Forwarded from the Other Israel

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

PEACE OR WAR IN JERUSALEM - Briefing nr 18

Tel-Aviv, July 26. A bitter morning. No more rushing to the radio, to
anxiously listen to the latest rumours filtering out of Camp David - as
became our habit in the past two weeks. We already know. The summit broke
up with no agreement, and though there is vague talk of "continuing", on
the ground Israeli and Palestinian military forces - and the various
militias - are intensifying their preparations for the September 13 deadline.

The Camp David Summit brought into being a heterogeneous coalition of
activists - Barak's own Labourite supporters, the veteran peaceniks Meretz
and Peace Now, the kibbutzniks, the Blue Shirt youth movements and up to
the more outspoken Gush Shalom activists such as the writers of this piece,
willing to suspend their distrust of Ehud Barak and give his peace efforts
the benefit of the doubt.

The rallying point throughout these tense two weeks was the Peace Tent
established in Tel Aviv's Rabin Square where the Bereaved Families
Forum(frankent@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx), maintained a tireless constant presence.
And activists stood at the junctions of intercity highways, holding up the
sign "The Majority voted for Peace!"; went on long cavalcades of private
cars (on the Tel-Aviv-Haifa Highway) and bicycles (on the streets of
Tel-Aviv) and even went rafting across the Sea Of Galillee - with cars,
cycles and rafts all bearing the same slogan; went out night after night to
put up placards and posters and stickers, occasionally getting into
fistfights with settlers putting up anti-peace signs; set up additional
peace tents at Jerusalem and Tel-Aviv; confronted across police cordons the
right-wingers when they swarmed for a rally in the Rabin Square... Over in
the US, a devoted group "North American Peace Headquarters"
(raznona@xxxxxxx) kept a constant presence as near as they could get to
Camp David itself, as well as outside the UN Headquarters in New York City.
But nearly all these actions involved only hard-core of activists. There
was one small rally outside the Prime Minister's residence, with some
thousand participants. The mass rally which was planned for Rabin Square
was put off from one week to another, the organizers feeling unsure of
their ability to mobilize the more passive supporters of the peace movement
before there would be an actual agreement to show them. The coalition
seemed paralyzed from above - with those closest to Barak preventing any
slogans which would push Barak further and - probably for the same reason -
avoiding the holding of a mass rally in support of peace while negotiations
were taking place.

Perhaps the most important result of what did get done was the intense
contact established in these two weeks between bereaved families from both
sides of the national divide - unprecedented not only during the century of
Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but also, according to a visiting American
expert, in the history of national conflicts in general. To all who
witnessed them, they were unforgettable scenes: the visit of the
Palestinian families to the Tel-Aviv tent; the hours of prolonged, very
emotional dialogue; the march of Israeli and Palestinian parents together
through the streets of Tel-Aviv, holding the banner "Barak and Arafat, you
have a mandate to take one more step for peace"; the ceremony outside the
Apropos cafe, where a Hamas bomb exploded in March 1997 - addressed by
Zehava Rosen, whose daughter was killed there; the return visit of the
Israeli families to the Palestinian Peace Tent, erected in Gaza - which
took place, though nobody knew it, at the very time when the Camp David
negotiations were spiralling down to their final crisis...

On the third day of the summit, dozens of Gush Shalom activists went on a
previously scheduled visit to Abu Dis, the Palestinian suburb of Jerusalem
which in some governmental schemes (firmly rejected by the Palestinians)
was to serve as "A surrogate Palestinian Capital". On a visit to the
Palestinian governor's office, they presented a copy of the "Our Jerusalem"
petition which was signed in 1995 by 685 Israeli academics, artists and
public figures, and which stated "(...) Our Jerusalem must be the capital
of the two states which will live side by side in this country - West
Jerusalem the capital of the State of Israel and East Jerusalem the capital
of the State of Palestine. Our Jerusalem must be the Capital of Peace"
(full text at http://www.gush-shalom.org/jerusalem). The Abu Dis action got
enormous attention in the media, which suffered from the lack of news and
lack of spectacular peace actions on the ground. This strong response lead
Gush Shalom (info@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx) to relaunch the "Jerusalem - Capital of
the Two States" campaign in newspaper ads and bumper stickers.

