Dome of the Rock & Western Wall (AP)
"Sher: [T]here are two levels of Jerusalem —the ‘urban’ one, which could be resolved with a lot of funding and planning of contiguity and unimpeded movement in junctures with adverse sovereignty. And this second level of the Old City and the Holy/Historic Basin, which is a completely different story. Unlike the latter, places like Kafer Aqeb, Issawiyeh or Jabel Mukaber within ‘urban’ Jerusalem and under the jurisdiction of its municipality, have nothing to do with the sites Jews prayed for in 2000 years of exile."You are in town for the launch of the the Jerusalem Old City Initiative from Windsor University; what is the objective of the plan that is being announced tomorrow?
Sher: It is an attempt to suggest one possible solution for the Old City which has become the heart of the Jerusalem issue, a major sticking point in resolving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The uniqueness of this place stems from it being holy to the three monotheistic religions. We thought that by trying to address this issue by neither accepting one claim nor another, rather by deferring the claims for sovereignty over the Old City and making a special regime within the Old City, it would be possible to alleviate the main obstacle to resolving the issue of Jerusalem altogether. This is basically where we started about five years ago. It was initiated by Windsor University and the Canadian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, with quite a large group of experts—Israelis, Palestinians and internationals—on security, governance, conflict resolution, the legal issues. The booklet you will see tomorrow is a culmination of all the work done.
Al-Ju’beh: It’s a Canadian initiative. It’s not an Israeli initiative or Palestinian initiative, it’s not a joint Israeli-Palestinian initiative, it’s a Canadian initiative. It’s a very interesting approach. We had two approaches in the past. One approach is dividing the Old City, which is in accordance with President Clinton’s parameters; what is Arab is Palestinian State, what is Jewish is Israel, and this would lead to division of the Old City. Along these lines we had also the Geneva Accords, which are similar to Clinton’s parameters.
Sher: Which I disagree with [Al-Ju’beh’s last comment].
Al-Ju’beh: The other approach is the absolute claim of one or the other side to the Old City. I would say this Canadian Old City Initiative option is about diffusing the conflict around the Old City, postponing it for a while and not making it a central focal point of the conflict as both parties are trying to do. So, it is not really a special regime; it is a form of international regime over the old city. It’s not internationalization, but it is an international regime for a transitional period with both parties having to agree on a period of time—three years, or forever. This transitional regime would apply to the Old City only. Outside the Old City is another question. But this is done with the assumption that outside the Old City would be divided into two cities, one Israeli and one Palestinian. The interest of both parties is concentrated primarily on the Old City. Through this initiative, we postpone the conflict to the future when both parties can find a solution.
Sher: Allow me to make a few comments by way of clarification. The notion of the special regime over the Old City was first mentioned in Camp David, but was not really elaborated or explored back in July 2000. Later on, when the Clinton Parameters were conveyed to the parties in December 2000, Israel officially endorsed them and responded affirmatively. However, one of the reservations of the Israeli cabinet objected precisely to the idea of dividing the Old City between the parties. Instead, Israel suggested exploring the establishment of a special regime in the Old City of Jerusalem. Finally, the special regime could only be established in permanent status and subsequent to the implementation of a treaty of peace.
What are some key components to the plan itself?
Al-Ju’beh: Well the major component is that it’s not a sovereign entity—neither Israeli nor Palestinian. It will be administered by an international body in the name of the two people until they can agree or reach a solution. So the question of sovereignty and belonging of the Old City is not solved, but the Old City would be run in a positive, constructive way, with all the administrative tools and infrastructure. The Old City would no longer suffer from the conflict. I think part of the international administration would be to administer it for the international community which has an interest in the Old City, so the administration would deal with only so many issues. The initiative would leave whatever it can to the Palestinian and Israeli authorities. It would not deal with education—so the Palestinians would continue to have a Palestinian education, the Israelis in the Old City would have an Israeli education.
