bitterlemons-international.org
Middle East Roundtable /
Edition 20
Jerusalem Update:
An Israeli View
by Yossi Alpher Every Israeli
government since 1967 has worked to settle Jews across the green line in
Jerusalem, building huge neighborhoods and settlements to the north, east
and south of Arab East Jerusalem. The objective, a noble one from the Jewish
point of view, is to fortify and aggrandize Jerusalem as the capital of
Israel.
Unfortunately, the strategy selected for this enterprise has been faulty,
most recently bordering on pure folly of the sort once described by
historian Barbara Tuchman in her landmark The March of Folly.
The point of departure for the expansion of Jewish Jerusalem was the
decision, in June 1967, to enlarge the city by annexing not only the Old
City and (what came to be called) the Holy Basin, from the City of David to
the Mount of Olives, but all the rural villages on the hills surrounding the
city, and a long finger of territory reaching north to encompass the
airfield at Atarot/Kalandia, just south of Ramallah-Al Bireh. At the time
the logic seemed sound: Israeli security planners were certain the
superpowers would soon demand massive withdrawals from the territories
conquered a few weeks earlier in the Six-Day War, and the region would
revert back to a reality of prolonged hostility; Jerusalem needed an
airfield for re-supply in case of 1948-style siege, and a protective range
of hills to its east, north and south to avoid the pre-June 1967 situation
of Jordanian Arab Legion snipers shooting at Israelis from these hills.
No one took into account that the US and USSR would not demand an immediate
withdrawal and that the Jordanian option would be replaced by that of a
demilitarized Palestinian state that sought Jerusalem as its capital. Within
a few years, Israeli thinking proved to be totally anachronistic, but nobody
ever bothered to reconsider the direction chosen.
Next, in an obvious act of folly, Israel built Jewish neighborhoods
precisely on those newly annexed parts of the city that were supposed to
form a protective belt. Hence, in the recent intifada, while Palestinian
snipers did not shoot at Ramat Rachel, they were able easily to fire at
Gilo.
But the principle act of folly was the total lack of thought given to the
fate of Jerusalem's Arab residents and its Muslim holy places. Now more than
200,000 strong, the Arab residents of the city are increasingly cut off from
the rest of the West Bank by Jewish neighborhoods. To compound the folly,
the Sharon government is routing the fence/wall along the annexation borders
rather than the demographic borders, thereby further detaching this
Palestinian population from the rest of Palestine and embittering
Palestinians on both sides. The fence/wall is needed for the security of
Jews; its current path is counterproductive to that objective.
Two aspects of current government policy are worthy of mention because they
show how different things could be. First, at the northern end of the
Jerusalem "finger" the fence is being built south of Kafr Aqab and the
Atarot/Kalandiya landing strip, both within the city's expanded municipal
borders. In effect, Israel is giving up on a portion of "united Jerusalem,
eternal capital of Israel". Yet no one objects, because that slogan has long
been understood to be a can of worms of contradictions. Why not move the
fence elsewhere in accordance with demographic, security and, yes, political
logic?
Secondly, the E1 construction project, which has attracted heavy pressure
from Washington, is part of the paradox of Maale Adummim. That settlement
town of 30,000 residents will be part of Israel; even the Geneva Accord
recognizes that reality. But from the start it was clear that attaching it
to Jerusalem would be problematic because it cuts the West Bank in two and
seals off yet another area where Arab Jerusalem could still be attached to
the West Bank as part of a final status agreement. This is a topic par
excellence for creative negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians; its
solution could be a major confidence builder. The Sharon government prefers
to establish its own facts on the ground, however erroneously.
Israel does not want the Arab residents of Jerusalem as full-fledged
citizens because of demographic fears. The Arab residents refuse to
cooperate with the municipality for reasons, largely misplaced, of
Palestinian nationalism. By voting and running for municipal office they
probably could have thwarted many of the Israeli acts that have made their
lives so difficult, but here the PLO's mistakes equal those of Israel.
Israeli strategic planners have no idea what to do with the city's Arab
residents, some one-third of Jerusalemites. So they ignore them in terms of
municipal development and services. Until lately this situation was somehow
tolerable, in that Palestinians were able to move back and forth fairly
easily between the city and the West Bank for purposes of work, education,
health care, commerce, etc., while Palestinian Jerusalemites enjoyed
relatively generous Israeli social security and health benefits.
Now the critical mass of the fence/wall and ongoing settlement of Jews on
every flank of the Arab city is liable to turn Arab East Jerusalem into a
powder keg. At the state political level Israeli construction is,
deliberately, foreclosing any option of attaching the Arab city to a
Palestinian state as its capital. At the personal level the fence/wall is
cutting off more than 200,000 Palestinians from the rest of Palestine, and
vice versa. At the religious level, every step Israel takes to isolate
Jerusalem from the West Bank also isolates the Haram Al Sharif (Temple
Mount) mosques from Muslim believers, to the detriment of any future chance
for peaceful coexistence with the Muslim world.
The last intifada began in Jerusalem. I fear the next one will also erupt
there, and then focus heavily on the city.- Published 13/6/2005 (c)
bitterlemons.org
Yossi Alpher is coeditor of the bitterlemons family of internet
publications. He is former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic
Studies at Tel Aviv University, and a former senior adviser to PM Ehud
Barak.
Bitterlemons-international.org is an internet
forum for an array of world perspectives on the Middle East and its
specific concerns. It aspires to engender greater understanding about
the Middle East region and open a new common space for world thinkers
and political leaders to present their viewpoints and initiatives on the
region. Editors Ghassan Khatib and Yossi Alpher can be reached at
ghassan@bitterlemons-international.org
and
yossi@bitterlemons-international.org, respectively.
hagalil.com 14-06-2005 |