Generally speaking, when Muslim rights in Jerusalem are enunciated, history, people and nationalism become intermingled. The reason is twofold: the difficulty of building a case for Muslim rights outside the range of the city's history, as well as the difficulty of disentangling that history from the fate of Jerusalem's people. Muslim claims to Jerusalem have always derived from peoples' right of self-rule wherever they constituted a numerical majority. This is both a historic and a modem right, based on the majoritarian principle underlying the notion of political self-determination. But the majoritarian principle also derives from the issue of territoriality, for history has demonstrated how easily a majority can be reduced to a minority under the manipulative influence of a determined regime. Whether inside or outside of Jerusalem, Palestinians have always felt that they were victims of a map.
The nationalism perspective helps explain Palestinian claims to Jerusalem in general, irrespective of the religious issue. This is not to belittle the Palestinians' Islamic rights in Jerusalem, but simply to underscore the fact that Jerusalem has always existed as part of Palestine. Jerusalem was never a city state unto its own; its fate was always tied to that of Palestine in general. Indeed, the rise and fall of an Arab demographic majority in the city always derived from the political fortunes of Palestine itself. The issue of nationalism also helps explain why Palestinian claims to Jerusalem are made in the name of Palestinian Muslims and Christians alike. Thus, Palestinian claims to Jerusalem transcend the issue of control over the Islamic holy places. Whether Jordan or even Saudi Arabia lays claim to guardianship or custodianship over the Islamic holy places, Palestinians will always present their rights to Jerusalem as the centerpiece of their national case. And, whereas the Israeli view of Arab control over Jerusalem is colored by memories of the Jordanian period of control, a distinction must always be made between the Jordanian record and Palestinian claims of sovereignty over it.
CHANGING DEMOGRAPHY AND BOUNDARIES
Palestinian claims to Jerusalem have been severely weakened as a consequence of political and military defeat. The demise of the world's last great Muslim power, the Ottoman Empire, after World War I, and the failure of an Arab Islamic power represented by the United Arab Kingdom of Sherif Hussein of Mecca to take its place, left Jerusalem and all of Palestine at the mercy of the British. British control over Palestine, however, was not motivated by respect for the historic rights of indigenous people or for the law governing the ownership of the various holy places within the walled city. Indeed, despite Lord Curzon's public letter of assurances to Jerusalem's religious communities at the beginning of the British period, the Mandate authority proved incapable of resisting claims of Zionists to greater control over the Wailing Wall area. More important, secular Zionism's goal of building a substantial Jewish presence in Jerusalem was greatly assisted by British manipulation.
It is now clear, for instance, that British gerrymandering of Jerusalem's municipal boundaries facilitated the inclusion of many newer Jewish suburbs into the city, while at the same time excluding nearby Arab villages. The western boundary of the city was expanded in order to take in the Jewish neighborhoods of Qiryat Moshe, Bet Hakerem, and Beit Vegan. The eastern boundary of the city, however, ran close to the Old City, thereby excluding the Arab villages of Silwan, Ras al-Amud, Abu Tor and Al-Tur. Thus, even though the Mandate government rejected the Zionist demand to replace the city's Arab mayor with a Jewish one, the changing demographics within the new municipal boundaries made continued Arab dominance of the city council untenable.1
The demography of Jerusalem had changed dramatically since the nineteenth century. This was to the detriment of the city's Muslim population, while the number of Jews and foreign Christian residents increased. There had been an earlier wave of Jewish religious immigrants, but by 1917, the number of Arabs and Jews in the city had become equal due to the heavy influx of Zionists. The Zionist Jews were assisted in their goal of settlement and the acquisition of agricultural lands by foreign consuls whose jurisdiction had been expanded as a result of the Ottoman Tanzimat reforms and the inevitable decline of Ottoman power in the outlying provinces. During the early phase of this influx, Jews settled in the southern part of the walled city traditionally known as the Jewish Quarter. There they rented properties that were owned by the traditional Muslim families of the city or belonged to the Islamic charitable trusts, or waqf. During the 1860s and 1870s, Jews began to establish their own neighborhoods beyond the city's western walls. This area became known as New Jerusalem or the New City, but it was never exclusively Jewish. New Arab neighborhoods as well as Christian institutions sprang up within its confines,2 although there is a common misconception in the West that New Jerusalem was Jewish and the Old City predominantly Arab.
