A Plea for Fairness in the Holy City : Jerusalem: It can’t be divided, nor can one faith be dominant. Inclusiveness is the only peaceable approach.

The Israeli government’s plan to confiscate Palestinian land in East Jerusalem to be used for Jewish housing was considered an outrage by everyone hoping to achieve a lasting and just peace between our two peoples. Now that the plan has been at least temporarily suspended, we would like to suggest a saner look at the future of the holy city.

To begin with, it is important that the motivation behind the current peace process be put under scrutiny. Is this process aimed at the accomplishment of genuine peace and tranquillity that will guarantee for our descendants a safe and free future? Or is it simply a truce aimed at allowing the conflicting parties to regroup and prepare for another battle when the odds are better in their favor? Although the signs lately indicate that the latter is dominant, we will continue to conduct ourselves on the assumption that our peoples and leaders want and can achieve this lasting peace.

There is no doubt that Jerusalem tests the will of both peoples for reconciliation. Palestinian-Israeli reconciliation has to be based either on sharing power or on division of the land. Both Israeli and Palestinian leaders have opted for a division of the land. Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin recently reconfirmed this when he called for a “physical separation” between the two peoples. While this idea might work in the rest of the West Bank and Gaza, it will be impossible in Jerusalem.

A fresh and courageous approach must be applied for determining the future of Jerusalem. It has to be based on working together to achieve equity and mutual respect; without the derogation of the political rights of either side, the new approach to Jerusalem must be based on inclusiveness. Policies aimed at making the city the exclusive domain of Jews or Christians or Muslims will only lead to an explosion.

Never in history has any one group succeeded to dominate the city for a long time. Almost every conquest that has attempted to exclude others has simply sown the seeds for its own destruction. The confiscation of Palestinian land for the sole use of Jews falls in the category of domination and exclusivity instead of sharing and inclusiveness.

Before we can reach this utopian aim of sharing and inclusiveness, an honest appraisal of the reality in Jerusalem is needed. Although the wall separating East and West Jerusalem was removed in 1967, the city has never been as divided as it is today. Arab East Jerusalem has become a weak and dependent ghetto, while Jewish West Jerusalem has grown physically and economically at the expense of East Jerusalem. Palestinians have been allowed to live on and develop a mere 13% of East Jerusalem, while Jews live on or are scheduled to develop 34%. The remaining 52% is unplanned where construction is not allowed. Legal and zoning obstacles have been erected that deny Palestinians virtually any expansion or new housing on their own land.

The closure that was placed around Jerusalem in April, 1994, has isolated East Jerusalem from its natural social, economic and cultural ties in the rest of the West Bank. A tourist or a visitor from Jordan, Egypt or New York can travel freely in and out of Jerusalem, while native Palestinians living a few miles away are unable to reach their relatives, friends, jobs and places of worship.

Palestinian and Israeli negotiators in Oslo decided that the best way to deal with the thorny issue of Jerusalem was to delay it till the final status talks, due in a couple of years. This delay can be useful if the transitional period is used to build trust and to explore avenues of sharing and cooperation. But if this period is used to create facts on the ground that favor one party, then this delay would clearly have been ill-conceived, as it diminishes the possibilities of reaching the point of sharing and inclusiveness.

Ever since 1967, Palestinians have refused to participate in the political life of the city, arguing that Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem was unilateral and was not done with their acquiescence. This Palestinian boycott has played into the hands of the Israelis, who use it to act without concern to the basic needs of Palestinians. To move ahead, we need to overcome the highly charged political and emotional attitudes that are attached to the issue of Jerusalem. Leaders looking for a sober solution must refrain from using the issue for their own political careers. Instead, both sides must agree to defuse the issue, beginning with a moratorium on the shrill, daily declarations that Jerusalem is or should be the eternal capital of this state or that. This routine and highly publicized insistence raises emotional levels to the boiling point and closes minds and hearts to the real matter at hand--creating in Jerusalem a spiritual, cultural and business capital for both peoples based on the equitable distribution of resources and shared benefits for all the people of the city.