In a western, the sheriff confronts the stranger who rides into town and asks him to turn in his six-shooters. “This is a peaceful little place, mister. We don't want no trouble here.” Jerusalem, the city of peace, has seen more than its share of trouble over the last four millennia. And the question of its future is inextricably tied to the difficulties of keeping the peace. Who will play sheriff? A two-state solution that draws a border between Palestinian and Israeli sections of Jerusalem presents a unique problem of keeping the peace: Can the city remain relatively open and free while safeguarding both populations from attack? There are two basic solutions to the security requirements of an Israel determined to protect its civilian population from attacks originating in the West Bank. (Palestinians also have legitimate security concerns, including that of rampaging settlers, but so far these attacks have been initiated and carried out within the West Bank and have not involved Israelis crossing the green line.) Checkpoints must be placed either on the seam between east and west Jerusalem or on the outskirts of the city. The current security arrangements are based on the second option, with Israeli security personnel checking Palestinians entering Jerusalem from the West Bank. With the establishment of a Palestinian state, the Israeli occupation of the West Bank will come to an end. Presumably so will Israeli control of the checkpoint infrastructure located in what will become Palestinian sovereign territory. How will Israel then prevent would-be attackers from entering its capital? Israeli distrust of Palestinian security services will remain even after occupation ends; Israel will not turn over to Palestine security checks for those entering IsraeliJerusalem. Nor will it be willing to outsource to Americans or Europeans the responsibility for its own border security. As a result, security checks north, east, and south of Jerusalem would have to be conducted by Israelis – in conjunction with Palestinians – on Palestinian roads at Palestinian checkpoints in Palestinian sovereign territory. It seems unlikely that Palestinians would be willing to go along with such an arrangement, unless, of course, they consider the alternative. That alternative is to conduct security checks on the Israeli-Palestinian border between Israeli and Palestinian neighborhoods within Jerusalem. But what constitutes Jerusalem and where would the border be drawn? Whether we use Arabic, English, or Hebrew – Al-Quds, Jerusalem, or Yerushalayim – the city in question has enormously increased its square mileage since first expanding beyond its walls in the mid-19th century. Organic growth was dramatically supplemented by annexation of outlying areas in the wake of the June 1967 war. This redrawing of the borders of Jerusalem resulted in the inclusion of several villages such as Shu'afat, Isawiyya, and Sur Baher that had never before been considered part of the city. Jerusalem was expanded to more than twice the size of Israeli and Jordanian Jerusalem combined. This was done in the most overtly political tradition (known in this country as gerrymandering). Certain Arab areas were left outside the municipality while other areas in which Israel planned to build Jewish suburbs were included. When the PLO first accepted a two-state solution, it insisted that the basis for the division be the green line, i.e., the pre-1967 armistice line, so that all of what had been Jordanian Jerusalem (from ‘48 to ‘67) would become Palestinian Jerusalem, including the entire Old City, with all its “holy sites” and all of the Jewish Quarter. One alternative to the ‘67 border is the Clinton formula, which specified that in Jerusalem east of the green line, the Arab neighborhoods would become part of Palestine and the Jewish neighborhoods would become part of Israel. This formulation was offered to both sides as part of the “Clinton parameters” set forth in a meeting in the Oval Office in December 2000. Jerusalem has changed dramatically since Clinton made his proposal a decade ago. The barrier/fence/wall has gone up in several parts of Jerusalem. New Jewish neighborhoods such as Har Homa have been built since then. New roads have been built as well. More Jews have moved into traditionally Arab neighborhoods of east Jerusalem, such as Silwan and Sheikh Jarrah. Arab communities have also grown considerably, and Arabs have moved into some previously all-Jewish neighborhoods, such a French Hill and Pisgat Ze'ev. As a result, the border which could have been drawn in the year 2000 could not be drawn today. The map of Jewish and Arab neighborhoods is even more of a patchwork quilt. The boundary lines between the two communities have been blurred. Currently the Jewish population of Jerusalem west of the green line stands at roughly 300,000, with close to another 200,000 Jews living inside the municipal boundaries east of the green line. Approximately 300,000 Arabs live within those same municipal boundaries, almost all of them east of the green line. Redividing Jerusalem along the green line makes abstract sense, especially to one who has never lived there. In the absence of physical acquaintance with the landscape and people of Jerusalem, one can easily advocate a Solomonic solution of cutting the city in half, giving each side a piece of the maimed whole. But just as a baby is a living being that must remain whole to survive, so one can view a city as a living being or organism that should not be cut in