More Time to Discuss, Transform Jerusalem

[ProgressiveMuslim]

By Hasan Afif El-Hasan

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert stated recently that the status of Jerusalem will not be negotiated with the Palestinians at this time. Right wing Israelis are against conceding any part of the Old City or any suburb of Jerusalem municipality to the Palestinians. The ultra-orthodox right wing party in Olmert government threatens to leave the governing coalition if the question of Jerusalem comes up for discussion with the Palestinians and that is why Olmert will not discuss it now. This has been the same rationale that successive Israeli governments have always cited whenever they were pressed to stop settlement expansion. And if Israel says no negotiations on the future of Jerusalem, the Palestinians cannot do anything about it.

The Palestinians’ concession to keep Jerusalem out of the Oslo interim agreement in 1993 gave Israel the time to alter its status quo prior to any possible permanent status talks. Israel since Oslo has expanded the boundaries of the City, confiscated more Arab lands and constructed new settlements. Schemes have been devised to take over private Arab and Church properties inside and outside the Old City, and large settlements have been built on its outskirts. Some of these are Har Homa (Jabal Ghaneim), Gilo, Piscat Ze’ev, Atarot, Ramot settlement. Jewish settlers evicted Palestinian residents from their quarters in the Old City and took over St. John’s Hospice and other church and Islamic endowment (wakf) properties. The Israeli government dug Hasmonean Tunnel under al-Aqsa Mosque compound endangering the structure of the Islamic shrine.

The area of East Jerusalem has been isolated by Jewish only settlements from Ramallah in the north by Givat Ze’ev, from Bethlehem in the south by Gush Etzion and from the east to the Dead Sea by Ma’ale Adumim. Jewish settlements have been established in the Old City and in the surrounding Arab neighborhoods of Silwan, Ras el-Amoud, Wadi el-Joz and Sheikh Jarrah. Palestinian enclaves are divided so that people traveling from one to the other have to go through areas controlled by Israel.

When the subject of Jerusalem came up during the 2000 Camp David summit, Mayor Ehud Olmert led a mass march of some 350,000 protesters against the plan to divide the city. Today, a group of Kadima members, headed by Otniel Schneller, is demanding adhering to the party's agenda, which calls for Jerusalem's unity under Israel. US neoconservatives and the Israeli right are partners in the Greater Israel project which calls among other things for the absorption of East Jerusalem and the rest of occupied territories, excluding the Arab population centers, into a Jewish state.

Zalman Shoval, head of the foreign affairs department of Likud party, said before the Annapolis conference was convened, that the issue of Jerusalem should "not be on the table in any way". Sixty-one members of the Israeli parliament signed a petition against a proposal to give the Palestinians sovereignty over Shoufat refugee camp out side the Old City. The Prime Minister floated the idea of giving back the overcrowded Shoufat refugee camp to be the capital of the future Palestinian state. Two months after the conclusion of Annapolis conference, Ehud Olmert backed away from this position and told his coalition partners that the issue of Jerusalem would not even be discussed in the foreseeable future. According to the news media, Olmert told the Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas that Israel would continue to expand the settlements throughout the expanded East Jerusalem municipality. Palestinians’ aspirations to have Jerusalem as their future capital are being undermined by Israel’s deliberate attempts to alter the status quo in the occupied land including the Old City.

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http://www.palestinechronicle.com/view_article_details.php?id=13531