No. 447 8 Shvat 5761 / 1 February 2001
JERUSALEM IN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMACY:
THE 2000 CAMP DAVID SUMMIT, THE CLINTON PLAN, AND THEIR AFTERMATH
Dore Gold
A Jewish Majority in Jerusalem for 150 Years / Traditional Israeli
Policy on Jerusalem / Israeli Legal Rights in Jerusalem After the Six-Day War
/ The Oslo Agreement's Impact on the Jerusalem Question / The Barak
Government's Shift on Jerusalem / "Hypothetical" Discussions /
Jerusalem at Camp David / First U.S. Proposals for Dividing Jerusalem /
Palestinian Reactions to Camp David / The Palestinians Initiate the Al-Aqsa
Intifada / The Clinton Plan for Jerusalem / Lessons for the Future
Since its independence in 1948, and indeed even in prior times,
Israel's rights to sovereignty in Jerusalem have been firmly grounded in
history and international law. The aftermath of the 1967 Six-Day War only
reinforced the strength of Israel's claims. Seven years after the
implementation of the 1993 Oslo Agreements, Prime Minister Ehud Barak became
the first Israeli prime minister to consider re-dividing Jerusalem in
response to an American proposal at the July 2000 Camp David Summit. The
December 2000 Clinton Plan attempted to codify Barak's possible concessions
on Jerusalem. Yet they proved to be insufficient for PLO Chairman Yasser
Arafat, leading to a breakdown in the peace process and an outburst of
Palestinian violence with regional implications. At least the failed Clinton
Plan did not bind future Israeli governments or U.S. administrations, leaving
open the possibility of new diplomatic alternatives. Only by avoiding
premature negotiation over an unbridgeable issue such as Jerusalem can the
U.S., Israel, and the Palestinians stabilize the volatile situation that has
emerged and restore hope that a political process can be resumed in the
future.
A Jewish Majority in
Jerusalem for 150 Years
Israel's international legal position in Jerusalem emanates from the
Palestine Mandate, by which the League of Nations, the source of
international legitimacy prior to the United Nations, recognized "the
historic connection of the Jewish people with Palestine" and called for
"the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish
people." The Mandate did not deal with Jerusalem separately from the
rest of Palestine. While the Ottoman Empire had ruled Jerusalem from 1517 to
1917, Turkey renounced its rights to sovereignty in all of Palestine in
August 1920 in the Treaty of Sevres. Moreover, the Covenant of the League of
Nations established that the Mandates were no longer under the sovereignty of
the states that formerly governed them.
Even prior to the League of Nations Mandate, the Jewish people
established an overwhelming majority in Jerusalem; by 1914, there were 45,000
Jews in Jerusalem out of a total population of 65,000.1
Indeed, over a half-century earlier when the Jewish population of Jerusalem
first constituted a clear majority in the city after centuries, a British
visitor to Jerusalem noted: "Although we are much in the habit of
regarding Jerusalem as a Muslim city, the Muslims do not actually constitute
more than one-third of the entire population."2 The
Jewish presence had spread to beyond the overcrowded Jewish Quarter itself:
into the Muslim Quarter, and outside of the city walls even before the Muslim
population, in Mishkenot Sha'ananim (1855-1860), Me'a Sha'arim (1875), Kiryat
Neemana (1875) across from the Damascus Gate, and Kfar Shiloah (Silwan)
(1884).3 Jerusalem's demographics, and the spread of its
Jewish population to all parts of the city, were consistant with the League
of Nations' determination to include the Holy City in the Jewish national
home.
Traditional Israeli Policy
on Jerusalem
Despite the fact that the League of Nations was formally terminated
in April 1946, the rights of the Jewish people in Palestine (and in Jerusalem
particularly) were preserved by the successor organization to the League of
Nations, the United Nations, through Article 80 of the UN Charter. According
to Article 80, the existing rights of states, peoples, "or the terms of
existing international instruments" were protected. True, the UN General
Assembly subsequently voted in November 1947, according to Resolution 181, to
create an internationalized corpus separatum for the Jerusalem area,
but, like all General Assembly resolutions, this was only a recommendation
rather than an internationally legally binding instrument like the League
of Nations' Mandate for Palestine.
Resolution 181 presented a painful dilemma to the leadership of the
Zionist movement. While offering UN support for the idea of a Jewish state,
it required internationalization of Jerusalem, the center of Jewish
historical aspirations. However, while the Zionist movement accepted
Resolution 181 and the corpus separatum for Jerusalem that it
contained, at least this was not a permanent concession of Jerusalem.
According to Resolution 181, the special international regime for the city
was to "remain in force in the first instance for a period of ten
years."
Moreover, the resolution stipulated that at that time, "the
residents of the City shall be free to express by means of a referendum their
wishes as to possible modification of the regime of the City." Finally,
in 1947, the Jewish population constituted two-thirds of Jerusalem's
population. Thus, Jerusalem could well be incorporated into the Jewish state
in the future. In any case, the leadership of the Zionist movement at the
time knew that the Arab world, including the Palestinian Arabs, firmly
rejected the Partition Plan.
The invasion of Arab armies into the nascent State of Israel in May
1948 made the corpus separatum for Jerusalem a dead letter. The Jewish
population was expelled from the Old City when it fell, over fifty synagogues
were destroyed or desecrated, and Jewish access to the Western Wall was
prevented. After the siege and invasion of western Jerusalem was broken only
by the efforts of the Israel Defense Forces (and not the UN) during Israel's
War of Independence, Israel's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion,
declared in the Knesset on December 3, 1949, after the war's end: "we
can no longer regard the UN Resolution of the 29th of November as having any
moral force. After the UN failed to implement its own resolution, we regard
the resolution of the 29th of November concerning Jerusalem to be null and
void." Ben-Gurion made Jerusalem Israel's capital in 1950.
Israeli Legal Rights in
Jerusalem After the Six-Day War
The specific circumstances of the Six-Day War along the Jordanian
front, in fact, strengthened Israel's postwar claims in Jerusalem. In the
weeks leading up to the conflict, the focus of the Middle East crisis had
been along Israel's southern front where Egypt had closed off Israeli
shipping through the Straits of Tiran and moved the Egyptian army to the
Israeli-Egyptian border. While hostilities with Egypt began early in the
morning on June 5, 1967, with the first wave of Israeli air attacks on
Egyptian air bases at 7:45 a.m., Israel did not initially take any action
whatsoever against Jordan. Nonetheless, Jordanian artillery opened fire on
western Jerusalem by 10:00 a.m., hitting both residential and commercial
centers.
