In the previous two articles I suggested that 1) assigning sovereignty over the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif to the Palestinians and sovereignty over the adjacent Western Wall to the Israelis is impractical, and that 2) having two capitals of two sovereign states located in Jerusalem will dangerously increase tensions in the city. In this article I offer a continuation of this critique as applied to the proposed division of Jerusalem's Old City. It's another bad idea! My ideal solution would be to hire the Walt Disney Company to build a complete, full-size replica of the Old City near its current location so that each side could have its own. It would look so real, down to the smallest detail, that no one could tell which was which. Every other year the Israelis and the Palestinians would switch places between the original Old City and the cloned version. But given that we don't live in an ideal world, my ideal solution won't work. So what is the next best thing? For several hundred years, Jerusalem's Jewish, Christian, and Muslim populations all lived inside the walls rebuilt in the 16th century by the Ottoman sultan known to the West as Suleiman the Magnificent. From the mid-19th century, Christians, Jews, and Muslims began to build outside the walls. And so began the urban sprawl that continues to this day, in all directions. But when people around the world think of Jerusalem, they probably still think of the Old City. Within the confines of its one square kilometer can be found the Via Dolorosa, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, the Wailing Wall, the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount with the Al Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock. For centuries, dating back at least to the Mamluk era, the Old City has been divided into quarters of unequal size. Today these are known as the Muslim, Christian, Armenian, and Jewish quarters. Even the names reveal the asymmetry and untidiness of these divisions, since the Armenians are themselves Christians, though non-Arab ones. The four Quarters have never been hermetically sealed off from one another. Jews have lived in the Muslim Quarter. Muslims have lived in the Christian, Armenian, and Jewish quarters. In 1948, immediately following the surrender to Jordan's Arab Legion by the Jewish Quarter residents and their Haganah defenders, all Jews were expelled from the Old City. Shortly after Israel's military victory in 1967, Jews began to move into the Jewish Quarter once again. Some Jews have moved into other quarters of the Old City as well. In the three thousand-plus years of Jerusalem history, the Old City has never been divided. Though the rulers have often changed, there has only ever been one ruler at a time, one sovereign power over all of the Old City. Now it is proposed – more than proposed, it is accepted in the international community as obvious – that the only reasonable solution to the conundrum of ruling Jerusalem is to divide the Old City between Palestine and Israel. The first time a division of the Old City came up for discussion between official representatives of the current parties to the conflict was in July 2000 at the Arafat-Barak-Clinton talks held at Camp David. With Barak's backing, Clinton proposed Palestinian sovereignty over the Christian and Muslim quarters, with “guaranteed custodianship” (but not sovereignty) over the Haram. Arafat declined the offer. In the following months, until the end of Barak's turn as prime minister, variations on this theme remained in play, with a suggested possible further division of the Armenian Quarter between Israel and Palestine. No agreement on disposition of the Old City has ever been reached by official Israeli and Palestinian negotiators – not at Oslo or Camp David or Taba, not between Barak and Arafat or between Olmert and Abbas. If Israel's prime ministers from the Labor and Kadima parties could not reach agreement with the Fatah-dominated PLO, what are the odds that Likud's Netanyahu will soon see eye to eye on the subject with Abbas? Regardless of George Mitchell's much vaunted negotiating skills, the United States lacks the ability to force the Israelis and the Palestinians to accept a deal for the heart of Jerusalem which they view as inimical to their national interests or undermining of broader Jewish and Muslim affinities for the Old City. Where President Clinton failed to bridge the divide on that most emotional of issues, Jerusalem, it is doubtful that President Obama will succeed. What then should be done about the Old City? 1) It could be divided between Israel and Palestine; 2) It could remain united as part of Israel; 3) It could remain united as part of Palestine; 4) Israel and Palestine could share condominium over it; or 5) It could be placed under a special international regime. (Another option would be to designate Jerusalem as the united capital of one state for all Palestinians and Israelis, but since a one-state solution is not on the agenda of Israeli and Palestinian negotiators, this option will not be considered here.) Of the five named options, No. 3 is the least likely to be realized as long as Israel retains her military superiority. Having obtained possession of the area by force of arms in ‘67 after losing it in '48, Israel will hardly volunteer to give up the Jewish Quarter or the Wailing Wall. I can imagine no set of circumstances in which Israel would simply turn over the Old City to the Palestinians. The problem with No. 5 is that Israelis do not trust the international community. In Israeli eyes, that distrust is fully justified by the U.N.'s predominantly hostile attitude towards the Jewish state since before its inception and the more recently perceived hostility from the EU. Because of this distrust, Israel will not turn over the site of the ancient Jewish capital to outsiders to serve as arbiters of its fate. No. 4, shared condominium, is problematic for different reasons. Power-sharing arrangements always come down to the question of who has the final say. If Israel and Palestine have an equal number of votes on a governing council or committee, then we have a recipe for gridlock. If one side has more votes than the other, then that side will dictate policy. A variant of this idea, which