This Year in Jerusalem?

As noted in Part 1 of this Dossier, Jerusalem is on the one hand one of the most difficult problems in the Israeli-Palestinian final status negotiations, yet on the other, a problem which has generated no end of creative formulas for a solution. Most of those formulas involve a degree of good faith and mutual trust which does not yet exist, and a willingness on each side to compromise long-held positions.

The background of the Jerusalem issue is dealt with in Part 1. Israelis insist that it must remain the “eternal, undivided capital” of Israel, though many Israelis and overseas Jewish groups do not feel that that necessarily excludes it also being the capital of Palestine. Palestinians say they cannot accept any alternative to Jerusalem as their capital, including control of the Muslim holy places. But once one examines the Jerusalem issue closely, instead of focusing on the doctrinaire formulas of each side, all sorts of complexities appear. The Palestinians already have virtual control of the Muslim waqf and with it the holy places. The Palestinian Authority has a clearcut, if unofficial, presence in East Jerusalem, and some areas within the 1967 expanded municipality boundaries are in fact under virtual PA political control: the Shu‘afat refugee camp, the former villages of Beit Hanina, Shu‘afat, and others. There are some 200,000 Arabs living within the Jerusalem Municipality boundaries, and many Israelis do not feel obliged to govern them forever in order to maintain Jerusalem as the “eternal, undivided” capital.

On April 27, midway between the appearance of the first part of this Dossier and this part, the Israeli daily Ha’aretz reported that, as a sign to the Palestinians that Israel is sincere about reaching a final status framework agreement, Prime Minister Ehud Barak would soon transfer the town of Abu Dis and some other places near Jerusalem from Area B (Israeli security control/PA political control) to Area A (full Palestinian control). This would be a signal of some importance because a), the Palestinians have been asking that it be done; b) it evokes a scenario which has been kicked about for five years, under which an initial Palestinian capital would be at Abu Dis, in the Jerusalem area though not in the Jerusalem municipality. The move provoked reactions from the right: Likud Mayor of Jerusalem Ehud Olmert and Interior Minister Natan Sharansky, a member of Barak’s Cabinet, made a provocative trip to Abu Dis and were met with stone-throwing.

The Jerusalem Municipality as expanded in 1967. Abu Dis is just outside the line, below the right center of the map.

Subsequent press reports have hinted that Barak has backed off on an imminent transfer of Abu Dis, because of opposition within his fractious coalition. But the Abu Dis scenario, while not acceptable to most Palestinians as a permanent solution, seems to be taking on a new life as an interim measure. In this second part of this Dossier, we look at the Abu Dis scenario for the short term and some other possibilities for the longer term.

Abu Dis is a fairly typical West Bank town, except for its proximity to Jerusalem; it lies just south of the Mount of Olives, abutting the old Jerusalem-Jericho road, and has long been the location of a major checkpoint for West Bankers seeking to enter Jerusalem. (In fact, some 10%of the land historically part of al-Dis is included inside the expanded Jerusalem boundaries announced by Israel in 1967.) Al-‘Azariyya, another Arab town which is the Biblical Bethany, lies just to the east. It is within sight of the Old City, and the Palestinian Authority maintains a University known as al-Quds (Jerusalem), based in Abu Dis.

Abu Dis is part of Area B, those parts of the West Bank under Palestinian political control but Israeli security control. In the town, the Palestinian Authority has been building a five-story, 130,000 square foot building at the cost of some $4.5 million. The building, which has a domed hall as well as office space, is described as an economic studies center. But everyone, Palestinian and Israeli alike, knows what the building is really expected to become: the Parliament building of an independent Palestinian state.

Palestinians insist that, even if they put their Parliament in Abu Dis, they are not accepting the idea being bruited about by some Israelis, that Abu Dis will be the capital of the Palestinian state and that all of what is now Jerusalem will remain under sole Israeli control. But the Abu Dis scenario, in some form, at least on an interim basis, seems to be moving forward.

The “Beilin-Abu Mazen” Agreement

The Abu Dis scenario, which is seen by many Israelis as a “final status” solution but by Palestinians (if they do not reject it altogether) as an interim step, was first broached in a document whose full text is not public and the very existence of which has been denied by one of the participants. This is the so-called “Beilin-Abu Mazen agreement”.

The so-called agreement stemmed from a series of meetings between senior Israeli and Palestinian figures, carried out in a variety of places in Europe and the Middle East, over a period of several years. Yossi Beilin was a protegé of Shimon Peres, a Deputy Foreign Minister during the Rabin-Peres government, and is today Minister of Justice. Abu Mazen is the nom de guerre of Mahmud ‘Abbas, Secretary of the Executive Committee of the PLO, Member of the Central Committee of Fatah, and a key aide to Yasir ‘Arafat. The secret Beilin-Abu Mazen negotiations helped produce the Oslo accords, but continued after the signing of those accords in 1993.