Already Jordan had massed most of its army (9 out of 12 brigades) along
strategic positions in the West Bank and had given permission to Iraq to move
an expeditionary army across Jordanian territory toward Israel. Within an
hour Prime Minister Levi Eshkol sent a message to King Hussein through
General Odd Bull, the commander of the UN Truce Supervision Organization
(UNTSO), that Israel would not move against Jordan if Jordan would "not
open hostilities." As Foreign Minister Abba Eban noted, "we decided
to give King Hussein an ultimate chance to turn back." Jordanian attacks
only intensified, including the movement of armor and infantry; forward Iraqi
formations had reached the Jordan River. Israel only moved against Jordan at
12:45 p.m. on June 5 after Jerusalem had clearly come under attack.
With the liberation of the Old City of Jerusalem as a result of the
Six-Day War, the Eshkol government, with the backing of the Knesset, extended
Israeli law, jurisdiction, and administration to the eastern part of
Jerusalem on June 27, 1967. New municipal boundaries were created that
included strategic points in the West Bank which had been exploited by
Jordanian artillery.
Before the international community, Israel argued that it had not
actually "annexed" East Jerusalem. Clearly, this was done in order
to assuage states that firmly opposed unilateral Israeli acts after the war.
But, according to Israel's Supreme Court, the eastern section of Jerusalem
had in fact become an integral part of the State of Israel. The Supreme Court
did not have to take into account diplomatic considerations in its ruling,
but rather legal realities. Palestinian Arabs in East Jerusalem were not
forced to acquire Israeli citizenship or surrender their Jordanian passports,
but did have the right to apply for and receive Israeli citizenship.
Considering that Jordan's position in Jerusalem had resulted from its
1948 invasion of the city, which was defined by the UN Secretary-General at
the time as an act of "aggression," while Israel's standing in
Jerusalem resulted from a war of self-defense, Israel could claim that it had
a superior title to unified Jerusalem. This line of argument was largely
consistent with the analysis of major international legal experts like State
Department Legal Advisor Stephen Schwebel, who would later head the
International Court of Justice in The Hague. Schwebel indeed argued in 1970
that "Israel has better title in the territory of what was
Palestine, including the whole of Jerusalem (emphasis added), than do
Jordan and Egypt.4 Indeed, the UN Security Council refused to agree to
a Soviet initiative on June 14, 1967, to have Israel branded as the aggressor
in the Six-Day War. The situations of Jordan in 1948 and Israel in 1967 thus
stood in stark contrast.
In fact, UN Security Council Resolution 242 of November 1967 did not
even mention Jerusalem and did not insist on a full withdrawal to the
pre-1967 lines in the resolution's operative language (only a withdrawal from
"territories" to "secure and recognized boundaries").
True, Resolution 242 contains "the inadmissibility of the acquisition of
territory by war" in its preamble, but this language did not preclude
changes in the pre-1967 lines that would result in "secure
boundaries," as stipulated in the operative language of the resolution.5 This
dovetailed with Israeli legal claims to parts of the territories that it
captured, including Jerusalem.
Despite Israel's new legal position in East Jerusalem, the Eshkol
government did not interfere with the administration of the Muslim holy sites
on the Temple Mount by the East Jerusalem Waqf, whose officials continued to
be appointed by Jordan. While confirming Israel's political sovereignty over
the entire city, Eshkol announced before a group of religious leaders that
"it is our intention to place the international administration and
organization of the Holy Places in the hands of the respective religious
leaders."6
The Oslo Agreement's
Impact on the Jerusalem Question
The September 1993 Declaration of Principles between Israel and the
PLO - the Oslo Agreement - represented a fundamental change in this past
policy, for Israel's willingness to negotiate the Jerusalem issue was not
narrowly circumscribed, as it had been, to just the religious dimension. Yet
Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin himself remained firm on retaining Israeli
sovereignty over all of Jerusalem; he told a group of Tel Aviv schoolchildren
on June 27, 1995: "If they told us that peace is the price of giving up
on a united Jerusalem under Israeli sovereignty, my reply would be 'let's do
without peace.'"7 Rabin's preference should be understood against the
backdrop of his strong position on Jerusalem as a whole. Rabin was born in
Jerusalem; during the 1948 War of Independence, he commanded the Harel
Brigade that was responsible for keeping the Jerusalem corridor open for
Israeli convoys. Finally, he was chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces
in 1967 when Jerusalem was re-united.
The next major development in Jerusalem policy under the Rabin
government was the secret Stockholm channel on permanent status, run by
Deputy Foreign Minister Yossi Beilin and Arafat's deputy, Abu Mazen. Their
joint paper, reached on October 30, 1995, proposed a Palestinian capital in
the village of Abu Dis, which was technically beyond Jerusalem's municipal
boundary (yet within the Jordanian county of Jerusalem), but it did not grant
any Palestinian recognition of Israeli sovereignty in East Jerusalem, whose
final status would be determined in subsequent negotiations.
Arafat was only willing to call the paper "a basis for further
negotiations," which reflected the Palestinian view of the paper as only
a draft of negotiations in progress. Subsequently, Abu Mazen claimed, in
discussions with this author, that he never agreed to the document.
Nevertheless, the myth persisted that Abu Dis was an acceptable substitute
for Jerusalem from the Palestinian perspective, misleading many Israelis to
overestimate the extent to which the issue of Jerusalem was soluble.
The Netanyahu government sought to re-fortify Israel's position in
Jerusalem. Israel's 1994 commitment to Jordan as custodian of the mosques and
the continuity of the Washington Declaration was reconfirmed. The closure of
Palestinian Authority institutions in Jerusalem was a precondition for the
first Netanyahu-Arafat summit in 1996. Yasser Arafat, in fact, closed the
offices upon which Netanyahu had insisted. At the time of the signing of the
Hebron Protocol, on January 15, 1997, Israel received a commitment from
Chairman Arafat to close remaining Palestinian Authority offices in Jerusalem
(Note for the Record, Palestinian responsibilities - Article 4), and
further movement on Oslo was conditioned to the implementation of Palestinian
obligations on the basis of reciprocity.