is really a hybrid of options 4 and 5, has been developed in detail by a Canadian-led project, the Jerusalem Old City Initiative. This group proposes the appointment of a non-Israeli, non-Palestinian “Administrator with executive authority” to manage the Old City's daily affairs on behalf of Israel and Palestine. A single “Old City Police Service” would report to the Administrator through the Chief of Police. The Administrator would be appointed by and “accountable to a Governance Board composed of the parties themselves and international stakeholders acceptable to both.” This raises two issues: the precise make-up and number of members of the Governance Board and whether anyone attempting to govern in Jerusalem can be truly impartial. The British couldn't manage it, even when they tried. What about option 2, leaving the Old City as part of Israel? One should not expect the Palestinians to agree to any deal that leaves the entire Old City, including the predominantly Muslim sections, permanently in Israeli hands. Apart from its evocative power and religious significance, Al-Quds has become too much of a political symbol to the Palestinians for them to willingly surrender sovereignty over the heart of the Old City to their Israeli adversaries. That leaves option number 1, dividing the Old City between Israel and Palestine. If we look at the problem from a practical perspective, we come up with major difficulties in dividing the Old City between two sovereign states. One group that has worked diligently to flesh out the problems and solutions of a divided Old City wrote the Geneva Initiative, also known as the Geneva Accord. The Geneva Initiative was negotiated over a period of many months by Israeli and Palestinian non-governmental teams which included Yossi Beilin and Yasser Abed Rabbo. The resulting 2003 document assigned the Jewish Quarter and the Wailing Wall to Israel and the three other quarters to Palestine. The two teams came up with an elaborate scheme of joint committees and special authorities in their attempt to deal with the many complex and tricky issues of security, utilities and other municipal services, transportation, economic development, planning and zoning, and cross-border cooperation. For example, policing duties in the Old City would be conducted by the “Israeli Old City police detachment” in the Jewish Quarter, by the “Palestinian Old City police detachment” in the other three quarters, and by the “Old City Policing Unit” (PU) established by the “Implementation and Verification Group” (IVG), which includes the US, the EU, the UN, the Russian Federation “and other parties, both regional and international, to be agreed on by the Parties”. The PU will “liase with, coordinate between, and assist the Palestinian and Israeli police forces in the Old City,…defuse localized tensions and help resolve disputes, and … perform policing duties in locations specified in and according to operational procedures detailed in Annex X.” By the way, there is no Annex X. That is the non-existent place to which all unresolved matters are relegated by the authors of the Geneva Initiative. The security issues alone are daunting. The Old City is a major destination for tourists, pilgrims, and worshippers. Many of them enter on foot through one of the seven open gates in the wall which encloses the Old City. To require everyone who enters to undergo a security check would result in long lines and massive traffic jams, leading to a reduction in the number of visitors resulting in decreased revenues for Arab and Jewish businesses. But if there is no security check going in, there could still be security checks coming out, which is the proposal of the Geneva Initiative. Even this could create serious congestion problems. Partly to address this issue, “The Geneva Accord specifies that the gates of the Old City will not be used as crossing points for Israelis and Palestinians wishing to enter the territory of the neighboring country. Thus, Israelis and Palestinians will not be permitted to exit the other side via the Old City, and will need to do so using alternative crossings…” These problems would be multiplied several fold if security checks were introduced between those Old City quarters allocated to Palestine and the quarter or quarters designated as Israeli territory. While no one wants that to happen, if terrorist attacks or other security breaches take place within the walls, either or both sides could impose restrictions on movement across the border inside the Old City or even shut down cross-border traffic altogether. Such an action could bring commerce and normal daily life to a halt. In the Jerusalem Old City Initiative's 2008 report, its authors wrote: “We do not believe an Old City, geographically divided between Israel and Palestine, to be sustainable; indeed we are concerned that it would threaten the viability of any comprehensive peace, given the mosaic of Holy Sites within it, their intense symbolism and the potential for confrontation over them. Our view has been that the wounds of war do not permit a divided Old City, particularly when sacred space therein is indivisible.” Unless one starts with the unshakeable conviction that the Old City simply must be divided, an honest examination of the difficulties involved, from the conceptual to the mundane, will likely lead to the conclusion that doing so is unworkable. To quote again from the Jerusalem Old City Initiative, “the area is too small, densely populated and architecturally linked to be managed viably by a mix of different authorities and police forces.” Even if the Old City could be successfully partitioned, it shouldn't be. The supposed logic of drawing a border through it must be challenged. For as long as the Old City has been enclosed by walls, it has always been one entity. Its four Quarters are so historically and organically interconnected that to divide them between two rival nation-states would violate the integrity of this very special place. Another solution must be found or invented, one that does not require splitting it apart, for that is not an option that serves Jerusalem's Old City, its inhabitants, or the millions of Christians, Muslims, and Jews around the world who care about its future. ** Read more from Michael Lame on his blog BM
