O' Jerusalem!

As Israeli and Palestinian negotiators try to define the terms on which they will co-exist in the future, the question of control over Jerusalem looms as the most intractable issue, says KESAVA MENON.

``IF I forget thee, Oh Jerusalem, let my right hand lose its cunning.'' These lines from an ancient Biblical prayer are often cited by modern Israel as part justification for its claims over the whole of the city. The argument is that the Jews have considered Jerusalem as being central to their existence as a people and that no other people, even those who consider part of its earth sacred ground, have such a unique attachment to the city. That is all very well, but there are another people to whom this city is absolutely vital as the centre of their existence.

As Israeli and Palestinian negotiators try to define the terms on which they will co-exist in the future, the vexed question of control over this city looms as the most intractable issue. Other issues - such as the quantum of sovereignty that will accrue to the Palestinians, the amount of territory they will control, the identity of the people who will be allowed to live on that territory, how its water resources are to be shared - are also very difficult to resolve. Both sides have entered the negotiations on all these issue with fairly well-defined objectives and in almost every single respect the objectives of the two sides are in acute contradiction. Creative proposals to finesse the differences have also been thrown up in respect of all. But on the question of Jerusalem, the emotional, ideological and practical needs of one side clashes with that of the other with far greater intensity.

If the two sides had simply decided to implement U.N. Resolution 242 the issues might have been easier to resolve. This resolution calls upon Israel to withdraw from territories it had conquered in the 1967 war. (In a clever bit of legal drafting, the resolution left out the crucial words ``all'' and ``the'' before the word ``territories'' thus enabling Israel to claim that it was not enjoined to return all of the conquered land). But at least in respect of Jerusalem, the pre-1967 line between the areas of Israeli and Arab control was defined on the ground. Barbed wire fences and lines of pill-boxes which cut through the heart of the city clearly marked out where the ``Green Line'' was. If 242 had been accepted as the defining norm then all that Israel would have had to do was withdraw to its side of the Green Line.

However, with both sides having ratified the Oslo Agreements, and accepted it as the basis for their negotiations, complications have arisen. In the Palestinian interpretation, the Oslo agreement define the modes and procedures for settling the dispute while 242 defines the substance of the settlement. The Israelis interpret the Oslo processes as justifying changes in substance. They point to ambiguous language in the agreements and the reality that facts have changed on the ground to argue that the negotiations must cover the substance of the issue as well. This is a bid to make the Palestinians acquiesce to a fait accompli but with the facts on the ground (avdot in the Israeli parlance) having changed it is indeed difficult to revert to the status quo ante.

The major fact that has changed in Jerusalem is that the Jewish population in its eastern districts, which was non-existent between 1948 and June 1967, has since grown so large as to almost equal the Arab population. This change in the demographic balance has been wrought through a series of measures including the encouragement of Jewish land purchases and construction in the eastern districts, the denial of building permits to Arabs and the cancellation of residency rights to Arabs who had been away from the city for more than five years.

However, despite this major three-decade-long effort to change the demographic balance, nearly 1,50,000 Arabs continue to live in the districts where their ancestors had lived for centuries. Some of them carry Israeli identity cards and benefit from working in the Israeli economy, but not a single one of them defines himself/herself as anything other than a Palestinian Arab. These localities in the city contain their universities, their hospitals, their cultural centres and the houses of their social and cultural elite. Without Jerusalem, the Palestinian national identity would be ephemeral (the closest Indian parallel perhaps would be to imagine a Bengal without Calcutta). Jerusalem's centrality to the Palestinian cause is substantial without even considering the strong attachments which Palestinian Muslims and Christians have to their holy sites within the walled city - the Al Aqsa Mosque/Dome of the Rock complex in the first instance and the Holy Sepulchre in the second.

Israel's legally untenable annexation of East Jerusalem could perhaps have been reversed if its political leaders, from all sections bar the far left, had not boxed themselves into a corner with their endless prattle about the city being their ``eternal and undivided'' capital.

If Israel had confined its arguments to the claim of rights in the walled city its case might have had more international appeal. Its argument in respect of the walled city and its immediate environs is that Jordan (which controlled these areas between '48 and '67) had prevented Jews from visiting their holy sites in East Jerusalem and had desecrated their cemeteries. Israel, truthfully, argues that it permits everyone to practise their religion inside these areas. Israel's concern about a return to the pre-1967 situation could have been considered valid in this context, but when it relies on these concerns to extend an unjustifiable and impractical claim to the whole of the city its case runs into trouble.

There is a practical solution on offer though any Israeli Government will probably have to inch towards it. The present Government is apparently seriously considering the transfer of three villages on Jerusalem's fringe to full Palestinian control. One of them, Abu Dis, has been identified as the possible capital district of the emerging Palestinian state. If the proposal is implemented in full measure, the Arab districts of Jerusalem could be lumped together with Abu Dis so as to make a new corporate municipal entity. It is not certain whether Israel's Prime Minister, Mr. Ehud Barak, was preparing his people for such a solution when he recently said ``The Jews have never prayed, if we forget thee, O Abu Dis, may my right hand lose its cunning.''

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