For the past 85 years, the international community, the
representatives of the Zionist movement and, later, the State of
Israel, the representatives of the Arab world and, especially, the
Palestinians, have been engaged in attempts to find ways to make
the City of Jerusalem a city of peace. Over this period, more than
65 plans have been tabled for discussions.1 Many people claim that
the failure to resolve the issue of Jerusalem is what led to the
breakdown of negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian
Authority. The latest Palestinian uprising is named the al-Aqsa
Intifada after the central role that the Holy Places have played in
the latest round of the Israeli-Arab conflict.
The central focus of the tens of plans proposed for resolving the
Jerusalem issue was mainly placed on the issue of sovereignty: who
owns Jerusalem and who has the right to control the city? The
latest breakdown in negotiations between Ehud Barak and Yasser
Arafat focused more on the question of the control and sovereignty
over the Holy Places, or more specifically over the Temple
Mount/Haram al-Sharif, than over the general question of
sovereignty.
Positions Restated
The most important chapter in negotiating Jerusalem occurred during
the period of 1993-2001. The Oslo Declaration of Principles of
September 13, 1993, led to agreement between Israel and the PLO
that the issue of Jerusalem would be determined in final-status
negotiations among other final-status issues. The positions of the
Israelis and of the Palestinians on the Jerusalem question remained
rather stagnant from 1993 until the final stages of the
negotiations in mid-2000. These positions can be summarized as
follows:
Israel: All of Jerusalem, West and East, is Israel's eternal,
undivided capital. All of Jerusalem must remain under Israeli
sovereignty forever.
PLO: All of East Jerusalem (the area beyond the Green Line) is the
capital of the Palestinian state. All of the territories of East
Jerusalem must be under Palestinian sovereignty forever. This
includes the Jewish "neighborhoods" in East Jerusalem.
These positions were voiced over and over again by Yasser Arafat
and by each Israeli prime minister since the beginning of the Oslo
process (Rabin, Peres, Netanyahu, and Barak). Even prior to the
Camp David summit in the summer of 2000, Ehud Barak restated the
Israeli position: "Jerusalem will not be divided, we will protect
the Holiness of Israel," as he termed Jerusalem. Arafat, likewise,
reiterated the Palestinian position: "We will raise our flag from
the walls, the mosques and the churches of Jerusalem."
Searching for Models
Many of the pre-negotiations and Track II work that was conducted
over the Oslo years aimed at breaking the seemingly non-negotiable
nature of the question over sovereignty. Many "creative" models
were suggested including Joint Sovereignty, Shared Sovereignty,
Divine Sovereignty, No Sovereignty, to name a few. Some of the best
minds and creative thinkers of Israelis and Palestinians searching
for peace, authored papers, presented plans, and tried to market
their ideas. Always, the officials and their representatives from
both sides came back to their starting positions: sovereignty over
Jerusalem cannot be divided.
There were those who spoke about the inability to manage a city
under separate municipal governments. To answer these claims,
municipal government experts were called upon to propose technical
and legal solutions. These included joint commissions,
privatization of services, creation of neighborhood councils, joint
municipal government, umbrella councils, rotating mayors and deputy
mayors, etc.
Others claimed that even if sovereignty is divided, the city must
have one legal regime. These people also claimed that it was in the
interest of all of Jerusalem residents and businesses that the
regime be the Israeli one, because of it being more developed, more
reliable and less corrupt. Here international lawyers were brought
in to offer their creative interpretations of international law
and, in particular, on the waning importance and the changing
nature of the concept of sovereignty.
Some raised security issues as the focus, and then the security and
police experts were brought in to design various regimes for
security, public order and criminal law. The experts proposed joint
police forces, separate forces with joint commands, joint patrols,
joint checkpoints, hot pursuits across the city's complicated
network of neighborhoods and roads. There was no lack of other
ideas like fences, walls and a sophisticated high-tech network of
closed-circuit television cameras.
There were those who raised the question of whether or not
Jerusalem should be an open city or a closed city. If Jerusalem is
open, then there are no borders between Israel and Palestine, but
is it at all possible to seal off Jerusalem from the rest of Israel
and Palestine? Here suggestions were raised including passport
stations on the external borders, mobile spot checkpoints within
the city, a passport station on the west outside of the city.
Others claimed that without accepting the principle of an open
city, there would be no peace. And there were those who claimed
that if Jerusalem were left to be an open city, there would be no
security.
The Clinton Principles
Until Camp David and until the presentation of the Clinton
principles for Jerusalem - "What is Jewish to Israel and what is
Arab to the Palestinians" - there was no real progress ever in any
of the formal negotiations, the pre-negotiations or informal Track
II processes. The Clinton principles put to paper the basic truth
that sovereignty is linked to territory and that the sides must
agree to the legal division of the territory. Once there seemed to
be acceptance of the Clinton principles by both sides, the central
question became focused on the heart - the Temple Mount/Haram
al-Sharif.
In the end, the various experts found and proposed possible
technical solutions to all of the problems, save the religious one.
The Israeli side extended the definition of the religious problem
by talking about the "Holy Basin" including all of the Old City,
the Ophel, the City of David and the Mount of Olives. The Israelis,
with American support, spoke of the development of a special regime
for this area, without ever reaching into any agreement with the
Palestinians on an acceptable definition of this "special regime."