By 1948, there were 100,000 Jews in the city and 60,000 Arabs. Jews owned 18 percent of the total property of the city, but within the larger Jerusalem sub district, which included the city and its Arab villages, the Arabs numbered 105,000 and owned 80 percent of the property. As a result of the 1948 Arab-Jewish war, the Haganah forces won control over the New City or West Jerusalem, causing its remaining 30,000 Arab residents to abandon their properties and flee eastward, while the Arab Legion of Jordan won control over the Old City, forcing its 2,000 Jewish residents to flee westward.3
THE DIVIDED CITY: CONFLICT OR MODUS VIVENDI?
It is important to remember the extent of Arab dispossession and displacement from West Jerusalem before examining claims and counterclaims during the period of a divided Jerusalem, one Israeli and the other Jordanian. The facts surrounding 1948-1967 are so crucial, in fact, that they represent the main arsenal in the Israeli case for maintaining control over all of Jerusalem. Israelis continue to present their defiance of U.N. resolutions on the internationalization of Jerusalem as a necessary defensive response to the Jordanian takeover of East Jerusalem. Although well aware of British resistance to the inclusion of Jerusalem in a future Jewish state from the discussions of the British Peel Commission in 1937, the Jewish community in Palestine, the Yishuv, went ahead and accepted the U.N. partition plan in the hope of overturning that decision at a future date. The Yishuv was confident that since the proposed international regime for Jerusalem spelled out in United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181 (II) of 1947 was to culminate in a referendum on the future of the city after ten years, the United Nations Trusteeship Council was bound to rule in favor of a Jewish-controlled Jerusalem based on the presence of a Jewish majority.4 Furthermore, when Israel applied for admission to the U.N. in 1948, it was specifically asked if it committed itself to the internationalization of Jerusalem as specified in the pertinent U.N. resolutions. Israel then signified that it had no objection to this idea and was admitted to the world body on the basis of the U.N. resolution of December 11, 1948, that specifically reiterated the decision favoring internationalization.5
In subsequent years, Israel always justified its action by reference to the Jordanian seizure of East Jerusalem, arguing that the contingencies of war made the integration of West Jerusalem within Israel a matter of vital necessity. Equating their action with that of the Jordanians, however, cannot be justified morally or legally, since the two entities, Jordan and Israel, had differing relationships to the United Nations. Israel was simply a creation of the United Nations that owed its very existence to U.N. General Assembly resolution 181 and all its specific attachments concerning Jerusalem. The Jordanians, as well as all the Arab member states, had rejected the partition resolution, which gave away what was considered to be Arab Palestine. Even though other Arab states, unlike Jordan, belatedly favored the internationalization of Jerusalem and condemned Jordanian military operations within the city, the Jordanians, in contrast to the Israelis, were not obligated to respect any U.N. action that they viewed as unjust and arbitrary.6
Following the de facto division of Jerusalem between the Israelis and the Jordanians, Israel continued to claim that it was merely reacting to Jordan's illegal moves. Moreover, the Israeli government attempted to shift the entire internationalization issue to the Jordanian side. During the debates of the General Assembly's Third Session, in which the U.N. Special Mediator Count Folke Bernadotte presented his progress report on June 27, 1948, and recommended that Jerusalem be made part of the Arab state, the Israelis had to perform a most delicate diplomatic task. The Israeli delegation laid claim to the Negev area (which the mediator had proposed be included in the Arab state) on the basis of the partition resolution granting them that territory, while at the same time they argued against that section of the partition resolution that called for the internationalization of Jerusalem, 181 (II). In the Israeli view, this resolution had been invalidated by the Arab-waged war following the establishment of the Jewish state. In other words, the Israelis selectively accepted certain portions of the U.N. plan while rejecting what did not fit into their plans. Moreover, the Israeli U.N. delegation argued that the best way to protect international religious interests was to internationalize the one part of Jerusalem that contained almost all of the holy places, namely the Jordanian-occupied Old City. The General Assembly, however, rejected this argument and reinstated the principle of an international regime for the entire city. By the spring of 1949, the Israeli government had abandoned this position in favor of the principle of functional internationalization, limited to the holy places rather than to the entire Old City.7
It should be noted, according to the late Henry Cattan, a prominent Palestinian authority on international law, that whereas Israel and Jordan, as U.N. members, may be bound by the partition resolution and the internationalization clause, the Palestinian people are the only party that is not bound by U.N. resolutions on Jerusalem. Since the Palestinians were the only people legally sovereign over the city at the time of the resolution, and since they were not represented at the world assembly to signify acceptance or rejection of the resolution, they were in no way bound by it. Having emphasized the nature of Palestinian rights, however, Cattan recommended that the principle of internationalization be accepted in order to protect the historic character of the city against Israeli policies.8
