TOP STORY: THE FUTURE OF JERUSALEM: Palestinian leader says Jerusalem is key to peace prospects in I

c. 1996 Religion News Service WASHINGTON (RNS)-Of all the sticky issues that complicate resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, none is more important-or vexing-than Jerusalem, a city holy to Christians, Jews and Muslims. Thursday (June 6), Faisal Husseini, the top Palestinian official in Jerusalem, said the outcome of talks on the city’s political status could make […]

c. 1996 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON (RNS)-Of all the sticky issues that complicate resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, none is more important-or vexing-than Jerusalem, a city holy to Christians, Jews and Muslims.

Thursday (June 6), Faisal Husseini, the top Palestinian official in Jerusalem, said the outcome of talks on the city’s political status could make or break the Middle East peace process.


Israel’s Prime Minister-elect Benjamin Netanyahu said through an aide Wednesday (June 5) that he would not discuss Palestinian political claims to parts of Jerusalem-a city in which religious beliefs and national aspirations are enmeshed to a degree unmatched anywhere else.

Netanyahu says Jerusalem, which came under full Israeli political control in 1967, will remain the Jewish state’s undivided capital. Palestinians, both Christian and Muslim, want Jerusalem to be the capital of their hoped-for state as well.

But Husseini, speaking with reporters, said Netanyahu has no choice but to negotiate over Jerusalem because the defeated government of outgoing Prime Minister Shimon Peres had obligated Israel to discuss the city’s future as part of the 1993 Oslo peace process agreement.

Husseini, a close aide of Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, declined to say just what Palestinians would do if Netanyahu makes good on his pledge to unilaterally take Jerusalem off the negotiating table.

But Husseini, who runs Orient House, the nascent Palestinian foreign ministry located in east Jerusalem, hinted at a return of the intifada, or Palestinian uprising, and a resurgence in Islamic militancy. He said Palestinians would no longer accept the”negatives”that have accompanied the peace process-economic hardships caused by Israel’s closing off of the West Bank and Gaza in response to terrorism, for example-if Netanyahu dashes their dreams of eventually gaining some degree of sovereignty in Jerusalem.”I hope Mr. Netanyahu will not underestimate to what extent Jerusalem is important to us,”said Husseini.

Husseini’s comments to reporters followed by one day his attendance at a day-long conference in Washington at which several dozen leading Palestinian, Arab and American Middle East experts also discussed Jerusalem. Like Husseini’s remarks Thursday, the tone of the conference was despondent.

Richard W. Murphy, a former State Department official and ambassador to Syria and Saudi Arabia, said prospects for resolution of the Jerusalem issue are so bleak that it should just be shelved for now.”Let it be the one issue that’s unresolved”until other agreements between Israelis and the Palestinians have had a chance to reduce tensions between the two groups, said Murphy, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.


Speaker after speaker at the conference-which was sponsored by the American Committee on Jerusalem, a pro-Arab group, and the Saudi Arabia-based Organization of the Islamic Conference-underscored the depth of Palestinian attachment to Jerusalem, an attachment they said is equally strong for both Muslim and Christian Palestinians.

They also made clear the degree of Palestinian anger over Israel’s control of the city.

For Christians, Jerusalem derives its holiness from its association with key events in the life of Jesus, including the Last Supper and the Crucifixion. For Jews, Jerusalem is holy because it was there that Abraham was to sacrifice his son Isaac and where the two biblical-era temples stood. For Muslims, Jerusalem-called Al-Quds-al-Sharif (the noble holy place) in Arabic-is holy because it is where Muhammad is said to have ascended to heaven.

The three faiths have vied for control of the city for most of the past 2,000 years.

Palestinian historian Walid Khalidi called Israel the Christian West’s modern-day”proxy”in its ongoing quest to keep Jerusalem from ever again coming under Muslim control, as it has been many times through history.

Jerusalem, said Khalidi, a research fellow at Harvard University’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies, is at the”center of a clash of civilizations,”the”prime cause”of which is the”Western belief that Islam is outside the Judeo-Christian philosophical construct.” He blamed”Protestant intoxication with the Old Testament with its persistent advocacy of the return of the Jews to Jerusalem”for the West’s support for the establishment of modern Israel. His reference was to the belief among many conservative Christians that re-establishment of a Jewish state in the Holy Land is a prelude to the Second Coming of Jesus.


Ibrahim Matar, a Palestinian who is deputy director of American Near East Refugee Aid, which is funded by the U.S. government and private sources, said”Jerusalem belongs to the Palestinian people”and that the city’s”Judaization”under Israel’s control resulted from”theft of private Palestinian property.” Israel has constructed Jewish neighborhoods in the once exclusively Arab east Jerusalem to bolster its claim to the area. Husseini said Palestinians would counter that tactic by insisting that formerly Arab-owned property in Jewish west Jerusalem also be a topic of negotiations.

International law, he said, supports Palestinian claims to those properties.

However, legal codes, said Nathaniel Berman, a professor of international law at Northeastern University in Boston, are largely irrelevant when it comes to Jerusalem.

The city, he said, is a”place of extravagant passions,””a fetish for nationalists”both secular and religious, and for the international community. All sides to the Jerusalem issue view international law”as a hired gun”that can be used to their advantage, Berman said.

For that reason, he said,”Jerusalem is both the fantasy and nightmare of international law.” But for Husseini, Jerusalem is also”the main issue.”

MJP END RIFKIN

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