When that petition was originally published in 1995, it was little short of
utter heresy. Ever since 1967, total adherence to "United Jerusalem,
Eternal Capital of Israel" was a cornerstone of Israeli politics, sworn to
by practically all politicians. Even the left-leaning Meretz Party refused
to include in its program a suggestion of Palestinian sovereignty in part
of Jerusalem. Yet, in just a few days, the final days of the Camp David
Summit, the Jerusalem Taboo had been broken and swept away - irrevocably,
however things may develop from now on. Justice Minister Yossi Beilin - it
seems in tacit agreement with Barak, ensconced in Camp David - started it,
in a series of media interviews where he pointed out several obvious facts:
that Israeli sovereignty in the Arab neighbourhoods of East Jerusalem is a
sham, manifested in no more than occasional police raids; that their
inhabitants do not feel themselves part of Israel, and in daily life the
Palestinian Authority already fulfils most government functions in these
neighbourhoods; that Israelis rarely, if ever, set foot there. From all
these, Beilin drew in plain words the obvious conclusion: that it would do
Israel no harm, and quite a bit of good, to relinquish its rule over these
neighbourhoods in order to reach peace with the Palestinians.

Once the dam was broken, Beilin's iconoclasitc remarks were joined by a
host of other mainstream figures. Aryeh Amit, former commander of the
Jerusalem Police and Karmi Gilon, former head of the Shabak Security
Service, went with Beilin of a highly-publicized tour of the neighbourhoods
in question, backing him with their professional expertise. (No Israeli
company was willing to hire out a bus for an expedition into the Arab
neighbourhoods of Jerusalem, forcing Beilin and his fellows to charter a
Palestinian bus - which, the minister pointed out, proved his point all in
itself). Than Yehoram Gaon, well-known singer and middle-of-road Jerusalem
City Councillor, was quoted as saying "Once Jerusalem is divided, nobody
will understand what the fuss was about", and Ron Ben Yishai, Yediot
Aharonot's Security Commentator, followed with "Division of sovereignty in
Jerusalem is vital to Israel's long-term security needs" - statements which
neither of the two gentlemen would have dreamt of uttering in public even a
few weeks ago. After all that, it came as no surprise to hear Prime
Minister Barak confirming officially, after the summit failed and the media
blackout was removed, that he had indeed been considering the giving up of
some Arab neighbourhoods in Jerusalem.

Yet the summit did fail, over this precise issue of Jerusalem. Barak's
offer - while unprecedented and taboo-breaking in its principle - was
extremely niggardly in its concrete details. As came out clearly in the
past day, Barak was willing to altogether give up sovereignty only in some
of the outlying neighbourhoods of Arab Jerusalem; the ones more towards the
centre, and in particular the highly emotive Old City, would stay under
permanent Israeli sovereignty, with only "municipal autonomy" for the
Palestinians. Moreover, in return for this partial concession, Barak
demanded a more than full price: Palestinian acceptance of eleven Jewish
neighbourhoods established since 1967 on confiscated Palestinian land in
various parts of East Jerusalem - and also of several large Israeli
settlements established in West Bank areas near to Jerusalem, which would
become incorporated in a new "Jewish Jerusalem" with full Palestinian
consent. It was a deal which Arafat could not accept - certainly not with
the entire Arab and Muslim world looking over his shoulder, a billion
people from Morocco to Indonesia for whom the name of Al- Quds (The Holy
One, as Jerusalem is known in Arabic) is highly evocative. >From the
reports now flooding the media, it seems that the thorniest sticking point,
over which the summit finally foundered, was the holy compound known to
Judaism as Har HaBait (Temple Mount) where King Solomon built his temple,
and which to Muslims is Haram A-Sharif (The Noble Sanctuary) from which the
Prophet Muhammad ascended to Heaven.