The ensuing Israeli-Jordanian Armistice Agreement, signed at Rhodes on April 3, 1949, under U.N. auspices - and which was intended to be of a temporary nature - lasted until 1967. This agreement, however, did not eliminate all points of friction. Article 8 of the agreement called for the creation of a special commission charged with working out a modus vivendi guaranteeing free access to the holy places and free traffic on certain roads. But the commission never operated properly, and its members had ceased to meet by the end of November 1950. The negation of Article 8, which some experts considered to be very vague, ironically affected Israeli Muslims and Israeli Jews, but not Israeli Christians. The latter were able throughout Jordan's tenure in the city to cross over to the Jordanian side on their annual pilgrimage. Thus, whereas the Jordanians felt the need to demonstrate their respect for the rights of international churches, the free movement of Jews and Israeli Muslims was hampered by the exigencies of war.
The denial of access to the Wailing Wall, of course, became a major propaganda item in the hands of the Israelis, who continued to paint this as symptomatic of Jordan's (as well as all Muslims') disregard for the religious rights of others. The underlying story, however, bears a different message. It is no secret that Israel and Jordan were engaged in secret negotiations for a separate peace agreement from the end of 1949. During these talks, King Abdullah of Jordan made repeated attempts to reach an understanding with the Israelis by offering them free access to the _ Western Wall and the Mount Scopus area, in exchange for returning the former Arab quarters of Jerusalem located in the New City. Since Israel rejected these proposals, access to the Western Wall remained blocked.9
The Jordanians always argued that providing free access to the Wall for Israeli nationals posed a security nightmare both for the visiting pilgrims who would have to traverse the Old City's narrow streets, and for the Palestinians of Jerusalem, with their bitter memories of recent wars. The Jordanians never admitted publicly that this issue was a subject of secret negotiations. The Israelis never confessed that the Western Wall was part of their bargaining tactics. Instead, they continued to claim that infringement of the holy places was Jordan's problem exclusively. Israeli propaganda also damned the Jordanians for settling Arabs in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, ignoring the fact that these Arab squatters had themselves been pauperized and uprooted as a result of the Israeli takeover of their villages surrounding Jerusalem. This complaint, along with the more serious charge of the destruction of a Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives, was never balanced out by an admission of the massive takeover of Islamic charitable properties within Israel itself.10 That Israel had willfully transferred massive amounts of the property of the Islamic waqf to the Custodian of Enemy Property and from there to the Jewish people, was never mentioned. Neither was there much hue and cry, Israeli or otherwise, over the destruction of the Muslim cemetery of Tel Aviv in order to make way for a Hilton Hotel.11 The Israeli destruction of holy places, in reality, far exceeds the Jordanian. The Mamillah Mosque in West Jerusalem was demolished in order to make way for a public park, and the Safad Mosque has been leveled in a town which is now completely populated by Israeli artists.12
These were all wanton acts resulting from the conditions of war and the prolonged absence of peace. Yet, even a former Israeli diplomat who studied the Jordanian record in Jerusalem was unable to find much to criticize about Jordan's tenure in the eastern half of the city. Other than misrepresenting Jordan's reluctance to tum Jerusalem into the capital of the entire country, he gave the Jordanians high marks. Jordan actually did not retain the status of East Jerusalem because of fear of the wrath of other Arab countries but simply in keeping with Muslim tradition. In order to protect the holy city from the rapacity of resident armies, Muslim rulers always located their capitals somewhere else. It was only Palestinian wrath at the perceived disregard of the Jordanians for this, the most historic and important of Palestine's cities, which prompted the Jordanian monarch to perform two symbolic gestures in response to the establishment of Israel's capital in West Jerusalem. He convened a single parliamentary session and two cabinet meetings in East Jerusalem in 1953, and threatened to build (and eventually built) a palace for himself in the city. Jordan's defiance of world public opinion regarding the status of Jerusalem, therefore, remained contained. The foreign consuls accredited to Jerusalem, despite all of this, continued to withhold recognition of the Jordanian created post of Royal Custodian of the Holy Places.13
Relations with the Christian communities also were relatively benign. The Jordanians adopted two Jaws in 1953, Numbers 36 and 61, which facilitated control over foreign Christian institutions. These were not onerous laws but were sometimes intended to insure some representation of the Arab community in higher church councils. An example of this was the adoption of Jordanian Law Number 27, 1958, which mandated the creation of mixed councils of clergy and laity to share in church administration. 14 It should be emphasized that the history of foreign churches in the city and their implication in land sales to Jewish settlers and groups before 1948 contributed to straining church-state relations. Therefore, one of these laws demanded the registration of all church institutions in accordance with Jordanian law, and the other specifically limited and regulated church acquisition and dispossession of real estate.