In accordance with its rights under Oslo that provided Israel with
jurisdiction in Jerusalem, the Netanyahu government decided to construct a
new Jerusalem neighborhood at Har Homa and approved a new Jerusalem-Tel Aviv
Highway (Route 45) north of the Jerusalem corridor. Finally, it refused to
acquiesce to international pressure, including a direct appeal by the Clinton
administration, to close an ancient Hasmonean tunnel in the Old City, one end
of which was opened in September 1996. Arafat at the time incited widespread
riots in the West Bank and Gaza, claiming that Israel was digging a tunnel
under the Islamic mosques on the Temple Mount. The tunnel, in fact, was more
than 2,000 years old and ran parallel to the Temple Mount, and not underneath
it.
The Barak Government's
Shift on Jerusalem
The July 11-24, 2000, Camp David Summit was the first serious official
negotiation between Israel and the Palestinians over Jerusalem. It was
also the first time since 1967 that an Israeli prime minister was willing to consider,
albeit conditionally, specific proposals for re-dividing Jerusalem. Prime
Minister Ehud Barak was elected in May 1999, having committed himself to
keeping Jerusalem united.
As late as May 2000, he declared on Jerusalem Day: "Only those
who do not understand the depth of the total emotional bond of the Jewish
people to Jerusalem, only those who are completely estranged from the vision
of the nation, from the poetry of that nation's life, from its faith and from
the hope it has cherished for generations - only persons in that category
could possibly entertain the thought that the State of Israel would actually
concede even a part of Jerusalem."
Barak's violation of these sort of commitments led to the collapse of
his parliamentary coalition and his standing in Israeli public opinion.
Additionally, Barak dropped reciprocity from the Oslo process. Just before
the convening of Camp David, Interior Minister Natan Sharansky and other
ministers of the Barak government in fact resigned, representing three
coalition partners (Yisrael B'Aliyah, Shas, and Mafdal), leaving Barak with a
minority government. Just after the summit, they were joined by Foreign
Minister David Levy.
Most commentators attributed the Camp David summit's failure to the
differences between the parties over Jerusalem, although wide gaps remained
over every major issue that was on the negotiating agenda. Nevertheless,
Samuel "Sandy" Berger, President Clinton's assistant for national
security affairs, insisted that the parties refused to move forward on other
Israeli-Palestinian issues before knowing whether their differences over
Jerusalem could be resolved.8 In this sense, Camp David was also a diplomatic
test of whether the positions of the parties to the Arab-Israel conflict over
the issue of Jerusalem could, in fact, be bridged.
"Hypothetical"
Discussions
The diplomacy over Jerusalem at Camp David was designed so that the
parties could consider ideas for solutions without binding themselves to the
negotiating record of the talks. At the end of the summit, President Clinton
specifically explained that the Camp David summit was guided by the principle
that "nothing is agreed until everything is agreed." Thus even if
the Israeli delegation found one point of a proposal to be acceptable, Israel
did not make any firm commitment by expressing approval of the idea or by not
rejecting it out of hand. The entire discussion of issues at Camp David was
hypothetical, depending on Palestinian agreement on other matters.
Second, very little at Camp David was put in writing. Instead, the
ideas raised in the summit were oral. Israeli position papers were not
shared with other delegations but rather kept within the Israeli delegation.9 This
served as a further protection against any discussion of proposals as
constituting a binding commitment that would later be raised in a future
negotiation. Finally, most of the ideas about Jerusalem were raised by the
U.S.; Barak tried to keep his direct contact with Arafat to a bare minimum.
Thus, the Jerusalem negotiations at Camp David had three aspects:
they were hypothetical (pending agreement in other areas), oral,
and conducted through a third party. Together these attributes made
Camp David more of a "brainstorming" session than a formal
negotiation in which the parties move from paragraph to paragraph until they
reach complete agreement. Capturing the dynamics of the summit, Arafat's
deputy, Abu Mazen, recalled "in Camp David...the Israelis and Americans
were releasing test-balloons regarding solutions to the Jersualem
issues."10 These very same attributes characterized the Israeli-Syrian
negotiations in 1994-96, leading the Clinton administration to conclude that
negotiations, under such conditions, could not bind either party. President
Clinton himself stated on July 25: "under the operating rules that
nothing is agreed until everything is agreed, they are, of course, not bound
by any proposal discussed at the summit."
Barak himself sought to clarify the status of what transpired at Camp
David as follows: "Ideas, views and even positions which were raised in
the course of the summit are invalid as opening positions in the resumption
of negotiations, when they resume. They are null and void"
(emphasis added). Realistically, despite the strong legal ground that Barak
stood upon, he would have to contend with the possibility that the
Palestinians would not be willing to forget the extent of Israel's
concessions on Jerusalem at Camp David. The PLO could well follow the Syrian
model in negotiations and insist that negotiations resume "from where
they left off."
However, members of Barak's government did not act as though the Camp
David proposals were removed from the negotiating table. Acting Foreign
Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami told President Mubarak on August 24: "We are not
going back to square one" as he sought to enlist Egyptian help in coming
up with a new diplomatic formula for the Old City of Jerusalem. Ben-Ami
explained that Israel was interested in setting down in writing a "paper
to express what the parties understand is the product of Camp David on some
core issues."11 Thus, Barak's negotiating record at Camp David did
not legally bind future Israeli governments, but as a matter of policy, he
seemed prepared to continue to view Camp David as a basis for future
negotiations.
Jerusalem at Camp David
Despite its loose diplomatic style, Camp David was predicated on the
assumption, particularly among Israelis and Americans, that the gaps in the
positions between the parties on all the issues, particularly Jerusalem, were
indeed bridgeable. While the proposals at Camp David were, for the most part,
oral, nonetheless, it is possible to discern clear U.S. and Israeli
formulae that were considered during the talks. That the Palestinians were
not prepared to float a compromise plan of their own is indicative of the
fact that they were far less optimistic that the gap over Jerusalem could be
bridged. Under such conditions, the Palestinian team was either itself not
prepared to compromise or assessed that any flexibility it offered would be
"pocketed" by the U.S. and Israel.