Sher: Same applies to issues like family law.
Al-Ju’beh: All of theses laws would continue under citizenship; the people in the Old City would be part of their own countries—there would be no Old City citizenship, but rather Old City residency. Other issues like security, infrastructure and cultural heritage would be dealt with by the international administrator. This administrator could get help from the Israelis and Palestinians, but would get help from any country in the world as well. Both countries have to facilitate the work of this entity.
Sher: Here are the key components as stated in the Initiative’s suggested mandate1:
• The Old City as a distinct unit with a distinct legal personality under the executive authority of a single Chief Administrator accountable to a Governance Board.
• The Governance Board as the oversight authority of the Special Regime.
• The Chief Administrator appointed for a fixed renewable term by the Board, the latter consisting of senior representatives of the Israeli and Palestinian governments and select other countries and institutions as may be agreed by Parties.
• Special Regime responsibility for specific aspects of governance including policing, heritage, archaeological oversight, access, planning, zoning, property registration and transfer and ensuring equal status for all residents and visitors. …
• Israeli and Palestinian residents to carry either Israeli or Palestinian citizenship, with their political rights secured through participation in the political processes of their country of citizenship.
• Freedom of worship secured and guaranteed, according to established practice.
• A Police Service with a Chief of Police, heading a unified command structure accountable to the Chief Administrator; members of the service recruited individually according to a list of countries agreed by the Parties. …
• Police Service responsibilities to include maintenance of public order, counter-terrorism, entry and exit control to and from the Old City, enforcement of criminal and specific civil laws, security and intelligence responsibilities and community policing. …
• The Old City as a “weapons-free” zone, excepting the Police Service.
What did you find were the main challenges in coming up with a plan?
Sher: The challenge is in changing the mindsets of Israelis and Palestinians, Arabs, and Jews, Muslims and Christians, towards transformation into a different set up in an environment of peace. This is the challenge, not the plan itself. It would only be when Israelis and Palestinians would have prepared the ground for a special regime to become acceptable and practicable that it could take effect. We need to gradually change the public’s hearts and minds by introducing this outreach idea, in order to obtain legitimacy to it, based on internal dialogue and hard work. And it is necessary that confidence between the two societies would have started to be restored.
Al-Ju’beh: I think there are a lot of potential explosions within the Initiative itself. It’s not that easy because the Old City contains so many elements with a lot of symbols that have to be dealt in a very profound way. Issues like property, on both sides. You have a huge 90 percent of the population that is Palestinian, and 10 percent of the population that is Israeli. These are elements which will also blow up in the face of the administrator in the future if we do not really take them into consideration and read them in a very fine way. The element outside the initiative is what Gilead already mentioned: we give holiness to world sovereignty. I’m not sure that 99 percent of the people understand what that means. But if you ask anyone on our side at least ‘what is the Old City?’ they would say its part of the Palestinian capital with Palestinian sovereignty over it. What it means is not clear, therefore we will have a lot of difficulty in convincing people and decision makers of this new approach to leave Jerusalem without sovereignty for awhile and let us see how we can deal with it. I’m not sure we can manage to deal with it. Maybe this special regime will be a form of permanent regime. It’s not a transitional regime unless we really change totally, which I do not see in my life time.
What lessons do both of you draw from your experience in negotiations in regards to the Old City and Jerusalem in the bigger picture?
Sher: Well I can’t say we were surprised by the fact that there are two levels of Jerusalem—the ‘urban’ one, which could be resolved with a lot of funding and planning of contiguity and unimpeded movement in junctures with adverse sovereignty. And this second level of the Old City and the Holy/Historic Basin, which is a completely different story. Unlike the latter, places like Kafer Aqeb, Issawiyeh or Jabel Mukaber within ‘urban’ Jerusalem and under the jurisdiction of its municipality, have nothing to do with the sites Jews prayed for in 2000 years of exile.
