WITH plans under way to build three new Jewish sites in East Jerusalem, Israel has once again chosen settlements instead of peace. What is intended by the building of 20,000 homes is to create a contiguous Jewish residential area linking East Jerusalem with major West Bank settlement blocs. The result is another loss of a swathe of Palestinian land and, of course, Palestinian sovereignty over that land.
Even though Israel has occupied East Jerusalem since 1967 — it annexed the area in 1981 — it is not Israel’s exclusive domain. . Israel has possessed and exercised administrative control over East Jerusalem for four decades; yet to this day, the world community has not recognized its claim to sovereignty. Israel ‘s purported annexation of East Jerusalem has been declared null and void and Jerusalem has been explicitly included among the occupied territories in a long series of unanimous or near-unanimous UN Security Council and General Assembly resolutions.
The universal refusal to recognize even West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and the presence of embassies to Israel in Tel Aviv is striking evidence of the refusal of the international community to concede that any part of the city is Israel’s sovereign territory. Israel could retain administrative control over East Jerusalem indefinitely. That is a question of military strength and political will. However, it will never acquire sovereignty over East Jerusalem, for that is a question of law. And so far the law is squarely against Israel. No Israeli government has ever accepted a redivision of Jerusalem — just as no Palestinian leadership can ever accept a permanent-status solution which gives a Palestinian state no sovereign rights in Jerusalem. The stalemate is one of the major reasons that peace has been so difficult to achieve. There will never be a durable peace in the Middle East without a settlement of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. That is a fact. There will also never be a lasting settlement of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict without a solution to the status of Jerusalem acceptable to both Israelis and Palestinians. That is also a fact.
Israel must also abandon its two-faced policy. At the very time it seeks to link East Jerusalem with its West Bank settlements, its foreign minister pledges further withdrawals from the West Bank to facilitate the creation of a Palestinian state. The building of more settlements in one occupied area while abandoning some settlements in another is no more than a policy of entrenching and withdrawing which can only be called duplicity.
It is odd that details of the extent or timing of another round of West Bank pullbacks have not been forthcoming. If there is truly such a major departure in the works, that the announcement indicates so little could mean this future withdrawal is more fiction than fact. And even if Israel does withdraw from additional West Bank settlements, there is no guarantee its forces will not return, with devastating consequences, as happened with the siege of Gaza in the summer of last year.