Another law passed in 1965 (Law Number 4), further restricted the acquisition of church properties, particularly within the vicinity of the Old City. As to the exercise of control over the internal affairs and elections of the churches, there is only one unexplained incident of Jordanian intervention to block the election of the Armenian Patriarch, Archbishop Tiran Nerosyan. The Jordanian government also intervened on the side of the Ethiopian Coptic Church in a property dispute with the Egyptian Copts. Lastly, even though it was claimed that the Jordanian government interjected itself in the dormant conflict between the priestly hierarchy of the Greek Orthodox Church and its Arab laity, which exploded again in 1965 following the death of Patriarch Timotheos, clearly this intervention was brought about by the Arab Orthodox community. This group had also received support from the mufti of Jerusalem in a similar dispute, which flared up before the Jordanian period. The same Israeli writer concludes that the Jordanian monarch "took a paternal interest" in the affairs of the Christian minorities. More important, access to the Jordanian holy places through the Mandelbaum Gate was never interrupted for foreign and Israeli Christians, despite years of intense border conflict between the two neighboring states.15
JERUSALEM SINCE 1967 AND THE LEGACY OF TEDDY KOLLEK
Jerusalem's occupation by Israeli forces in 1967 brought more than one type of violence to the city and its people. In addition to the quick seizure of the Wailing Wall and the forcible removal of 650 Arab families from the Moughrabi Quarter, the legally constituted Arab city council was also unceremoniously dismissed from office, mayor, councillors and all. The administration of West Jerusalem quickly extended its water, electricity and telephone grids across the eastern half of the city in order to integrate its two parts.16 Anwar Nusseibeh, the chairman of the East Jerusalem Electric Company since 1980, fought a long and losing battle to prevent the incorporation of his company into the Israeli part of the city.17 A serious attempt to control the Muslim holy places and censor the Friday sermon at the holiest places of worship was rebuffed. The effort of the Israeli authorities to place the Muslim institutions of Jerusalem under the jurisdiction of the Israeli Ministry of Religious Affairs was strenuously resisted by officers of the Supreme Muslim Council, who were well aware of the experiences of Palestinian sects within Israel.18
Permanent alteration of the city's boundaries and demography, however, became the most serious threat to the survival of Arab rights over Jerusalem. The day after the Israeli Knesset passed an amendment to the Law and Administration Ordinance whereby Israeli law was extended to "any area of Eretz Israel designated by the Government by order," Israeli law was extended to occupied East Jerusalem. On June 27, 1967, the law was also applied to an area of 7,500 acres of East Jerusalem and the West Bank, covering the land between Qalandia Airport north of the city to Sur Bahir in the south. This area included the Old City. Expanding the boundaries of annexed East Jerusalem can best be illustrated by the following figures: the municipal boundaries of Jordanian East Jerusalem comprised around 1,500 acres, while the municipal boundaries of Israeli West Jerusalem came to 10,000. The newly expanded Israeli-controlled municipality, on the other hand, came to 17,500 acres.19
This expansion entailed the addition of a large Arab population to the municipality, something the authorities quickly sought to control. Through providing housing at low mortgage rates to Jewish citizens, and through the use of restrictive zoning laws and construction permits in the Arab areas, Jewish residents of Jerusalem managed to hang on to their majority status. The Jewish population in the city in 1967 was around 198,000, but it increased to 393,000 by 1993. The Palestinian population, on the other hand, doubled from 69,000 in 1967, to 152,000 in 1993. The percentage of the Arab population within the city remained almost the same after annexation between 25 percent and 28 percent of the total. The demographic explosion within the Arab community was also due to its predominantly young population; around 50 percent was below 18 years of age. This explains Israel's alarm and the determination of Israeli planners to "run faster." Jewish settlement within the occupied areas of Jerusalem has increased due to official encouragement. By 1990, 135,000, roughly one-third of the Israeli Jewish population of Jerusalem, lived on estates and in neighborhoods within the annexed areas.20