This basically is the value of this project: narrowing the focus down to the Old City alone, rather than contemplating greater Jerusalem. I find the real challenge in having more and more people, including religious leaders in the two constituencies, endorse this approach.
Al-Ju’beh: I am still learning. First I have learned that every day we lose is a catastrophe which makes any solution in the future more difficult. Therefore, we have to rush. The second lesson I learned from this initiative and other negotiating initiatives is that there is no peace without Jerusalem—with each piece of Jerusalem peace will be farther away from us. Third, is we have to find compromise in Jerusalem. Jerusalem cannot be a claim to one party—it is too big for one party. Fourth lesson, we do not have to minimize the international importance of Jerusalem for the international community. Usually we think it is just an Israeli and Palestinian issue, which is true, but you discover slowly that the international community is really deeply interested in Jerusalem and they have their own interests you know, like the Vatican, Russia or France with all of their interests in Jerusalem. Through this and other initiatives I discovered there are many who are emotionally connected to Jerusalem and want partners in solutions over Jerusalem. This could be used as an asset, actually, for the city if we managed to solve the national conflict of it, because we’re not negotiating the future of Jerusalem with France, but I have to take its interest in Jerusalem into consideration and not to deal with it as a national issue. We have to be aware and sensitive to other interests in Jerusalem, including the whole Jewish community of the world, the Christians of the world, the Muslims of the world—fifty percent of the world’s population which is related one way or another to Jerusalem. Their interests will not dictate what will happen with Jerusalem, but we need to take them into consideration.
What role can outside players have in the resolution of the issue of Jerusalem?
Al-Ju’beh: This is what the initiative is all about. This is an invitation for the international community to assist us in solving the conflict of Jerusalem. I think they can contribute a lot to diffuse the conflict of Jerusalem from one side. From the other side, we need their financial know-how and administrative assistance, and I do not see any problem with the international readiness to jump into the Jerusalem issue. I think for some countries it would be a form of prestige to assist with Jerusalem so therefore I think the international community is more than ready to do that.
Sher: It is not unique once again. The need for either a third-party presence or international involvement in the resolution of the conflict is not unique to Jerusalem, but is nevertheless emphasized in the Canadian Old City Initiative. The fact of the matter is that the two parties cannot resolve the conflict without international intervention, facilitation and assistance. The experience compiled by the international community in the last two or three decades, on third-party intervention might prove itself valuable in our case. It is not by accident that this project has not been an Israeli-Palestinian one, but rather a foreign actors’ one. Nazmi and myself were also colleagues in another project on the principles and guidelines for the long-term arrangements in the Holy Sites, which is a much easier one, as it did not relate to governance or the legal system. And there we two had the chance to propose our set of recommendations, but this proposal is a Canadian proposal. The caucus group comprised Canadians, Americans, Israelis, and Palestinians, working together for 5 years. It is a serious and thorough study.
The problem isn’t producing ideas, schemes or plans—we have enough of these. More than a few initiatives, track-two and NGO projects have produced valuable outcomes in recent years. These include studies on boundaries, territorial swaps, options for compensation and rehabilitation mechanisms for the refugees. This project is in line with them. In due time, these thorough plans may well be incorporated into official channels of negotiation and, subject to further assessment, staff work and processing, serve as toolkits for the negotiating parties.
Al-Ju’beh: I would add that the third-party involvement would not only be in Jerusalem. We need international assistance in a lot of issues, especially for transitional periods—maybe in terms of a border-regime system, maybe security advice and so many other issues where the international community could assist. But Jerusalem is different. It is not just the assistance of the international community to oversee Jerusalem for a period which is a very intensive form of assistance, but in a lot of other issues we will have international presence in different forms and levels.
Everything you’re saying is leading me to the question, how do you get the governments and the people to buy into the plan?