two. A certain logic can also be found in designating Jewish neighborhoods as part of Israel and Arab neighborhoods as part of Palestine. It makes sense until one examines the enormous difficulties required to make it work at all. Both of these alternatives – division along the green line or division by neighborhood – are easy-to-understand mechanistic solutions to a non-mechanistic problem. For two contrarian views on the future direction of Jerusalem, I suggest reading articles written this year by Khaled Abu Toameh and Danny Rubenstein, both of them Jerusalem residents who are longtime observers of Israeli-Palestinian relations in general and of Jerusalem in particular. Regarding the practicality of dividing the city, Abu Toameh claims that “Jerusalem is a very small city where Jews and Arabs live across the street from each other and on top of each other. Since 1967, Israel has built many new neighborhoods in the eastern part of the city, rendering it impossible to imagine a reality where Jerusalem would exist as a divided city. Redividing Jerusalem will turn the lives of both Jews and Arabs into a nightmare, especially with regards to traffic arrangements. Every day, tens of thousands of Jews and Arabs commute between the two parts of the city freely. Redividing Jerusalem will result in the establishment of checkpoints and border crossings inside many parts of the city. Jews and Arabs will find themselves confined to their homes and neighborhoods, which will be surrounded by security barriers and checkpoints.” One hopes that implementing a security regime between Israeli and Palestinian Jerusalem will not result in the nightmarish scenario envisioned above, but hope is an insufficient basis on which to split a city in half. The Geneva Initiative people, having thought long and hard about these issues, developed detailed and complex proposed solutions which envision three crossing points in Jerusalem. Mundane municipal matters of utilities, transportation, zoning, and the like would need to be sorted out by two municipal governments. The Geneva Initiative posits the establishment of a coordinating committee with equal Israeli and Palestinian membership and at least seven subcommittees. Given the residency, employment, and traffic patterns in today's Jerusalem, splitting the city between two different nation-states with two different political philosophies and systems of governance will inevitably be a complicated proposition, fraught with potential for operational breakdowns and escalated tensions. One bomb that explodes in west Jerusalem could easily result in the ordered shut-down of all crossing points, bringing life in much of the city to a standstill. And then there is the political question of the desire of the residents. Most east Jerusalem Palestinians are not Israeli citizens. Since 1967 they have lived under Israeli rule, with many severe restrictions and some important benefits. Danny Rubenstein writes of Jerusalem's Palestinians that “in the past few years, tens of thousands of them have applied to the Ministry of the Interior for full Israeli citizenship” and that “in the last two years, about twelve thousand Palestinians from East Jerusalem have received Israeli citizenship…They now believe that the Israeli (Jewish) presence in the eastern part of the city is so powerful that it cannot be shaken or dislodged. The city won't be divided…” Abu Toameh suggest holding a referendum “where the Arab residents would be asked if they would like to live in a divided city under the rule of the Palestinian Authority or Hamas. Most likely, a majority of the Arab residents would say that they prefer the status quo to the other options.” He doesn't mention the options of living as Israeli citizens in a united Jerusalem or of living under some form of international regime. But he does clearly state not only that east Jerusalem Arabs don't want to be part of a sovereign Palestinian state, but that dividing Jerusalem won't work, for political as well as practical reasons: “Redividing Jerusalem means bringing either the Palestinian Authority or Hamas into the city. The Arab residents of Jerusalem have seen what happened in the West Bank and Gaza Strip over the past 16 years and are not keen to live under a corrupt authority or a radical Islamist entity.” [Note: One may remember that Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has called for redrawing borders so that a number of Arab towns and villages would be reallocated from Israel to Palestine. One major objection to his idea is that it goes against the expressed wishes of the Arabs in question. What if the Arabs of east Jerusalem expressed similar opposition to inclusion in a Palestinian state? Should the desires of local inhabitants determine the fate of nations?] In examining the world's history, it is hard to find an example of the healthy division of a city. Does anyone really think Berlin was better off before the wall came down? Jerusalem itself was divided by walls and barbed wire and no-man's land from 1948 to 1967. No one longs for the return of those days. The huge unsightly slabs of gray concrete erected between some neighborhoods and through others in east Jerusalem should come down rather than more being put up. Whether we favor the establishment of Palestine alongside Israel or not, the proposed division of Jerusalem raises practical, political, and even spiritual issues that demand our rethinking the city's future. ** Read more from Michael Lame on his rethinkme.org blog BM