Official government policy not only devised many ways of restricting the natural expansion of Jerusalem's Palestinian population, but also of generating from it maximum propaganda. The decision to demolish Arab homes within the vicinity of the Western Wall immediately following the conquest of Jerusalem was referred to as slum clearance by Israeli Mayor of Jerusalem Teddy Kollek. The mayor, who presented himself to the world as a liberal Zionist equally concerned with the city's Arab residents and its Jewish citizens, presided over the deliberate de-Arabization of the city and the implanting of sizable Jewish settlements within its environs. Although he was critical of the methods of religious settlers in seizing control of parts of the Old City, Kollek steadily worked for the building of new apartment buildings for Jewish citizens on confiscated Arab agricultural lands. His denial of Arab political rights in the city and his claim that Arab Jerusalemites were offered a very generous and fair deal were grave distortions of the reality of the Arab presence in Jerusalem. First of all, Kollek always denied that any Palestinians outside of Jerusalem had significant claims to the city, since they had rejected the U.N. resolutions on Jerusalem. Muslims have claims in Jerusalem, according to this argument, but not Palestinian Arabs. Thus, the status of the Arab national community is reduced to that of a religious minority. He claimed that his administration offered Arab Jerusalemites the choice of citizenship, an unhindered internal autonomy, administration of the "Temple Mount" area, and an opportunity to enjoy all the municipal services provided to the rest of Jerusalem's population.21
Truth, however, lies elsewhere. Palestinians in Jerusalem have rejected the idea of becoming citizens of Israel or meaningfully participating in the city's municipal elections in order to withhold their legitimization of the city's occupation. To do otherwise would be to betray the national cause and sever any connection with Palestinians elsewhere. Israel's response to the Arab Jerusalemites' moral dilemma, created by the conditions of war and military occupation, was to reduce the Arab population of the city to the status of resident aliens. As such, the Arab population of Jerusalem is treated as if it were made up of foreign residents, not native-born citizens of Palestine. In addition to the burden of having to renew their identity cards whenever they stay outside the city for a period of time, the rights of the Arabs of Jerusalem are impermanent and ill-defined.22 Moreover, the rights of residency that Kollek proudly flaunted never prevented the Israeli authorities from applying to Jerusalem's Palestinians the same emergency regulations governing the occupied West Bank. For instance, the Arab press in Jerusalem has always been subject to severe censorship laws, and prominent members of the Palestinian community, including Islamic figures such as the president of the Supreme Muslim Council, Sheikh Abd al-Hamid al-Sayyeh, and the mayor of Jerusalem, Rouhi al-Khatib, have been expelled from their ancestral city. Jerusalem's Palestinians have also been subjected to massive land and property confiscation.
Urban planning by the Israeli authorities has actually prevented the city's Palestinians from using 80 percent of the area east of Jerusalem for housing construction purposes. This caused some Palestinians to migrate and settle in other parts of occupied West Bank and Gaza, with all the attendant hardships that this entails. Some Palestinians in the Jerusalem area have even tried to remain in legal limbo, suspended between full Jordanian citizenship and Jerusalem's residency status. Around 90 Palestinian families actually applied for Israeli citizenship in May 1994, with little hope of its being granted, since very few of the previous applications succeeded.