The discussions over Jerusalem went through several stages during
Camp David. Originally, the Israeli team did not envisage significant Israeli
concessions in the core area of Jerusalem, in and around the Old City. Israel
had informally floated a trial balloon of conceding only outer neighborhoods,
like Shu'afat and Beit Hanina. But in the discussions between Israelis and
Palestinians held in Stockholm in the month prior to Camp David, the Israeli
team had no mandate to discuss Jerusalem.12 Just before Camp David,
Ben-Ami, in fact, suggested postponing the Jerusalem issue for two years, but
Arafat refused.13
Even this early stage of Israeli informal concessions would have
posed a difficult problem for many Jerusalem residents; those living in the
Jewish neighborhoods of Neve Yaakov and Pisgat Ze'ev would have found
themselves surrounded by areas of Palestinian sovereignty as their
neighborhoods would have become virtual Israeli enclaves within
Palestinian-controlled Jerusalem. The Palestinians did not find these kinds
of proposals to be at all forthcoming in any case: thus Akram Hanieh noted
generally about Israel's various Jerusalem proposals: "Israel was keen
on getting rid of the Arab residents of Jerusalem while keeping Palestinian
land."14
First U.S. Proposals for
Dividing Jerusalem
The real Camp David negotiations over Jerusalem came in the form of
U.S. proposals to the parties. The American bridging paper initially
contained the following elements:
·
Palestinian
sovereignty in the Muslim and Christian Quarters of the Old City.
·
Israeli sovereignty
over the Jewish and Armenian Quarters.
·
The Temple Mount area
was to remain under Israeli sovereignty with a new concept of
"custodianship" for the Palestinians which would be formally
granted to them by the UN Security Council and Morocco. There was a second
American proposal put forward as well for the Temple Mount. The Palestinians,
according to Abu 'Ala, understood this second proposal to mean that
sovereignty would be divided "vertically and horizontally": the
Palestinians would control everything above the ground, while Israel would
have sovereignty over everything underneath the ground. The U.S. was willing
to entertain an Israeli request for a Jewish place of prayer on the Temple
Mount itself. Arafat would obtain a headquarters, or a "sovereign
presidential compound" (according to one version), inside the Waqf
compound on the Temple Mount, access to which would be assured without any
Israeli checkpoints through a tunnel, bridge, or a special road from Abu Dis.15
·
The outer
Palestinian neighborhoods like Shuafat and Beit Hanina in east Jerusalem
would be put under Palestinian sovereignty, while the inner neighborhoods
like Sheikh Jarah, the area of Salah ad-Din Street, Wadi Joz, Silwan, and Ras
al-Amud, around the Old City, would only be under functional Palestinian
control within the framework of Israeli sovereignty. The Palestinians
understood this to mean local self-rule in these areas.
Prime Minister Ehud Barak did not accept the U.S. proposals straight
out, but was willing to consider them as a basis for negotiation, if Yasser
Arafat would do the same.16 Thus, while Barak did not legally bind the State of
Israel by formally accepting the Clinton proposals, by not rejecting them out
of hand he placed himself in a position of being the first Israeli prime
minister since 1967 to be politically willing to divide Jerusalem. Barak,
however, made clear that he insisted on preserving Israeli sovereignty over
the Temple Mount.17 This conditional approach by Barak essentially
placed the burden of acceptance or refusal of the proposals on the
Palestinians; that President Clinton considered Barak's response as adequate,
without pushing any further for an unconditional Israeli acceptance, prior to
turning to Arafat, meant that Washington, in some sense, helped Israel avoid
any responsibility for Camp David's failure.
Acting Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben Ami articulated a vision for the
Old City that was very different from the U.S. proposals: "a special
regime in the Old City is what we should try to build. Since we have a
two-kilometer square, this is the Old City and full of holy sites - Muslim,
Christian, Jewish - populations that mingle in the Jewish quarter, you have
Jews in the Muslim Quarter. You have Jews and Muslims in the Armenian
Quarter. Half of it is Jewish. So to divide sovereignty in such a limited
space is ridiculous."18 Clearly, Barak's willingness "to
consider" U.S. proposals did not mean that the Israeli government
accepted them.
The Barak government continued to seek new formulae for resolving the
Jerusalem issue, after Camp David, as well. These efforts included proposals
for "Divine sovereignty" as a solution to the Temple Mount. Despite
U.S. and Egyptian mediation efforts in these post-Camp David negotiations,
none of these proposals managed to close the gap between Israel and the PLO.
Palestinian Reactions to
Camp David
Yasser Arafat rejected the U.S. proposals for Jerusalem. He argued
before President Clinton that no Palestinian could concede Jerusalem, and
more specifically he insisted upon the Arab interpretation of UN Security
Council Resolution 242: "I want a peace based on the implementation of
Resolution 242, as it was implemented on the Egyptian and Jordanian fronts.
The Resolution must be implemented in full on the Palestinian
territories....Why did you not ask Egypt during Camp David '78 to give up an
inch of Sinai?" Arafat also used Islamic argumentation before American
negotiators: "Jerusalem is not a Palestinian city only, it is an Arab, Islamic
and Christian one. If I am going to take a decision on Jerusalem, I have to
consult with the Sunnis and the Shiites and all Arab countries."
Arafat's post-summit comments on the negotiations revealed the bottom
line of the Palestinian position on Jerusalem: the PLO's demands for
sovereignty "not only refer to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the
Temple Mount mosques, and the Armenian quarter, but it is Jerusalem in its
entirety, entirety, entirety."19 Arafat's claims extended to the Western Wall:
"The British Mandate administration stated as early as 1929 that the
Western Wall is the Al-Buraq Wall and that it is considered a Muslim
religious endowment (waqf) to which Palestinians hold historic rights."20
Arafat repeated his claim to the Western Wall, to which he would give the
Jews access, during an interview with NHK, the Japanese News Agency, in Tokyo
after the Camp David Summit: "I have offered them free access to pray at
the Western Wall...they will have an open corridor to reach the Western
Wall."21
This was also the position of Faisal Husseini who indicated that the
Palestinians wanted full control of all four quarters of the Old City, but
would allow "some sort of arrangement" with Israel regarding the
Jewish Quarter and the Western Wall.22
The Palestinian Authority Mufti,
Sheikh Ikrima Sabri, reinforced this point about Palestinian ownership of the
Western Wall: "Arafat can tell them (the Israelis): 'Give me sovereignty
over Jerusalem, and I will make it possible for you to reach the Al-Buraq
Wall and pray there. I promise you freedom of worship.' [However] granting
free access to the Wall does not mean that the Wall will belong to them. The
Wall is ours."23
These sorts of Palestinian assertions were widespread. Even more
moderate voices adhered to this position. Palestinian Legislative Council
member Ziad Abu Ziad stated: "My comment to you was that the
(international) committee determined that the wall was part of the mosque and
was thus Waqf property."24 Hasan Asfour, one of the key Palestinian
negotiators who accompanied the Oslo process since 1993, also stated:
"With regard to the Al-Buraq Wall, which the Jews call the Wailing Wall,
the Israelis were told that the Palestinians do not object to free worship by
Jews at this site. But, the Israelis must realize that this is a Palestinian
concession. They should not view this as a right. It is a Palestinian
concession. This is so because the British-Jewish agreement of 1929 gave Jews
the right to worship there based on the premise that the Al-Buraq Wall is an
Islamic waqf."25
Abu Mazen used the same argumentation: "[W]e agreed that they
could pray next to the Wall, without acknowledging any Israeli sovereignty
over it. We relied on the resolution of Britain's 1929 Shaw Commission. The
Commission acknowledged that the Wall belongs to the Muslim Waqf, while the
Jews are allowed to pray by it as long as they do not use the Shofar."