According to Israeli accounts, the document now called the Beilin-Abu Mazen agreement was drawn up in May of 1995 and completed in October of that year, with the knowledge of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian Authority President ‘Arafat. But less than two weeks after the document was completed and before it was made public, Rabin was assassinated.

As events transpired, the document was never made public. Israeli press reports have described its general contents, but Abu Mazen has denied that he had ever agreed formally to some of the terms reported.

The document dealt with all aspects of the “final status” issues, including settlements, but for our present purposes what matters is the “Abu Dis” approach. The document reportedly envisioned an expansion of the municipality boundaries of Jerusalem to include the Arab towns of Abu Dis, al-‘Azariyya, and Silwan, and perhaps others, and also the Jewish settlements ringing the city. Then, within this expanded Jerusalem, the Palestinians would be able to create their capital within “al-Quds” (the Arab name for Jerusalem) but not including the present boundaries of the city. Abu Dis, which was part of the Jerusalem District under the Ottomans, was envisioned as the capital of the Palestinian state. Under the Beilin-Abu Mazen plan, the Arab districts would also be called “al-Quds” in English, not Jerusalem.

The plan also envisioned raising either a Palestinian or an Israeli flag over the Haram al-Sharif, the Muslim holy places of the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque, and creating an extraterritorial status which it compared to the Vatican’s in Rome.

As noted, Abu Mazen has denied that the agreement as leaked in 1996 represented his own views, and in any event the Rabin assassination meant that the document was never given official sanction.

After the Likud victory in the 1996 elections, Beilin met with the Likud Parliamentary Group leader, Michael Eitan, and in January 1997 announced an “Eitan-Beilin” agreement, which also incorporated the Abu Dis idea. Other Likud officials have remained more skeptical, and Likud Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert has opposed the idea of making Abu Dis part of Area A, putting the Palestinian Authority so close to the city’s boundaries.

It needs to be emphasized that while the Abu Dis formula seems to be moving forward — Barak seemingly moving towards transferring it to Area A even before a final status agreement, and the PA building the building there — the two sides approach matters very differently. Whatever Abu Mazen may have said in 1995-96, Palestinian officials insist that while they may put their Parliament in Abu Dis, their capital is in Jerusalem. That certainly implies the holy places must be included. Many Israelis, on the other hand, seem to look on Abu Dis as an easy way out, to create an “al-Quds” which is near but not in Jerusalem as presently recognized.

The obvious problem with the Abu Dis scenario is that when Palestinians speak of “Jerusalem”, they do not mean Abu Dis. They mean the old city, at least its Arab quarters, the Haram al-Sharif, and the newer towns and areas where Arabs live. Declaring Abu Dis to be “al-Quds” might provide an initial figleaf during a transitional period — allowing the Palestinian state to declare its capital to be “al-Quds” without provoking a conflict with Israel — but neither in the new state of Palestine nor elsewhere in the Arab and Muslim worlds would this be seen as anything other than a pretense.

How Final is Final Status?

On the other hand, if the “final status” agreement being negotiated is not really final, but an interim agreement, then some compromise formula makes more sense.

Few believe that if an agreement is signed by September, it will be truly “final”. For one thing, Israel is simply not ready to give the Palestinians what virtually all of them believe is their minimum requirement. What seems to be emerging is a sense that:

• Israel will, this year, recognize an independent Palestinian state. It will probably also seek to annex at least some of the settlements.
• Israel will agree to withdraw from much of the rest of the West Bank, but by no means all. The Palestinians will get geographic contiguity, but not all the land they hope for.
• There may, however, be room for certain issues to be resolved in the future between the states of Israel and Palestine. This may be acceptable to Palestinians in exchange for statehood — especially if the alternative is to freeze the situation with what Israel will accept now. An example is the Jordan Valley. Numerous peace plans, particularly those labeled “Allon” and “Allon Plus” through the years, insisted on keeping security control of the Jordan Valley under Israeli control. But over time, if the states of Israel and Palestine are able to live alongside each other, some adjustment of that might be considered; many peace plans envisioned rethinking these issues after five years, 10 years, or even longer.

Some of these plans may have a chance, in time. Squaring the circle of long-term control of Jerusalem is probably too ambitious a goal for this year, or certainly for mid-September, however, so some formula which leaves room for future evolution of the situation is far likelier to have a chance of success. And while Abu Dis may serve as a temporary capital, it is not Jerusalem, and few Palestinians will accept it as such in the longer term.

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