In the meantime, the Israeli authorities continue to resist the natural expansion of Palestinian housing to keep up with population growth. The Palestinian Human Rights Information Center, for instance, has documented the demolition of 2,100 Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem since mid-1986 on the pretext that these structures lacked the proper building permits. Around 50 Arab houses are still being demolished every year. In addition, while 70,000 Jewish families enjoy subsidized housing in East Jerusalem, only 555 Palestinian families had received government subsidies by 1994. Another statistic shows that 26 percent of the municipal taxes in Jerusalem were raised by Palestinians, but they received services worth only 5 percent of the total municipal budget.23
THE JERUSALEM OF THE FUTURE
What would bring peace, equality and security to Jerusalem's Arab population? It is well known by now that there have been several well-thought-out and elaborate schemes to bring about a peaceful· resolution to this most contentious aspect of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Some of the studies and plans have been unacceptable to one side or the other. Reviving the internationalization option apparently is unacceptable to Palestinians and Israelis alike. To the Israelis, the idea of redividing the city is unacceptable for two reasons. On the one hand, they claim that the record of the 1948-67 period is unsatisfactory, despite the clear evidence of their successful cooperation and association with the Jordanian regime. On the other hand, Israelis claim that the city's "expansion" since 1967 cannot be reversed without inflicting damage on its basic demographic and geographic character.24 This is another distortion of reality, implying that the city has expanded as a result of the natural forces of urban growth, whereas Jerusalem's municipal boundaries and demographic reality were deliberately altered to accommodate Jewish nationalist and religious sentiment.25
Since the Israeli preference for maintaining total control over Jerusalem is unacceptable to the other side, Israel has been forced to consider different options. The value of examining these plans lies in the fact that they shed light on the nature of Israeli propaganda surrounding the historic city. Kollek, for instance, was known to favor maintaining Israel's control over the entire city and keeping it as the capital of Israel, while sharing administrative functions with the Arab population. This entails decentralization of the city administration and the establishment of a borough system permitting full functional autonomy to the Palestinian neighborhoods. In return, the city's Palestinians are expected to renounce any claims to the city as the capital of a Palestinian entity. This option would, in effect, sever any connection between these Palestinians and their fellow nationals outside of Jerusalem. Sometimes the option of granting functional administrative autonomy to the Arab sectors of the city is presented as part of a wider settlement that would entail granting Israeli recognition to a Palestinian state. Jerusalem's historic role as the religious and cultural center of all of Arab Palestine, if not its official capital, would have to be abandoned under this plan. Some suggestions, which do not receive the endorsement of a wide segment of Israeli public opinion, propose making the city the capital of two states, by splitting sovereignty: the Palestinian state would base its capital in the Old City, while Israel would maintain its capital in the New City outside of the walls.26
Israel has been adamant in recent years, however, against relinquishing any part of Jerusalem to a Palestinian state, even if conceding part of the city was the only price for a permanent peace settlement. Recent revelations regarding the secret Oslo negotiations indicate that all that the Israeli Labor government was willing to concede was the establishment of a Palestinian capital outside of the eastern municipal boundaries of Jerusalem, specifically in the nearby village of Abu Dis. This village, within full view of the ancient walled city, would be recognized by the Israelis as al-Quds, the historic Arabic name for Jerusalem. Muslim Palestinians would also be granted access to their holy places, or the Noble Sanctuary area (al-Haram al-Sharif), but Israeli police would remain firmly in control. This plan, which was supposedly discussed with both Palestinian and Jordanian representatives, bears a remarkable resemblance to a Jordanian suggestion put forth by Adnan Abu-Odeh on the pages of Foreign Affairs in 199 1.27
IMPLICATIONS FOR THE PALESTINIANS
It seems that despite a legacy of religious tolerance and accommodation, a predominantly Palestinian government with a powerful secular tradition of respect for its Christian population will never be granted its rightful place in Jerusalem. Having experienced demo-graphic manipulation, gerrymandering of boundaries, political and racial discrimination, abuse of its human rights, threats to its religious freedom, and absolute loss of security at the hands of its latest occupying regime, the Palestinian population is still crying for justice. Even the most basic rights of religious worship and uninterrupted access to its holy places have been threatened by actions of religious zealots and militants. Jewish groups such as the Temple Mount Faithful not only continue to plot the destruction of the Muslim holy places but have also precipitated an attack by the Israeli police on Muslim worshipers on October 8, 1990. This attack alone resulted in the killing of 17 Palestinians and the wounding of more than 150 people.28 The al-Aqsa Mosque itself has been the target of an arsonist attack during the period of Israeli control. Muslim worshipers are often barred from entering the hallowed grounds of al-Haram al-Sharif because of security considerations.