Abu Mazen also rejected the subsequent proposals for Divine
sovereignty over the Temple Mount.26 Speaking on Palestinian television, Abu Mazen was
very clear on this point: "We don't agree to UN sovereignty in Jerusalem
or Islamic sovereignty. Sovereignty can only be Palestinian. There is no
place for dividing sovereignty and there is even no place for Divine
sovereignty. Any agreement requires recognition of our sovereignty."27
In the aftermath of Camp David there was also evidence that the
Palestinians retained residual claims to the western side of Jerusalem, as
well. Birzeit University conducted a public opinion poll during November 2000
on the issue of Jerusalem and the peace process. When asked "if East
Jerusalem comes under Palestinian sovereignty, will you accept Israeli
sovereignty over West Jerusalem?," 74.3 percent of respondents replied
in the negative (21.1 percent said yes, while 4.6 percent were not sure).28 Reflecting
this view, Faisal Husseini proposed his own modified post-Camp David
proposals for the "land swap" concept raised at the summit. Instead
of agreeing to Israeli annexation of Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem
on the basis of a land swap with Israeli territory in the Negev, Husseini
insisted that the land swap be made on the basis of exchanging East Jerusalem
Jewish neighborhoods for land in West Jerusalem that was occupied by
Palestinians prior to 1948.29
The Palestinian position on Jerusalem was not always identical to
that of all Arab and Islamic states, which stressed Islamic holy sites more
than the strict implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 242 or the
line of June 4, 1967. For example, after a meeting of the Jerusalem Committee
of the Islamic Conference, Egyptian President Husni Mubarak told Le Figaro:
"I think the Western Wall adjacent to the Haram can be left to the
Israelis along with the Jewish Quarter." The Palestinians disagreed and
tried diplomatically to explain the differences between Egyptian and
Palestinian policy on Jerusalem; they clarified that Mubarak did not negate
their demand for full sovereignty over all of East Jerusalem, but only
reiterated Arafat's offer of free access to the Western Wall.30 This
disagreement highlighted the Palestinian demand for sovereignty over the
Jewish Quarter and the Western Wall.
The Palestinians Initiate
the Al-Aqsa Intifada
The results of the Camp David summit posed a serious problem for
Yasser Arafat. Barak's conditional acceptance of the Clinton proposals
juxtaposed against Arafat's total rejection of the American plan created a
strong impression in the international community that the Palestinians were
responsible for the failure of Camp David. As a result, as Arafat, after Camp
David, sought international support for a unilateral declaration of a
Palestinian state, he discovered that major powers in the international
system, including France, were not prepared to assure him that they would
recognize a unilaterally declared Palestinian state. Realizing the need to
reverse international sympathy away from Israel, back to the Palestinians,
the Palestinian Authority began preparing for a renewal of violence against
Israel, which would put supposedly unarmed civilians against armed Israeli
soldiers - like the Intifada of 1987.
While foreign commentators associated the outbreak of what the
Palestinians called the Al-Aqsa Intifada with the visit of Likud Party
Chairman MK Ariel Sharon to the Temple Mount on September 28, 2000, the
Palestinians have clearly linked the outbreak of the violence to preparations
made weeks earlier. Thus, the Palestinian Minister of Communications, Imad
Al-Falouji, stated in the official Palestinian Authority daily, Al-Ayyam,
on December 5, 2000, that plans for the outbreak of the current Intifada
began the moment the Palestinian delegation returned from Camp David, at the
request of Yasser Arafat. Arafat's advisor for strategic affairs, Hani
al-Hassan, who was also a member of the PLO Central Committee, admitted:
"The present Intifada enabled the Palestinians to change the old rules
of the game, and thwarted Barak's attempt to place responsibility for the stalemate
in the peace process [on the Palestinians]."31
Already in August 2000, the Palestinian Justice Minister, Freih Abu
Middein, confided to another Palestinian Authority daily, Al-Hayat
Al-Jadida, that "violence is near and the Palestinian people are
willing to sacrifice even 5,000 casualties.32
Clearly, leading Palestinian officials were expressing their awareness that
some kind of major public disorders were about to erupt. The Palestinian
Authority Police Commander echoed this awareness as well, stating: "The
Palestinian Police will be leading together with all other noble sons of the
Palestinian people, when the hour of confrontation arrives."33 This
was stated at least six weeks before Sharon's Temple Mount visit. The actual
outburst began a day earlier when an Israeli soldier was killed by a roadside
bomb at Netzarim junction, in the Gaza Strip, followed by an attack by a
Palestinian police officer on his Israeli counterpart during their joint
patrol in Kalkilya.
The outbreak of the Al-Aqsa Intifada should have frozen the post-Camp
David negotiations over Jerusalem. After all, fundamental assumptions of the
entire Oslo process, that had begun in 1993, were put in doubt. Under Oslo,
Jewish holy sites had begun to be transferred to Palestinian territorial jurisdiction.
Yet at the outset of the riots, Jewish holy sites came under assault: the
Western Wall became the target of rock throwing mobs who hurled stones from
the Temple Mount, in the presence of Palestinian Authority religious and
security officials. In Nablus, Joseph's Tomb came under repeated gunfire and
was eventually sacked and burned by Palestinian mobs; Palestinian authorities
made preparations to convert the tomb into a mosque. At the
Jerusalem-Bethlehem border, Rachel's Tomb came under repeated Palestinian
sniper attack. Finally, the ancient Shalom al Yisrael synagogue in Jericho
was burned by Palestinians as well.
On the security level, the Al-Aqsa Intifada exposed further basic
weaknesses in the original Oslo arrangements. Since the implementation of
Oslo II in early 1996, Gilo had been the only population center inside of
municipal Jerusalem which was a few hundred meters (and hence within
automatic rifle range) from Area A, where the Palestinians exercised
exclusive security control (and hence excluded an Israeli security presence).
