Thanks to demolition orders, the loss of homes belonging to East Jerusalem Palestinians continues, as does the steady diminishing of the dream to have East Jerusalem as the capital of the Palestinians’ own state. The Israeli bulldozers which recently destroyed the home of Samia Ihdaidoon and her five children in Jabal Mukabar in East Jerusalem could mangle close to 2,000 more such homes over the next few months.
The current course of settlement activity makes it difficult to envision how East Jerusalem could become the Palestinian capital. Needless to say, the consolidation of a Greater Jerusalem as the capital of Israel will further complicate final-status negotiations, and could render the two-state solution obsolete. The problem of Jerusalem is no different from that of the West Bank, and to a lesser extent the Gaza Strip. Settlements in and around Jerusalem present in microcosm the Zionist mission of realizing a Greater Israel.
The central contention between Palestinians and Israelis is that both see Jerusalem as the future capital of their respective states.
This might not pose a difficulty were Israel willing to return to the pre-1967 status quo, that is a Jewish Western Jerusalem and a Palestinian East Jerusalem. But the two sides’ competing positions have been made irreconcilable because Israel refuses to sanction any kind of realistic division of the city. As such, Jerusalem is being Judaized by force, its Arab identity is being obliterated, its history falsified, its homes are demolished and its people oppressed.
The status of Jerusalem stands as the biggest single obstacle to a peace deal between the Palestinians and Israel. It was what sank the negotiations at Camp David in July 2000, and it was what ignited the second intifadah.
It is, therefore, not surprising that the American-inspired road map to create a Palestinian state has kept the issue of Jerusalem on the backburner. Indeed, the road map faces an insurmountable obstacle, in the shape of Jerusalem.
Settlements have overwhelmed Jerusalem and the demolition of homes like that of the Samia Ihdaidoon family is proof that the Palestinians cannot arrest Israel’s geo-political grip on Arab East Jerusalem,
With no Palestinian state in sight, and with Arab East Jerusalem incorporated into Israel, one is compelled to ask whether Palestine remains a reality or a symbol. As Israeli facts on the ground consolidate, that reality is rapidly vanishing. Will what remains of Palestine then be incorporated, as East Jerusalem has been, into Israel? If so, a binational state could then become a possibility. Hundreds of East Jerusalem Palestinians have lost their homes over the past few years. If current demolition orders are carried out, we will be looking at the largest loss of Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem since Israel captured the territory just over 40 years ago. It’s a form of quiet transfer.
This is the Israeli vision — demographic decapitation.
A Swat down for Pakistan, Obama
Now that the Swat deal has revealed the Taleban’s duplicity and its rough sense of justice, the choice for Pakistan is even clearer, said Christian Science Monitor in an editorial. Excerpts:
As a candidate in 2008, Barack Obama criticized George W. Bush for giving billions in aid to Pakistan even as that country made “peace treaties with the Taleban.” Now in the Oval Office, Obama has learned how easy it is for Pakistan, a democratic but Muslim country, to ignore US pleas and take its money.
Last week, the US was helping line up $5.3 billion in new development aid from foreign donors for Pakistan. This week, Richard Holbrooke, special US envoy to the region, was trying to persuade Congress to increase US development aid to Pakistan. But at the same time, President Asif Ali Zardari was hailing a deal that gave up territory to militants.
The deal reveals a strange unwillingness by Pakistan’s 500,000-strong army to confront the violent jihadists. Hawkish leaders in the army remain too focused on a perceived threat from India and not on the jihadists along the western border with Afghanistan.
The government’s appeasement of the Taleban also reflects an ambivalence about suppressing a group that the army helped create in Afghanistan during the 1990s. Pakistan may still want to retain ties to the Taleban in its jockeying with India and the US.
In sealing the deal last week, Zardari likely took a cue from the Obama administration in its eagerness for Afghanistan to talk with factions of the Taleban. But alas, Zardari soon discovered that fanatics don’t make good partners. Instead of laying down their arms as promised, the Taleban used the stand-down of Pakistani forces in Swat to take over ever-larger areas. The 6,000 to 8,000 fighters even came within 60 miles of the nation’s capital this week. Rightly so, this set off alarm bells in Washington. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Pakistan was “basically abdicating to the Taleban and the extremists” while Obama dispatched the Pentagon’s top military chief to Islamabad.
