JERUSALEM, 9 October 2007 — Senior Israeli officials discussed a possible division of Jerusalem in public yesterday, signaling a shift in the Israeli consensus on one of the most sensitive issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but still falling short of a Palestinian demand to set up their future capital in all of the Israeli-annexed area of the city.
The officials spoke as Israeli and Palestinian negotiators were to start drafting a joint declaration of principles that would guide negotiators in future peace talks. The document is to be presented at a US-hosted Middle East conference later this fall. The fate of Jerusalem would be central to any peace deal. Israel has long maintained that it would never relinquish control over any areas of Jerusalem, including the Arab neighborhoods it captured in the 1967 Middle East War and annexed to its capital. The Palestinians want east Jerusalem, including the walled Old City with key Jewish, Christian and Muslim shrines, as their capital.
In recent weeks, Israeli Vice Premier Haim Ramon has floated the idea of Israel giving up outlying Arab neighborhoods of the city, sparking harsh criticism from Israeli hard-liners.
In radio interviews yesterday, Ramon raised the proposal in the most public forum yet, but was vague on the extent of Israeli control in the Old City, its holy sites and Arab neighborhoods in the center of town. “I agree that all the Palestinian neighborhoods except the Arab neighborhoods in the holy basin... would be transferred,” Ramon told Army Radio.
The Old City contains the Temple Mount of the Jews, and the third holiest site in Islam, the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
Ramon, a member of Olmert’s Kadima Party, argued that Israel could only benefit from such an arrangement. It would no longer have to pay social benefits to tens of thousands of Palestinian residents of Jerusalem and could possibly win international recognition for its annexation of parts of Jerusalem.
Ramon noted that Kadima’s two main coalition partners, the center-left Labor and the hard-line Israel Beitenu, both want to hand over Arab neighborhoods, but disagree on how many. The leader of Israel Beitenu, Avigdor Lieberman, confirmed in an interview with Israel Radio that he is in favor of handing over some of the neighborhoods.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told Parliament yesterday that the time is over for making excuses not to talk to the Palestinians. “The current Palestinian leadership is not a terrorist leadership,” he said. “President Abu Mazen and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad are committed to all the agreements signed with Israel, and I believe that they want to move ahead together with us on a route that will bring about a change in the reality of relations between us and them.”