Exploiting their immunity from Israeli ground movements, Palestinian units,
chiefly belonging to the Fatah Tanzim militia, regularly opened fire on Gilo
from positions in Beit Jalla during the Al-Aqsa Intifada. Israel responded
with counter-fire from Gilo to Beit Jalla, but did not patrol or set up its
own positions in Beit Jalla to prevent the town's infiltration by Tanzim
snipers.
A similar situation could have evolved from Abu Dis toward the Mount
of Olives and the Old City. In May 2000, the Barak government authorized the
transfer of Abu Dis from Area B status to Area A; it nonetheless made the
transfer conditional upon the disarming of the Tanzim, which the Palestinian
Authority failed to implement. Thus, the Israel Defense Forces retained their
freedom of action in Abu Dis, unlike the situation in Beit Jalla.
The Clinton Plan for
Jerusalem
These experiences did not alter the determination of the Barak
government to go forward with its post-Camp David diplomacy, including
consideration of new American proposals for Jerusalem that were more
forthcoming for the Palestinians than what was proposed at Camp David. On
December 23, 2000, President Clinton met with Israeli and Palestinian
negotiators in the White House and read aloud the new American plan for
Jerusalem. Just like at Camp David, Clinton did not present his proposals in
writing. Significantly, according to notes taken by Giddi Grinstein, who
worked for Israeli negotiator Gilad Sher, the oral presentation made by
Clinton was to be regarded as "the ideas of the President." And if
the ideas were not accepted, Clinton stated, "they are not just off the
table; they go with the President as he leaves office."34
Clinton's proposals could be summarized as follows:
Division of Sovereignty in Jerusalem
The "general principle" put forward was that "Arab
areas are Palestinian and Jewish areas are Israeli." This principle of
assigning sovereignty was to be applied to the Old City, as well. Clinton
urged both sides "to create maximal contiguity." This new Clinton
proposal was even more favorable to the PLO than the earlier Camp David
ideas, since it transferred Palestinian residential areas in the inner
neighborhoods around the Old City to full Palestinian sovereignty instead of
just giving the Palestinians functional powers in the framework of Israeli
sovereignty.
Temple Mount
The Clinton proposals contained several alternative solutions for the
Temple Mount:
1.
Palestinian
sovereignty over the Temple Mount and Israeli sovereignty over the Western
Wall "and the space sacred to Judaism of which it is a part," or
Israeli sovereignty over the Western Wall "and the Holy of Holies of
which it is a part." This proposal would also contain a firm commitment
by both sides not to excavate beneath the Temple Mount or behind the Western
Wall.
2.
Palestinian
sovereignty over the Temple Mount and Israeli sovereignty over the Western
Wall and "shared functional sovereignty over the issue of
excavation," requiring the mutual consent of the parties before any
excavation could take place. This second alternative eliminates the idea of
Israeli subterranean sovereignty on the Temple Mount that was advanced at
Camp David.
Clinton's final summary of his Jerusalem proposal was presented
publicly in his parting address to the Israel Policy Forum on January 7,
2001: "First, Jerusalem shall be an open and undivided city, with
assured freedom of access and worship for all. It should encompass the
internationally recognized capitals of two states, Israel and Palestine.
Second, what is Arab should be Palestinian, for why would Israel want to
govern, in perpetuity, the lives of hundreds and thousands of Palestinians?
Third, what is Jewish should be Israeli. That would give rise to a Jewish
Jerusalem larger and more vibrant than any in history."
Neither Israel nor the Palestinians fully accepted the Clinton Plan;
indeed, the Palestinian position was closer to outright rejection. The
Israeli cabinet conditioned its acceptance of the proposals upon their
acceptance by the PLO; moreover, the Israeli government prepared a list of
reservations regarding the details of the Clinton Plan. No less significant
was the reaction of the heads of Israel's security establishment. The Chief
of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces, Lt. General Shaul Mofaz, severely
criticized the Clinton Plan as a virtual disaster for Israel, before the
Israeli cabinet: "The Clinton bridging proposal is inconsistent with
Israel's security interests and, if it will be accepted, it will threaten the
security of the state."35 With respect to its Jerusalem component, Mofaz
added: "The proposed plan will turn Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem
into enclaves within Palestinian sovereignty that will be difficult to defend."36 Avi
Dichter, the head of Israel's General Security Services (GSS), was concerned
about how the Clinton Plan would address the problem of terrorism in light of
the situation that had emerged whereby Palestinian security services, that
were supposed to fight terrorism, were now engaged in terrorism themselves.
The Palestinians had their own forceful argumentation against the
Clinton Plan that they presented in the form of a letter from Arafat to
Clinton:
We seek, through this letter, to explain why the latest American
proposals, that were presented without any clarifications, do not meet the
required conditions for a lasting peace. In their present form, the
American proposals may lead to the following: 1) partitioning the Palestinian
state into three different cantons connected by roads either for Jews only or
for Arab [sic] only. These roads will also divide the cantons which may
jeopardize the viability of this state; 2) partitioning Palestinian
Jerusalem into several islands detached from one another as well as from the
Palestinian state [emphasis added]; 3) forcing the Palestinians to
concede the refugees' right of return.37
The Palestinian critique of the Clinton Plan included the formulae
proposed for the Temple Mount: "it seems that the American proposal
recognizes, in essence, the Israeli sovereignty underneath the Haram
(al-Sharif), since it implies that Israel has the right to excavate behind
the Wall (which is the same area underneath the Haram), but it voluntarily
concede [sic] this right."38 Implicit in this Palestinian objection is a
residual claim to the Western Wall, itself, which the PLO leadership, in
fact, voiced after Camp David. Clearly, the Palestinians were concerned that
Israeli sovereignty over the Wall would lead to Israeli sovereignty behind
the Wall and hence subterranean Israeli sovereignty under the Temple Mount
plaza. This would be consistent with the PLO claim, according to the 1930
Shaw Commission from the period of the British Mandate, that the Western Wall
is an integral part of the Temple Mount.