In practice, it had been a Muslim holy place - Islam's third holiest site -
for the past 1300 years, with Jews contenting themselves by worshipping at
the nearby Wailing Wall. Already centuries ago, Rabbis have declared the
Mount to be too Holy to be traversed by mortal feet until the coming of the
Messiah - yet the present-day ones, while keeping the old prohibition, also
burst out in vociferous indignation at the idea that formal Israeli
sovereignty over the place be waived.

Barak, apparently unwilling to confront the Rabbis, offered what he
considered a compromise: Palestinians would get "Religious Sovereignty"
over this sensitive compound, while Israel would retain the "Political
Sovereignty". What this amounted to, in down to earth terms, was that the
Muslim religious authorities would administer the compound in daily life
(as they had been doing, in fact, since 1967) but any riots or disturbances
would still be dealt with by the Israeli Riot Police. Given that one police
incursion into this holy compound, back in 1991, had ended with nineteen
Muslim worshippers being shot down, it is no wonder that Barak's
"compromise" was turned down out of hand by the Palestinian side.

And so, the summit collapsed. Since there was no agreement on Jerusalem,
nothing was agreed upon - neither Barak's reported willingness to recognize
a Palestinian state in most of the West Bank and the whole of the Gaza
Strip, nor the assent which Arafat apparently gave to "settlement blocs"
being annexed to Israel, a major and painful Palestinian concession
entirely overlooked by those rushing to put the blame on the Palestinian
leader. As things stand now, on the September 13 deadline the Palestinians
are likely to declare their independent state and proclaim East Jerusalem
its capital. And asserting this proclaimed sovereignty beyond the present
narrow Palestinian-held enclaves - in and around the settlements, and
perhaps in Jerusalem as well - would almost certainly lead to bloody
clashes, which may well go down in history as the Palestinian War of
Independence. Israeli youths in uniform, most of them secularists who care
little for Temple Mount and its Biblical glories, would get killed and
would kill Palestinian youngsters - armed with more than stones this time -
and all for the sake of abstruse theological-nationalist precepts...

Can it still be averted? Many of the signs are ominous. Much of Barak's
words since he came out, his accusations of Arafat, his courting of the
notorious Likud leader Ariel Sharon as a possible partner for "National
Unity Government", i.e. a war cabinet, and - possibly worse of all - his
newly-made depiction of himself as the "Defender of Jewish Holies", an
inflammatory rhetoric which can all too easily get out of hand. After these
two intensive weeks, with a President of United States giving his all and
failing, can something be salvaged? Can a new summit, or any other
effective form of negotiations, still be cobbled up in the short space of a
month and half? Who can push Barak the vital extra mile, before the guns
get their say?

On the other hand, there are still those who keep up hoping, who point to
the long way Barak had already travelled in the past year, to the fact that
upon his election he talked of a Palestinian state embracing no more than
50% to 60% of the West Bank and would not hear of the slightest compromise
in Jerusalem, to the fact that in concrete physical terms - as opposed to
the all- important explosive mix of religious and nationalist symbols - the
official Israeli and Palestinian positions had never come closer. And Barak
did also make some peace rhetoric in the televised welcoming rally which
was held tonight outside his residence by several dovish groups - an event
in which we most emphatically do NOT participate. (Perhaps more
importantly, Meretz leader Yossi Sarid has just distanced himself on TV
from that rally and from the PM in general: "We will support the government
- IF it continues on the way to peace").

Meanwhile, we have just received notice of a vigil planned by the Yesh Gvul
Movement (Ishai@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx), for this Friday (11:45 -- 13:00) at
Kikar Paris, near the PM's Residence in Jerusalem. The idea is to "support
the chance we have to finish the bloodshed between us and the Palestinians,
and to put a warning before the government that there are wars we are not
willing to take part in." The reemergence of Yesh Gvul, which had a key
role in organizing reserve soldiers' refusal to participate both in the
Lebanon War and in fighting against the Intifada - could be rather
significant at this very moment.

Adam Keller
Beate Zilversmidt



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Louis Proyect
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