The Israeli negotiators, under Barak's direct instructions, were
told to avoid the possibility of Palestinian sovereignty over the
Holy Basin, preferring to create a joint regime of
Israeli-Palestinian sovereignty and control over this area.
The Palestinian negotiators remained adamant in their demand that
this area be placed under Palestinian sovereignty. The Israeli
negotiators believed that under the Clinton principles, the
Palestinians had conceded that the Western Wall (Kotel) and the
Jewish Quarter would be under Israeli sovereignty. The
Palestinians, however, talked about Israeli "control" and not
Israeli "sovereignty," without defining what that means. An
argument ensued between the sides on the actual definition of the
Kotel - is it the open area where Jews pray today, as the
Palestinians claimed, or is it the entire Western Wall of the
Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif compound, as the Israelis claimed?
This issue was never resolved.
The Religious Dimension
To complicate matters more, Jewish legal opinion suggested that a
place for Jewish prayer could be constructed in the northern part
of the Temple Mount. At the end of these internal Jewish
deliberations, the prevailing Halachic opinion remained that Jews
should not enter the Temple Mount.
At Camp David, in an apparent move to preempt Israeli public
objection to dividing sovereignty in Jerusalem and, especially,
relinquishing Israeli sovereignty over the Temple Mount (not to the
Palestinians, but to some kind of international and/or Islamic
body), Barak instructed the Israeli team to make Israeli
concessions here conditional on Palestinian acceptance of the
construction of an area for Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount. This
was the first breaking point that led to the failure of the Camp
David summit.
The introduction of the religious dimension of the Jerusalem
conflict meant, almost automatically, a radicalization of positions
and an inability to reach agreement. Several years ago, King
Hussein had suggested that sovereignty of the Temple Mount/Haram
al-Sharif be placed in the hands of God. This seemed like a logical
outcome in the indivisibility of theological beliefs. Each side
could claim that "their God" held sovereignty. The Israelis would
also agree to the status quo whereby the Islamic Waqf maintained
effective control on the Mount, on the condition that the Waqf
refrained from building and digging, and that some kind of
international force guaranteed the security of the Jewish prayers
below at the Kotel.
Each Side's Worse Fears
The opportunity for agreement on the Divine Sovereignty concept
seems to have been compromised and demised at Camp David by an
American modification that included what was termed "horizontal and
vertical elements of sovereignty." Here, apparently, they added
that there would be a concept of Divine Sovereignty over the space
above, Palestinian sovereignty horizontally - meaning on the Haram
al-Sharif itself - and Israeli sovereignty vertically, or
underneath the Haram. This ridiculous proposal only served to
magnify the already suspicious response regarding the vague concept
of Divine Sovereignty. Each side's worst fears were embellished:
the Israelis already feared Palestinian control on top that would
allow them to prevent the Jews from conducting peaceful Jewish
prayer at the Kotel. The Palestinians have always believed that the
Israelis have been digging underneath al-Aqsa for years and
eventually they would achieve their goal of making the Holy Mosque
collapse. In the end, Arafat believed that the concept of Divine
Sovereignty was part of an Israeli-American conspiracy designed by
Israelis together with what he called "Albright's Jews" - the
American peace process team. The possibility of accepting the
concept of Divine Sovereignty over the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif
disappeared almost as quickly as it was presented.
Barak was willing to consider some alternative sovereignty over the
Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif, even calling for United Nations
involvement, which was a great surprise. Upon his return from Camp
David, he once again restated, over and over again, that he "would
not agree to sign any agreement that would turn sovereignty on the
Temple Mount over to the Palestinians." After Camp David, Arafat
restated, over and over again, that the only acceptable plan for
the Haram al-Sharif could only be full Palestinian sovereignty. And
once again the sides were deadlocked on this issue.
As the negotiations seemed to be getting more and more serious,
both sides convened forums of experts to help work out the details
for Jerusalem's future. The experts on both sides, although never
meeting formally together, did exchange views amongst themselves.
Many had been involved for the past decade in the Track II working
groups and discussions held under various auspices such as IPCRI -
the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information - the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the ECF - Economic
Cooperation Foundation - the Jerusalem Institute for Israel
Studies, Orient House, the Truman Institute, the Palestine-Israel
Journal, and more. These efforts began in the early months of the
first Intifada in 1988 and intensified over the past several years.
The work conducted by the experts' committees was perhaps the most
intensive and most detailed work undertaken to date. Maps were
drawn, municipal models were deliberated in detail, infrastructure
needs and developments were planned, security arrangements were
analyzed with various alternatives proposed. With the work of these
committees being based on the Clinton principles enabled both teams
of experts to take the planning of Jerusalem's future to places
that had never been seen before. As a member of the experts
committee from the Israeli side, I can state with full confidence
that we had never been closer to agreement.
Today, both the Bush administration and the Sharon government have
declared that the Clinton principles are null and void. There is no
doubt in my mind that some day, when the two sides are more ready
for agreement, we will return to those principles and they will
once again serve as the base for any future agreement. Until that
time, what remains to be done is for the two expert committees to
meet together and to put together a shared paper mapping out
Jerusalem's possible future.