home > by publication type > op-eds > The Truth About Jewish and Muslim Claims to Jerusalem
Email
| Author: | Henry Siegman, Former Senior Fellow and Director for the U.S./Middle East Project, Council on Foreign Relations |
|---|
August 10, 2000
International Herald Tribune
NEW YORK—When the sages of the Talmud had irreconcilable differences over a point of Theology or law, they decided to defer a decision to the Messiah, when he comes. It is a legal fiction referred to in the Talmud as teiku. Teiku is the only solution to the issue of sovereignty over Jerusalem’s holiest site.
By every account, Israel and the Palestinians made significant progress on most of the permanent-status issues during their 15-day negotiations at Camp David. Only the issue of Jerusalem defied agreement, thus rendering all other agreements null and void. The ground rules included a clear understanding that "nothing is agreed to until everything is agreed to."
So both sides preferred to abandon historic agreements on most of the issues that divide them for the sake of retaining certain claims to sovereignty over parts of East Jerusalem.
For Israelis, a redivision of Jerusalem, which has served as the "undivided, eternal capital" of the Jewish state since 1967, is inconceivable. Equally inconceivable to Palestinians is Jewish sovereignty over Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, and above all over the Haram al Sharif, on which stand the Al Aqsa and Dome of the Rock mosques.
The surpassing irony is that by failing to reach an accord, each side is in fact bringing about the very situation it is seeking to prevent. Israel is all but assuring the division of Jerusalem, and the Palestinians are assuring that they will have far less access to their holiest shrines than they now do.
Israel has had complete sovereignty over all of East Jerusalem for more than three decades, yet for Israelis the Palestinian areas of East Jerusalem might just as well be on the other side of the moon. Most Israelis have never entered these areas, a foreign and threatening place for them. It is quite common for Israeli taxi drivers to refuse to take passengers to these parts of East Jerusalem.
If that is today’s reality, how much more isolated will East Jerusalem be from the rest of the city in conditions of far greater political confrontation, or even of actual violence. In those perilous circumstances, the division between Palestinian areas of East Jerusalem and Jerusalem’s Jewish parts would become complete.
This radical fragmentation of the city is the predictable consequence of a sterile Israeli policy denying manifestations of Palestinian sovereignty.
The consequences of Palestinian rigidity are equally predictable. Today, Palestinian Muslims enjoy largely unfettered access to the Haram al Sharif. But absent a peace agreement, and most certainly after a unilateral declaration of Palestinian statehood, Palestinian access to this area will be curtailed by Israel. In the case of violence, it may well be halted entirely.
In the name of protecting the unity of the city and guaranteeing access to holy places in East Jerusalem, both sides are in fact accomplishing the opposite. It is clear that only by reaching an agreement that creates new levels of sharing can the unity of Jerusalem and access to its holy places can be enhanced.
Which brings us to the dirty little secret about Jerusalem. Both Islam and Judaism have managed quite well over the centuries (in the case of Judaism, for two millennia) even when they did not exercise political sovereignty on the Temple Mount, as they call the Haram al Sharif. They would undoubtedly continue to manage well without such sovereignty in the future.
What neither side can apparently imagine is yielding sovereignty over its shrine to the adversary. It is Jewish sovereignty over the Haram al Sharif and Muslim sovereignty over the Temple Mount that most outrages the religious/national sensibilities of Muslims and Jews, not the absence of their own sovereignty.
This unpleasant truth suggests the solution—both sides deferring indefinitely the issue of sovereignty over Temple Mount/Haram al Sharif.
This does not preclude Palestinian sovereignty in areas of Jerusalem in which Palestinians predominate, a possibility that Ehud Barak conceded at Camp David. Palestinians would continue to have administrative control of the Haram al Sharif, as they do now, and unfettered access to the mosques from the Palestinian side would be assured by a sovereign land connection.
Israel would defer any further action on its claim to sovereignty over the Temple Mount, but it would not concede anyone else’s sovereignty.
Some may dismiss this proposal as politically unrealistic since it requires Israel to withdraw its earlier annexation of the Temple Mount. In fact it requires no such thing, for, contrary to conventional assumptions, Israel never annexed East Jerusalem. In 1967, Israel’s government decided to apply Israeli law and administration to the enlarged municipal boundaries of Jerusalem. The terms "sovereignty" and "annexation" do not appear in the Knesset’s legislation.
To order Task Force reports, Council Special Reports, and Critical Policy Choices, please call, fax, or order online from our distributor, the Brookings Institution Press: phone +1.800.537.5487, fax +1.410.516.6998.
For information on other reports that are not for sale, or for general publications information, please call +1.212.434.9516 or email publications@cfr.org.
Start-Up Nation addresses the trillion-dollar question: How is it that Israel—a country of 7.1 million, only sixty years old, surrounded by enemies— produces more start-up companies than large, peaceful, and stable nations like Japan, China, India, Korea, Canada, and the UK? With the insights of geopolitical experts and investors, the authors examine this nation’s adversity-driven culture to answer this question and offer prescriptions for a global economy on the rebound.
In Forces of Fortune, Vali Nasr presents a paradigm-changing revelation that will transform the understanding of the Muslim world at large. He reveals that there is a vital but unseen rising force in the Islamic world—a new business-minded middle class—that is building a vibrant new Muslim world economy and that holds the key to winning the cold war against Iran and extremists.
In Cuba: What Everyone Needs to Know, Julia E. Sweig presents a remarkably accessible portrait of Cuba's unique place on the world stage over the past fifty years, including its internal politics, its often fraught relationship with the United States, and its shifting relationship with the global community.
Complete list of CFR Books
Copyright 2009 by the Council on Foreign Relations. All Rights Reserved.