists tell us that
even this is not quite correct, because at the time of the ancient
Temple, the plateau was much smaller than it is now. The Western
Wall is a retaining wall for the plateau as it was expanded by Kind
Herod in the first century BCE.
Even if one cares about Jerusalem, cares passionately, about
exactly what should one care? In what should one reasonably invest
one's concern? Assuming that Benvenisti is correct about halacha,
can a rational person's emotional energies flow along that
prescribed path - if the Knesset says that a settlement of 25,000
people a mile from Jerusalem is suddenly in the city, is it
rational that one's feelings about that settlement suddenly
change?
The more one wonders "What is Jerusalem?" the more perplexing it
all becomes. Why, for instance, should Palestinians who deny that
Israel has any rightful authority vis-à-vis Jerusalem or the
West Bank experience "as Jerusalem" some village area in the West
Bank, simply because the day before, an Israeli administrative
authority defined it as part of Jerusalem? We can understand why
the political leadership on both sides might want to manipulate
people's feelings about what is and is not Jerusalem. But, free
from manipulation, what is Jerusalem, really?
Here again we find indeterminacy. One can know the facts, but the
facts don't themselves imply that something is or is not Jerusalem.
To view something as Jerusalem is to have made a decision, or to
have adopted a stance or a point of view. And such a decision can
be revered, when there are good reasons to do so.
Redefining Jerusalem
The empirical research suggests that official boundaries, halachic
positions, and political rhetoric aside, we should go slowly in
making any assumptions with respect to how ordinary Israelis or
Palestinians define Jerusalem. It turns out that there is actually
great diversity within each national community in the extent to
which different parts or what is administratively defined as
Jerusalem by Israel are invested with the symbolic power of
Jerusalem. And there is considerable willingness, if there are good
reasons, to redefine Jerusalem. For example, when Israeli Jews were
asked: in order to ensure a Jewish majority [in Jerusalem] would
you support or object to redefining the city limits so that Arab
settlements and villages which are now within the borders of
Jerusalem (such as Shu'fat, Urn Tuba, Sur Baher) will be outside
the city? 59 percent supported and 41 percent opposed this
redefinition of the boundaries. Moreover, of the 41 percent
opposed, only 7 percent were strongly opposed. Presumably, anyone
who views the boundaries of the city as a sacred line would have
been very opposed. Thus, we can conclude that almost no Israeli
Jews view the boundaries in this way. For purposes deemed
legitimate, what is Jerusalem, especially what is East Jerusalem,
can be expanded or diminished. Within limits, boundaries are a
policy instrument.
When Palestinians were asked if they considered as part of
Jerusalem those areas that were defined as Jerusalem for the first
time when Israel expanded the boundaries in 1967, roughly 40
percent said they did not and 60 percent said they did. The result
varies, however, depending on whether the question emphasized that
Israel made this specification. When simply asked about the areas
by name, more people view them as part of Jerusalem. What this
suggests is that calling attention to the fact that common
definitions of Jerusalem implicitly accept Israel as the party that
defines "Jerusalem" prompts Palestinians to assert their own
definitions.
On both sides, moreover, there are major differences in the extent
to which people consider various parts of the city "important as
part of Jerusalem." Within each national community, one finds
consensus around certain areas ¬for instance, around the
Western Wall for Israeli Jews, and around the Haram al-Sharif (the
Temple Mount) for Palestinians. But then, within each national
community, this consensus breaks down. Only about a third of
Israeli Jews view Palestinian residential areas anywhere in the
city, including those within the Old City, as "very important as
Jerusalem." And only about a quarter of Palestinians view Jewish
residential areas within any part of the city as "very important as
Jerusalem." It turns out that once one disaggregates the
Old City, only two areas in all of Jerusalem stand out as of great
importance to most Palestinians and to most Israelis "as part of
Jerusalem": the Temple Mount and the Mount of Olives.
All of this suggests that exploring what actual people experience
as Jerusalem holds much promise as a key to resolving the conflict.
Broadly speaking, it is possible for Israeli Jews to experience
"Yerushalaim" as consisting of the Old City plus Palestinian
residential and commercial areas in East Jerusalem.
When we bring together the "What is Jerusalem?" question with the
"Whose is it?" question, what emerges is a path towards conflict
resolution. This path leads, as it were, to two overlapping
Jerusalems that have only the Old City and the Mount of Olives in
common and over which there would be some form of joint
administration. Were national referenda held on this approach
today, it would attract greater support than most people believe.
Even so, the extent and intensity of popular opposition would
preclude agreement. It is reasonable to believe, however, that if
there emerged on both sides a political leadership that sought to
achieve an agreement on Jerusalem and if there were a much fuller
discourse about the moral complexity of the Jerusalem question,
what is not at the moment politically viable could over time emerge
as the basis for lasting peace.
Reprinted from Philosophy and Public Policy, Vol. 17 No.4, Fall
1997, with permission.