Of all Jerusalem's religious communities, Muslims suffer the most as a result of the uncertainty of their political future. The Islamic institutional infra structure has been drastically weakened as a result of demographic changes and the separation of Islamic Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank. The administration of the Muslim waqf, as well as appointments to higher Islamic office have been shrouded in uncertainty due to contestation by the Palestine Authority and the Jordanian government. Jordan, with the active support of Israel, is still permitted a prominent role in running the Islamic institutions of Jerusalem.
The denial of the legitimacy of Palestinian nationalism lies at the root of the loss of Palestinian rights in Jerusalem. Every effort has been made, overtly or otherwise, to reduce the Palestinians of Jerusalem to the status of a religious community and to separate Muslim from Christian Palestinians. As a religious community, Palestinians become eligible to receive municipal benefits but not to enjoy political rights. The loss of political rights will inevitably lead to the contraction and weakening of the religious infrastructure necessary for sustaining a viable religious community. The prospect for a healthy Muslim presence in the city is nil if Islamic institutions, such as schools, courts and charitable establishments are not allowed to function in a normal way. The denial of Palestinian historical rights in the city has hit a new low with the substitution of a small village for the Arab capital of Palestine. The Palestinians are being denied all the accoutrements of sovereignty as the price of peace - an army, control over territory, and a meaningful capital with which their national memory is intertwined. An attempt is being made to denationalize the Palestinian entity in Jerusalem in order to satisfy the needs of other nationalisms.
This is not a durable solution. Two alternatives suggest themselves: a denationalized Jerusalem for all the communities, or a recognition of the legitimate national rights of the most significant historical groups within the city.
1 Michael Dumper, "Jerusalem's Final Status: What Will be Left to Negotiate?" The link, Vol. 28, Issue 3 (July-August, 1995),pp. 3-4.
2 Martha Wenger, "Jerusalem," Middle East Report, Vol. 23, No. 3 ( May-June, 1993), pp. 9 - 10.
3 Ibid.
4 Gabriel Padon, "The Divided City: 1948 - 1967," in Msgr. John M. Osterreicher and Anne Sinai, eds., Jerusalem (New York: The John Day Co., 1974), pp. 88-89.
5 Wenger, p.11.
6 Padon, pp.88-90.
7 Ibid.
8 Nur Masalha, "Sovereignty over Jerusalem: The Status of the City under International Law," Middle East International, No. 491 (January 6, 1995), pp.17-18.
9 Padon, pp.87, 92, 93, 97.
10 Ibid., p. IO I.
11 Michael Dumper, Islam and Israel: Muslim Religious Endowments and the Jewish State (Washington: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1994), passim.
12 Evan M. Wilson, Jerusalem, Key to Peace (Washington: The Middle East Institute, 1970), p. 123.
13 Padon, pp.98- I 00.
14 Letter from the Task Force to Support the Orthodox Christians in the Patriarchate of Jerusalem to His All-Holiness Archbishop of Constantinople, New Rome, and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, May I, 1995.
15 Padon, pp. 101-103.
16 Wenger, 11. See also on this same episode, Meron Benvenisti, Jerusalem: The Torn City (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1976).
17 "In Memoriam: Anwar Nusseibeh," New Outlook (November-December, 1986), p.6.
18 Wilson, Ibid.
19 Dumper, "Jerusalem's," p.5.
20 Ibid., pp. 6-7.
21Joost R. Hiltermann, "Teddy Kollek and the Native Question," Middle East Report, Vol. 23, No. 3 (May-June, 1993), pp.24-26. See also: Teddy Kollek and Sari Nusseibeh, "Whose Jerusalem?" New Outlook, January-February, 1990, pp.18-21.
22 "Targeting Jerusalem," Tanmiyya, Issue 36, September, 1994, p.3.
23 Ibid.,3-4, 7.
24 Naomi Chazan, "Negotiating the Non-Negotiable: Jerusalem in the Framework of an Israeli-Palestinian Settlement," Israel Horizons, Vol. 43, No. 1, Spring, 1995, p. 24.
25 Fouad Moughrabi and Rashid Khalidi, "Comments on Naomi Chazan's Paper," in Ibid., p.26.
26 Chazan, 25.
27 Storer Rowley, "Israel, PLO Had Plan for Palestinian State," Chicago Tribune, August I, 1996, p.6. Adnan Abu Odeh, "Two Capitals in an Undivided Jerusalem," Foreign Affairs, Vol. 71, No. 2, Spring, 1992, pp.183-188.
28 Moughrabi and Khalidi, p.27.
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