Lessons for the Future
It is important to carefully analyze the failure of the Camp David
diplomacy over Jerusalem in order to draw lessons for future diplomatic
initiatives, especially by Israel or the U.S.:
1. Unbridgeable Gaps Between Israel and the Palestinians
Despite the unprecedented concessions offered by Prime Minister Ehud
Barak regarding Jerusalem, especially in comparison with every preceding
Israeli prime minister since 1967, the PLO did not offer any corresponding readiness
to compromise on territorial matters. Generally, Yasser Arafat
insisted on receiving 100 percent of the West Bank (including East Jerusalem)
and the Gaza Strip. He was only willing to concede land in these territories
if he received equivalent compensation, in terms of a land swap, from
unpopulated territories inside of pre-1967 Israel, like the Halutza area of
the Negev.
It was not even clear whether the land swap concept, based on the
Halutza area, could be applied to Jerusalem at all. Official Palestinian
statements indicated little or no willingness to compromise on land inside
the Old City of Jerusalem; residual Palestinian claims to sovereignty in the
Jewish Quarter and even with respect to the Western Wall were repeatedly
voiced in the post-Camp David period. There were also Palestinian voices that
sought special land swaps for Jerusalem, utilizing land in the western side
of the city in exchange for Israeli populated areas in East Jerusalem.
Finally, while Barak was willing to forgo exclusive Israeli sovereignty over
the Temple Mount, albeit stipulating that he would not accept exclusive
Palestinian sovereignty, the PLO would accept no alternatives to Palestinian
sovereignty, period.
Moreover, Barak's readiness to consider American proposals for
the re-division of Jerusalem were not even acceptable to the general Israeli
public. Thus, even if the PLO unconditionally had accepted the Clinton Plan,
which it did not, it is far from clear that the plan would be approved in a
national referendum of Israelis. The heads of the Israeli security
establishment viewed the Clinton Plan as dangerous. Israel's chief rabbis
ruled that Israel must retain its own sovereignty over the Temple Mount.
Additionally, it is important to recall that the Al-Aqsa Intifada actually
began when a Palestinian police officer shot and killed his Israeli
counterpart in a joint patrol in Kalkilya; Israeli readiness to experiment
with joint patrols in the sensitive Old City of Jerusalem was limited, at
best. The deteriorating security situation, including Palestinian sniper
attacks on Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem and assaults on holy sites, only
reinforced the view that Jerusalem must remain united, under Israeli
sovereignty and effective control.
2. The Non-Binding Nature of the Camp David and Post-Camp David
Discussions
In international legal terms, the only diplomatic activity that can
legally bind the State of Israel is a signed international agreement that is
ratified, in accordance with past Israeli practice, by the Knesset.
Nonetheless, in the past there have been efforts, at least, to politically
bind the State of Israel to the negotiating record of even failed peace
talks. In 1996, for example, Syria insisted on resuming negotiations with
Israel "from the point where negotiations broke off," ignoring the
change in Israeli government policy that transpired after the May 1996
elections; both the U.S. and Israel rejected this Syrian policy in September
1996. A similar Palestinian effort cannot be ruled out in the future that
would be intended to lock in the concessions of the Barak government to the
Camp David negotiating record without committing the PLO to any corresponding
concessions.
Yet the entire pattern of Camp David diplomacy was designed to
preclude this sort of diplomatic course of action. As noted above, President
Clinton himself summarized the negotiations on July 25 by re-stating the
guiding rule of the summit, that "nothing is agreed until everything is
agreed." Thus, there could be no locking-in of Israeli concessions on
Jerusalem without locking in concessions in every field: borders, refugees,
security arrangements, etc. For that reason, Clinton concluded in a public
declaration that the parties were "not bound by my proposal at the
summit."
Even in the post-Camp David diplomacy, these principles were
preserved. Thus, when the Clinton Plan was presented to Israeli and
Palestinian negotiators on December 23, President Clinton himself stated that
these were his ideas and that "they go with the President as he leaves
office." The U.S. Peace Coordinator, Dennis Ross, repeated this
principle in an interview on January 19, 2001: "The President's ideas
leave [the White House] with the President."39 Thus,
Ross concluded that "the new administration is not obligated in any way,
shape, or form by these ideas." In summary, neither the Camp David
summit nor the failed Clinton Plan obligated, legally or politically,
successive U.S. or Israeli governments in the future.
3. The Cost of Failed Negotiations
Both the U.S. and Israel incorrectly assumed that the diplomatic gap
between Israel and the PLO over the subject of Jerusalem could be bridged. It
could be asserted that at least the real positions of the parties are now
known and that nothing was lost in trying to reach a final peace settlement
that included a resolution of Israeli-Palestinian differences over Jerusalem.
However, this kind of assertion would be wrong.
The failed negotiations over Jerusalem led to violence that the Palestinians
intentionally chose to call the Al-Aqsa Intifada, for good reasons. Since
1929, the struggle over Jerusalem has always been a convenient vehicle for
mobilizing the Palestinian populace, as well as the Arab and Islamic worlds,
more generally. This has been especially true of any struggle over the Temple
Mount. A failed negotiation over Jerusalem can thus potentially convert an
Israeli-Palestinian national struggle over land and boundaries into an
inter-religious struggle with region-wide implications.
Both Israel and the U.S. paid a price for this development. Egypt
recalled its ambassador from Israel as a result of the Al-Aqsa Intifada,
while Jordan failed to send its ambassador back to Israel. Israeli relations
with North Africa and the Gulf states were frozen. U.S. officials discerned a
deepening rage in large parts of the Arab world, that even led to
demonstrations in places like Oman and Saudi Arabia, where political activism
in the streets was previously very limited. It is probable that while the
compromises on Jerusalem in the Clinton Plan that were demanded of Israel
were unacceptable to most Israelis, nonetheless, the American compromises
demanded of the PLO were not popular in the Arab world, either.
There are two courses of action that should be pursued by Israel and
the U.S. in the period ahead. First, it is clear that a completed final
status negotiation between Israel and the Palestinians is premature at this
time. Israel and the PLO would be better advised to focus on areas where they
can reach agreement: meaning a new, long-term, interim understanding
that sets aside the explosive issue of Jerusalem for the future.
The new Bush administration, which is interested in restoring U.S.
relations in the Gulf, in part, in order to better deal with Iraq, can become
deeply engaged in the issue of Jerusalem, like the Clinton administration.
But such involvement could easily lead to demands for a policy of
"linkage" in many Arabian Gulf states: the price for a more robust
containment bloc against Iraq might become linked to impossible Israeli
concessions on Jerusalem that cannot be delivered.
