Jerusalem In A Free State
Source: ivarfjeld.wordpress.com/
It is becoming ever clearer that Menachem Begin’s vision will, more likely than not, be the new reality in Israel: Jerusalem shall never be divided again. Previous peace plans have been constructed upon the notion of dividing the city, with Israel in the west and Palestinians in the east hosting two distinct capitals. This idea is surely in a vegetative state, awaiting consensus from both sides to pull the plug.
Not that the idea of splitting Jerusalem was a particularly workable one to begin with. The mayor, Nir Barkat, is correct to state that no city, once complete and having been divided in two, has ever remained so – Berlin being the most noteworthy example. And in terms of indefensible borders, nowhere would a piece be more fragile than in a tinderbox like Jerusalem, where a sovereign border would have to run through neighbourhoods and places of spiritual significance. How could it possibly work? Would the Palestinians have to set up a customs point at the Jaffa Gate?
Yet Israel’s creeping expansion eastward in the aftermath of the Six Day War has made partitioning Jerusalem almost impossible. A recent endeavour by The Atlantic and the S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace, in addressing the question of Jerusalem, sought to argue that even as the metropolis has expanded, Jewish and Arab communities have remained hermitised, and their population centres contiguous.
Such an observation is correct to the extent that some newly-erected neighbourhoods were designed to connect already-existing Jewish populaces. The boroughs of Ramat Eshkol and French Hill, for example, links West Jerusalem to Mount Scopus – the latter having been an Israeli island entire of itself in the West Bank from 1948 to 1967.
Menachem Begin, 6th Prime Minister of Israel. Wikipedia
But it also evident that patterns of housing construction in areas past the Green Line were surgical and deliberate, as to separate and isolate Arab neighbourhoods, thus blockading the process of patching them back together again to make a Palestinian capital. Ma’ale Adumim, established in the mid-1970s, was built deep inside the West Bank. The E1 highway which acts as a bridge between the settlement and the capital scythes through East Jerusalem, parting it in two and creating a barrier between Ramallah and Bethlehem.
Ehud Olmert’s attempt to draw borders for a cantonised Jerusalem demonstrated what an impractical task this is. To take one instance, due to the settlements of Gilo on the left, and Har Homa and Highway 60 on the right, the Arab centre of Beit Safafa is in essence detached from the Palestinian main. The Olmert Plan thus created a stretch of land no wider than a connecting road to join the borough with Bethlehem.
As such, we must no longer pretend that the two-state solution will ipso facto result in the creation of two separate capitals in one city – or not without tremendous upheaval, internal strife, and violence. This is not only the obligation of peace activists in Israel, but also the leadership – whoever that may be – in the Palestinian Territories, who continue to disseminate the fantasy of a single Palestinian capital in al-Quds, just as they still cling to the right of return and the notion of re-establishing the villages of the old Mandate.
And, whilst establishing a Palestinian voice in Jerusalem would be a necessary compensation for the wrongs committed in the name of existential security, it needs to be stated that the unification of Jerusalem under Israeli rule has presented boons all the city’s residents. For, never has Jerusalem experienced such religious freedom, where on any given day Jews can pray at the foot on the Temple Mount whilst Muslims attend mosque on its summit, all as Christians parade a cross down the Via Dolorosa.
Recent events would indicate that in any future united Jerusalem – whether that be under total Israeli control, or a far more preferable situation based on joint custodianship with some degree of international assistance regarding administration of the Holy Basin – this sort of inter-religious, bi-national cooperation remains possible. Yet, just as easily, the City of David could slide into misunderstandings, hostility and tribal conflict.
The latter was highlighted by a report released in October which stated that Israel plans to construct an entirely new settlement in East Jerusalem, for the first time since the groundbreaking of Har Homa in the late 1990s. The new town of Givat Hamatos would contain around 1750 homes, and be located south of and adjacent to the aforementioned Beit Safafa district. Unlike the plans to expand the existing settlements of Gilo and Pisgat Ze’ev, Peace Now assert that Givat Hamatos would result in “an entirely new footprint of a new Israeli neighbourhood in East Jerusalem”.
It is inevitable (and in many respects desirable) for Palestinians and Israelis, Muslims and Jews, to cohabitate in close quarters in Jerusalem. But the Givat Hamatos project – particularly coming at a time when the questions of Jerusalem and borders are supposed to be on the table – cannot help but appear to be anything short of another land grab, and an attempt by a right-wing government to cannibalise Arab neighbourhoods within Israeli ones to block peace once more.
At the same time, after years of delay, impasse, and legal wrangling, the Jerusalem Light Rail has entered into its test phase prior to full operation later this year. Its route begins at Mount Herzl, crosses over the glorious Bridge of Strings near the Central Bus Station, down the Jaffa Road, past the Old City at the Damascus Gate, and then winds its way northward through both Arab and Jewish neighbourhoods, terminating in the settlement of Pisgat Ze’ev.
As the Forward’s Nathan Jeffay reports, pessimists might conclude that by building the railway past the Green Line “through settlements and Palestinian areas, Israel is tightening its hold on areas conquered after 1967”, thus reducing the chance of a peace agreement. But to optimists, “the carriages could one day form a peace train, facilitating freedom of movement through the shared capital of two friendly states”.
I’d prefer to assert that these trams represent the latter. If there is to be a single Jerusalem – preferably the capital of both Israel and the future state of Palestine – city life has the potential to be grounded in values of harmony and inter-community cooperation. Jerusalem is too important for all concerned to have it slide into conflagration for the sake of an insecure border which would cleave the city in twain.
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