c. 1997 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON _ Jerusalem is a city in which Christian, Jewish and Muslim faith claims have been used throughout history to deny the political assertions of the opposing religious cultures.

However, if real peace is ever to come to the contemporary Middle East, Jewish Israelis and Muslim and Christian Palestinians will have to settle for less than the maximum positions held by hard-liners on both sides of the issue, panelists at a Washington forum on the future of the city agreed Friday (Feb. 7).”There is no religious claim (to Jerusalem) that will not be trumped from someone else’s point of view,”said Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg, a humanities professor at New York University.

Rashid Khalidi, a University of Chicago Middle East scholar who has advised Palestinian officials negotiating with Israel, said:”During Jerusalem’s history, the city has been conquered repeatedly, and repeatedly religious claims have been made to justify unilateral control of the city.” The debate over Jerusalem is one of the more vexing hurdles in the way of a final peace settlement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. The Israeli government position is that the city must remain undivided under its rule, as it has been since the 1967 Six Day War. Palestinians say the eastern portion of the city should become the capital of their emerging state.”I want to see Jerusalem as an open city, but one that is two capitals for two peoples on a political level with equal religious freedom for all,”said the Rev. Naim Ateek, a Palestinian who leads Jerusalem’s St. George’s Episcopal Cathedral.

Religiously, Jews consider Jerusalem their holiest city, while for Muslims it is the third holiest of cities after Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia. Christians consider Jerusalem holy because of the events associated with Jesus that occurred in the city.

Panelists at the forum sponsored by the Middle East Institute, a Washington think tank, generally agreed that it may be possible for negotiators to come up with some as-yet unknown political arrangement involving newer neighborhoods of Jerusalem that might satisfy centrist Israelis and Palestinians.

They mentioned three possibilities: redrawing the city’s municipal boundaries to allow a Palestinian political entity; some undefined form of shared political control; or dividing the city with west Jerusalem remaining part of Israel and east Jerusalem coming under Palestinian control.

But as complex as these questions are when they involve Jerusalem’s modern neighborhoods, panelists agreed that the difficulties are even greater in trying to determine the future of the Old City of Jerusalem _ what panelist Daniel Pipes, a University of Pennsylvania professor who edits the magazine Middle East Quarterly, called”the holy part.” Hertzberg said Jews simply will not give up control over the Old City.”Deep in the consciousness of Jews is that every time someone else has controlled the walled city, Jews have gotten an unfair shake. It’s deep in their craw. It’s in my craw,”he said.

Ateek said Palestinians feel the same way about Israeli control of the Old City _ a relative speck of land that encompasses only about 200 acres surrounded by a modern city that is now home to more than a half-million people.”I have members of my church who cannot come to worship because they cannot get through Israeli checkpoints,”he said.”That’s not freedom of worship.” In the end, the panelists fell far short of any agreement on the future of Jerusalem. That was to be expected, said Richard Murphy, a former assistant secretary of state and one-time U.S. ambassador to Syria and Saudi Arabia who now chairs the Middle East Institute’s board of governors.

Still, he concluded, Jerusalem can no longer be pushed aside in the hope that other, less contentious issues dividing Palestinians and Israelis can be settled first.

Not talking about Jerusalem, Murphy said, just adds to its”mystification,”which only makes it more difficult to solve the problem of the city’s future status.

DEA END RIFKIN