A new proposal for the “achievement of peace” in the Middle East has been presented, this time by former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and former PA foreign minister Nasser Al-Kidwa. Its plans for the division of Jerusalem render it unworkable and dangerous.
Firstly, the proposal calls for Israel’s withdrawal from over 95% of Judea and Samaria, for the sake of a Palestinian state to be formed there. The issue of Jewish “settlements and settlers” – over a half-million Jews living in the areas it designates for a Palestinian state – is to be negotiated later, according to the plan.
The very topic of a Palestinian state is quite outside the consensus. A poll conducted this past May by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs found that 64% of Israelis oppose the idea. Even among Arabs, only 32% of those living in PA-controlled areas support a two-state solution, according to a Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research poll in June.
The unfeasibility and dangers of a Palestinian state as a solution to the conflict have been outlined in many forums. Olmert and Al-Kidwa call for the Palestinian state to be “non-militarized” except for internal policing needs. The problem is that once it is recognized as a state, it will need no one’s permission to build itself an army, such that this clause is essentially irrelevant.
Israel will be permitted to annex 4.4% of Judea and Samaria – presumably mostly, if not all, in Jerusalem – “in exchange for territory of equal size [that] will include a corridor linking the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.” This 30-year-old idea has never taken off. Objections to a foreign corridor in the heart of Israel include judicial, sovereignty, engineering, environmental, and, most critically, security issues.
Tearing Apart the Holy City
But probably the most unacceptable aspects of the proposal concern the all-important issue of Jerusalem. The plan calls for its actual division into two capitals: one for Israel and one for the Palestinian state. The multi-faceted dangers of splitting Jerusalem include the surrounding of the Jewish city on three sides by radical Islamic elements enjoying strategic and geographic advantages, as well as the strangling of Jerusalem as a metropolis, leaving no space for the Israeli capital to expand.
No international peace force would be able to stop the entry of Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood terrorists into the areas under Arab control. Jerusalem would become a Gaza Strip-like entity! What the world certainly does not need now is the resulting emboldening of local and international Jihad.
The Old City, according to this plan, is to be administered by a five-state trusteeship, including Israel and the new PA state. “There would be no limitations on worship or movement in the Holy Basin,” an area that generally includes the Temple Mount. This implies that Jews would be permitted to worship freely on the Temple Mount – something the Muslims have not allowed for centuries. It is unclear why Olmert and Al-Qidwa feel that this can or will change in the near future.
Incredibly, the plan seems not to take into account the fundamental fact that Jerusalem has been the Jewish People’s eternal capital for three millennia. Handing over its very heart to foreign control is an unthinkable and demoralizing blow to the nation’s claim to any part of the Holy Land. It is our generation’s historic obligation to ensure that Yerushalayim remains Jewish and under complete Israeli sovereignty, with individual but not national rights to all ethnic minorities in its midst.
The plan does not address other negative repercussions of the city’s division, some of which were painfully felt the last time Jerusalem was divided, between 1948 and 1967. As explained in many KeepJerusalem publications and presentations, these include concrete security dangers given the pro-terrorist orientation of Fatah, which governs the current Palestinian entity; the likelihood that Jewish emigration from Jerusalem will increase even more than its current alarming level; and the probability that Jewish neighborhoods will be flooded by Arabs who prefer living under Israeli rule.
The day-to-day difficulties of governing and living in a city divided by a zig-zagging wall – concrete, barbed-wire, or even just on paper – separating one side of a street from another will be insurmountable. Tens of thousands of Jewish residents will abruptly find themselves guarding a border, whilst being exposed to close-range shooting attacks, as occurred during the Oslo War in Gilo and other neighborhoods.
Dividing Jerusalem thus means turning many Jewish neighborhoods into vulnerable border towns, leading to what former Mayor Ehud Olmert – yes, the same Olmert who is signed on the current proposal – said in the past would be “a daily security danger” for our capital.
The authors also related to the war in Gaza, calling for a ceasefire without specifying the terms, and stating that all Israeli hostages in Gaza must be released (no mention of the Hamas refusal). The plan also states that Gaza should be governed for the near future by a “Temporary Arab Security Presence,” which will be mandated to “prevent attacks against Israel from Gaza.” Need more be said?
The proposal concludes with essentially acknowledging its entire general irrelevance by stating its hope that all the remaining issues – “small ones” such as the status of settlements and settlers, refugeees, security, and even a possible international force along the Jordan River – will be resolved in future negotiations.
Olmert and Al-Kidwa, both past their prime, appear to simply be looking for a gimmick to reinvent themselves, at the expense of the survival of a democratic and Jewish State of Israel. We shouldn’t fall for their antics, and let’s hope our friends and allies don’t either.
