If the door to a final peace, in the Middle East, is a permanent Palestinian state and lasting security for Israel, then the city of Jerusalem is the key to that door. Under the leadership of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Israel is constructing a 350-km security fence to separate Israel from the Palestinians.

The construction began in June 2002 and it is anticipated that the first 120-km will be completed by June 2003. In the path of this project lies Jerusalem. If the project continues as planned, the fence will split the West Bank from east Jerusalem, the section of this city where Palestinians had planned to create their own capital.

To really understand what is happening in Jerusalem you need to look back at what has occurred in her long and important history. In the 1920s, 1930s and early 1940s Jerusalem was under the mandatory administration of the British. During that period of time, the British safeguarded the numerous historical sites and tried to keep a balance between the Arab and Jewish population.

When the British forfeited the mandate and departed in May, 1948, the United Nations stepped in. The United Nations approved a partition dividing Palestine into Jewish and Arab states but they did not divide Jerusalem. In fact, they voted to make Jerusalem a completely “separate body” or “corpus separatum” under a special international regime with “suitable guarantees for the protection of Holy Places.”

Before the ink could dry on the paper, the first Arab-Israeli war broke out. The armistice signed in April 1949 between Israel and Jordan to end that war resulted in Jerusalem being divided, split along the cease-fire lines with two demilitarized zones separating the two sides. This is how the city remained, a maze of barbed wire and danger zones until June 1967. With the advent of the six-day war Israel seized control of the eastern part of Jerusalem and reunited the city.

The border between Israel and Jordan in Jerusalem disappeared and Israel claimed Jerusalem as its own. In July 1980 the Israeli Knesset officially annexed the expanded city limits Israel captured during the six-day war. Jerusalem, the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world, now belonged exclusively to the Jewish country of Israel. Yet, who does Jerusalem really belong to? In its 38 centuries of existence Jerusalem has been destroyed 17 times and it has been ruled by 25 different peoples.

The pagans dominated the city for 800 years, the Jews for 543 years, the Christians for 427 years and the Muslims for 1193 years. It is not enough to say that Jerusalem is a Holy City only to the Jews. For Jews it is the place where the Messiah will come and unite his people.

For the Christians it is the place of the apocalypse where heaven will descend on earth. Pope Paul II refers to Jerusalem as “the mother of all churches.”

The archbishop of Jerusalem has said “for the last two thousand years Jerusalem was the source of continuous wars because it was always governed by one political authority corresponding to one religion, Christian, Muslim and today Jewish.” I say, Jerusalem belongs to the world. As the United Nations originally voted in 1947, Jerusalem should be a “separate body”. Not unlike the Vatican in Rome, Jerusalem should be an individual “city state” under the guidance of the world’s three major religions.

The United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 from November 1967 called for a complete withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from the territories they had conquered. The most current “peace plan” follows these same lines but they both fall short of the true key to finalization and justice in this area of the world and that is the liberation of Jerusalem from Israel and the return of this Holy City to the Muslims, Christians and Jews who remember it daily in their prayers.

The world has watched Israel expand her borders without regard to the impact upon the Palestinian nation. The United States of America, a Christian country, continues to dole out one-third of its foreign aid budget yearly to Israel and now Israel is using some of those dollars to buy materials to construct a fence closing the rest of the world out of Jerusalem. Where are the American people on this issue? Where are the speeches on the floor of Congress denouncing the thief of this Holy City? Jerusalem has been divided, re-divided and now totally conquered.

The Palestinians want her for their capital. The Israelis have already staked their claim. Jerusalem sits in the center of this on-going war and only with its removal can both sides be satisfied. The separate “city state” of Jerusalem will not only solve this problem but it will give the religious leaders of the Jewish, Muslim and Christian faiths an ideal opportunity to show the world how their followers can and must learn to live together in peace with respect for one another.

(Adrienne McPhail is a free-lance journalist based in Riyadh.)

Arab News Features 25 January 2003