Al-Ju’beh: Again look, this is an option. We are not negotiating in the names of the two sides, but we will present this to both parties and hopefully they can take all or part of it. When they come to a point where they are stuck with the Old City without finding a solution, such work would be very helpful to both parties in order to ensure that the solution is not impossible—because if a solution in the Old City is impossible it would be impossible in the rest of the country. Therefore both parties at least will have this alternative that could serve them, and I don’t see a problem with the international community accepting it. On the contrary, I think the international community will welcome it, because their interest is mostly protected by international administration rather than Israeli or Palestinian administration, or even by a joint administration. The question is how the public will accept it and will it create a third entity within the country. We aren’t comfortable with one entity so you can imagine with three. [Sher: Don’t forget Gaza as the fourth, or Jordan as the fifth.] The creation of a third regime is a problem. People will not have an easy time with it. For Israelis it would be easier to have all of the city as part of Israel and be finished with it, and same for the Palestinians. But, the creation of a third regime would require a third law, and even for well-educated people such a regime would not be easily understood. Do we need to educate people? I think yes. We need to educate not just people but leaders about this alternative. They can take it or go to the Clinton initiative or the Geneva Accords. Each of these initiatives has its pluses and minuses, but if they fail, this initiative will be there.
Sher: I do not expect them to ‘buy into the plan,’ rather, study it in the framework of the quest for peace and assess whether the proposed set-up might contribute to attaining a sustainable and durable peace. Moreover, it would be only when the public mindset has overcome its initial resistance and accommodated to change, that public opinion would be supportive. Only then will the respective leaders feel they can count on popular support for the decisions to be taken on the issue of Jerusalem on the road to peace
But in terms of public opinion, people may support a two-state solution, but they also, when asked about Jerusalem, want it united.
Sher: You are perfectly right, at least regarding Israelis: polls consistently demonstrate that Israelis overwhelmingly support the two-state solution. But this majority does not echo politically. Israelis are also starting to realize that without an agreed resolution to the issue of Jerusalem there might not be an ending to the conflict with the Palestinians. Therefore they will ultimately urge their leadership to look at a set of possible compromises—including this Canadian one—in order to enable progress towards peace.
Al-Ju’beh: Nobody claims it will be an easy task; it won’t be, it will be a very difficult task. I think that you are absolutely right, the majority of Israelis will doubt, or not support what Gilead said. The majority of Israelis understand the municipal borders of Jerusalem; they do not know the quarters. It will not be easy on the Israeli side to deal with issues of how to divide Jerusalem and it will not be easy for Palestinians to deal with Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem. It will be a very difficult issue, and I do not see it solved if we don’t agree on international administration in the Old City. We can add to it a lot of flowers, but it would be very, very difficult and fragile and therefore the international presence in the Old City and in other parts of Jerusalem has to be strong and tangible and we have to add to the solution a lot of positive elements—attractive elements to the people, to tell them that, for instance, for the Palestinians that you can visit Jerusalem afterwards though currently you cannot. We need a lot of regional support. International support is ok and wonderful, but we need the support of the Saudis, and the Egyptians, and we would be very happy if we got Jordan, and of Syria also for such a solution. So the region has to play a major role. It’s not just the internationals living overseas, but the next-door neighbors who must act as partners in any solution on the Muslim side. The Saudis are a key issue, so we have a lot of talks with them; we have to deal not just with our leadership but with the regional leadership.
Sher: Now if we use a larger umbrella like the Arab Peace Initiative, for instance, this Old City initiative could be incorporated within a larger scope of negotiations, between the Arab League states and Israel; hence, not just a bi-lateral political process. By using a larger all-Arab framework of negotiations in dealing with this sensitive issue you are bound to attract additional actors that would eventually endorse the solution as agreed upon in the negotiations.
Footnotes
1 See The Jerusalem Old City Initiative, "Proposals for the Old City of Jerusalem," University of Windsor, www.uwindsor.ca/jerusaleminitiative