A better approach would entail creating a "firewall"
between the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations and the Gulf, by keeping the
issues in both sub-regions of the Middle East apart. During the last year of
the Reagan administration, the U.S. Navy substantially enhanced its presence
in the Persian Gulf as its ships convoyed re-flagged Kuwaiti tankers. At just
about this time the first Palestinian Intifada broke out, yet the Gulf states
did not make their own protection by U.S. forces dependent on the Palestinian
issue. This model is still relevant for 2001. The question of Jerusalem
should not be tied to the overall bilateral relations between the U.S. and
each of its Arab partners. In exchange, Arab states should not be pressured
by the U.S. to approve specific proposals in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations
or to provide political cover for concessions that the U.S. or Israel may ask
of the Palestinians.
* * *
Notes
1.
"In 1845, more than a half century before the
first Zionist Congress set out the territorial aims of political Zionism, the
Prussian Consul General in Jerusalem, Dr. Schultze, estimated that there were
7,120 Jews, 5,000 Muslims, and 3,390 Christians in the city. From that
moment, the Jews were to remain the largest single religious community. Their
numerical dominance increased, despite periods of first Turkish and then
British restrictions on their entry into Palestine. Two years after Dr. Schultze's
estimate, a British visitor, Dr. John Kitto, wrote in his book, Modern
Jerusalem: 'Although we are much in the habit of regarding Jerusalem as a
Muslim city, the Moslems do not actually constitute more than one-third of
the entire population.'
On April 15, 1854, the New York Daily Tribune ran an article
that declared: 'The sedentary population of Jerusalem numbers about 15,500
souls, of whom 4,000 are Musulmans and 8,000 Jews.' The author of the article
was Karl Marx.
In the last decade of the nineteenth century, the influx
(of) Ashkenazi Jews, especially from Tsarist Russia, raised the Jewish
population to more than 28,000 in 1896. At the same time the Christian Arabs
and the Muslim Arabs each numbered less than 9,000....By 1914 the Jewish
population had reached 45,000 out of 65,000. Only the coming of the First
World War halted the continuing demographic dominance of the Jews, many of
whom were expelled to Egypt or deported to Turkey."
(All of the above are from Martin Gilbert, "Jerusalem: A Tale of
One City," The New Republic, November 14, 1994. A French source,
Father Abbe J.J. Bourasse, estimated in the late 1850s that the Jewish
population in Jerusalem numbered 7,000 out of a total population of 15,000
(5,000 Muslims and 2,500 Christians). See David S. Landes, "Palestine
before the Zionists," Commentary, vol. 61, no. 2 (February
1976):51.
2.
Ibid.
3.
Ruth Kark and Michal Oren-Nordheim, Jerusalem and Its
Environs: Quarters, Neighborhoods, Villages, 1800-1948 (Jerusalem:
Academon, 1995) (Hebrew), p. 103. At one point about 1,000 Jews lived in the
Muslim Quarter of the Old City; they began to purchase houses in the Muslim
Quarter in the 1860s, but after the riots of 1929, all but a few found it
impossible to live there. See Nadav Shragai, The Temple Mount Conflict
(Jerusalem: Keter Publishers, 1995), pp. 190-191 (Hebrew).
4.
Stephen Schwebel, "What Weight to Conquest," American
Journal of International Law 64 (1970):346-347.
5.
Julius Stone, "Israel, the United Nations and
International Law: Memorandum of Law by Julius Stone," in John Norton
Moore, ed., The Arab-Israel Conflict, Volume IV, The Search for Peace
(1975-1988) (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), pp. 816-817.
6.
Cited in Yehuda Blum, The Juridical Status of Jerusalem
(Jerusalem: Leonard Davis Institute, 1974), p. 31.
7.
Agence France Presse, June 27, 1995.
8.
Interview with Charlie Rose on the Middle East Peace Talks,
July 27, 2000.
9.
Haaretz, July 28, 2000.
10. Al-Hayat
(London-Beirut), November 23-24, 2000, translated by MEMRI, November 28,
2000.
11. Jerusalem
Post, August 25, 2000.
12. Haaretz,
July 28, 2000.
13. Jerusalem
Post, August 4, 2000, and Newsweek, November 27, 2000.
14. Undated
manuscript of English translation of Akram Hanieh combined newspaper
articles.
15. Haaretz,
July 28, 2000; and Yotam Feldner, "The Formulae for a Settlement in
Jerusalem," MEMRI, September 13, 2000.
16. Haaretz,
July 28, 2000.
17. Hanieh
manuscript.
18. Interview
with Charlie Rose, September 12, 2000.
19. Al-Hayat
Al-Jadida, July 28, 2000, translated by MEMRI, August 4, 2000.
20. Al-Hayat,
July 27, 2000, translated by MEMRI, August 4, 2000.
21. Japanese
News Agency, NHK, August 15, 2000, cited by MEMRI, August 28, 2000.
22. Jerusalem
Post, September 13, 2000.
23. Kul
Al-Arab, August 16, 2000, translated by MEMRI, August 28, 2000.
24. Interview
with Ziad Abu Ziad, December 31, 2000, http://www.imra.org.il.
25. Voice
of Palestine, September 17, 2000.
26. Al-Hayat
(London-Beirut), November 23-24, 2000, translated by MEMRI, November 28,
2000.
27. Cited
in Haaretz, October 20, 2000.
28. Birzeit
University Development Studies Program, "The Palestinian Intifada and
the Peace Process," November 6-8, 2000. http://www.birzeit.edu.
29. "East
Jerusalem and the Holy Places at the Camp David Summit," August 28,
2000. MEMRI Special Dispatch.
30. Yotam
Feldner, "The Formulae for a Settlement in Jerusalem," MEMRI,
Report 40, September 13, 2000.
31. Al-Ayyam,
October 12, 2000, MEMRI.
32. Al-Hayat
Al-Jadida, August 24, 2000, MEMRI.
33. Al-Hayat
Al-Jadida, August 11, 2000, MEMRI.
34. New
York Times, January 6, 2001.
35. Yediot
Ahronot, December 29, 2000.
36. Maariv,
December 29, 2000.
37. "Arafat's
Letter of Reservations to President Clinton," January 3, 2001, MEMRI.
38. Ibid.
39. Jerusalem
Post, January 19, 2001.
* * *
Dore Gold is President of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.
Previously, he served as Israel's Ambassador to the United Nations
(1997-1999). This study was prepared with the assistance of Rachel
Siegal.
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Jerusalem Viewpoints are published by the Jerusalem Center for Public
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