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| August 23,
2000 |
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Israelis and Palestinians have struggled for years to reach a peace agreement. At the heart of their dispute is the city of Jerusalem, which each group claims as its rightful capital.
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MERON BENVENISTI: This is supposed to be handed over to the Palestinians, which means that this is going to be a Jewish sovereign area and that is going to be a Palestinian sovereign area. And the question is who is going to maintain the traffic lights. |
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| 'We can't live without Jerusalem' | ||||||||||||||||||||
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ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: The Jerusalem issue has provoked demonstrations and helped fracture the governing coalition of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. These protesters - many of them from the opposition Likud Party - marched around the periphery of the old city earlier this month. Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert, of the Likud Party, pleaded their cause - first in Hebrew, then in English.
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: That place is the Western, or Wailing, Wall, and on this night thousands of Jews prayed there. It was the eve of the annual day of mourning for the destruction of two great Jewish temples, including the one built by Solomon 3,000 years ago. The stones of this wall are all that remain of the Mount on which the temples stood. MAYOR EHUD OLMERT: While we are ready to share, we are determined that the Temple Mount will never be handed over to become the sovereign place of any other nation but the Jewish nation. ADNAN HUSSEINI: We love Jerusalem. We love Palestine. We can't live without Jerusalem. ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Earlier the same day on the temple Mount -- or Haram Al Shariff in Arabic, Adnan Husseini, administrator of the Islamic Holy Sites here, stated the Muslim claim to this place.
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| After Camp David -- more tension | ||||||||||||||||||||
| ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: On this day, Husseini was trying
to defuse tensions he said were caused partly by the Camp David talks.
ADNAN HUSSEINI: We can say that there is more tension, and there is more movement of the settlers around the area.
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Would it be possible to solve the problem by giving you (Palestinians) religious sovereignty and Israel retain political sovereignty over this area? ADNAN HUSSEINI: Well, I have religious sovereignty, but I am suffering. I don't have any freedom of this sovereignty. So, I believe that without the political sovereignty, I can never has this freedom sovereignty of religion. It is exactly the same situation of occupation though in another way -- in a peaceful way instead of occupation and power. So this can never be accepted. ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz, who was appointed by the Barak government to oversee the Jewish holy places in Jerusalem, is also coping with the effects of Camp David. An ultra-Orthodox Jew, he worries too much will be given to the Palestinians.
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| Learning to accept less | ||||||||||||||||||||
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ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Lutheran Bishop Munib Younan, a Palestinian who often speaks for the Christian clergy here, is more hopeful. On his walks through the streets of the Old City, he says, he finds that underneath the rhetoric of both sides, acceptance of change is growing. BISHOP MUNIB YOUNAN: You know, it's a matter of awareness building, and it's a matter of maturity. ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Of awareness building?
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: In random interviews in the Jewish quarter, some Israelis reflected this new awareness. Yaron Schrem owns an art gallery.
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: David Bar Levav, the son of Holocaust survivors, has owned this antiquities shop in the Jewish quarter for 30 years. DAVID BAR LEVAV: I would want that the whole of Jerusalem will be under Israeli rule and then the Arabs becoming citizens of Jerusalem, and an open city for everyone as it is actually now, but I know that the reality puts some boundaries to what you can wish.
DAVID BAR LEVAV: I guess that we will have to accept something less than that. ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Among Palestinians in the marketplace, the mood was more somber. This man said negotiations over the years had not improved anything. HAJ OMAR JROUD: (Translated) They didn't do anything for us since 1948. We are going backwards, not forward. We didn't see a good day to talk about. ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Outside the Old City walls, there was more hope. Adly Hamouri owns a shoe store on Salahadin Street. ADLY HAMOURI: What we heard about Camp David talks was good, and what we need from Camp David talks is a good solution. This is a city for everybody, but we don't want to have a Jerusalem where somebody rules us. ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: In other words, you... ADLY HAMOURI: I want to rule myself.
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: What's happening here? FAISAL HUSSEINI: As you see, there is an occupation in Jerusalem. Those people here, the police here, they have the control. They have the power to control the city. We would like to have a meeting here at this place and they want to forbid us from having such a meeting. |
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| The turning point | ||||||||||||||||||||
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ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: In the end, the police permitted a less formal gathering to take place in another location, and there was no violence, but the potential is always there. It's because of that potential, Bishop Younan says, that an agreement now is so important.
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Meron Benvenisti warns such talk does more harm than good. MERON BENVENISTI: It is not a question if are we not going to resolve
it now -- then there's going to be bloodshed. This is wrong even to
suggest, because this is not how it's done here. This is a place where
there ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: As their destinies are debated, people in this very special space continue their daily lives. But everywhere questions hang in the air, like jasmine on the old walls. |
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ELIZABETH
FARNSWORTH: From the Mount of Olives, the Old City of Jerusalem shines
in the morning light. The city is vibrant, alluring. Muslims, Jews and
Christians go about their day's work on walkways in continual use for
thousands of years. But the ground is shifting underneath. The issue
of sovereignty over Jerusalem was on the negotiating table for the first
time publicly at Camp David last month, and some say nothing here will
ever be the same again. Israel annexed the eastern part of the city
after the 1967 Six Day War. The issue now is how much of the city Palestinians
will get-- if any-- as part of their new state. 
MERON
BENVENISTI: Just because there cannot be an ultimate solution for Jerusalem.
It is impossible to achieve, and once you start dealing with arrangements
that are aimed at resolving the conflict, you tend to open a can of
worms, open a genie... a bottle, and then the genie comes out. This
is exactly what's happening now.
MAYOR
EHUD OLMERT: For thousands of years the Jewish people prayed for this
place. For thousands of years we dreamt that one day we will come back
to the holiest of all places for the Jewish people.
ADNAN
HUSSEINI: This is the heart of the world. This is El Aksa mosque. This
is the most holy place, with Mecca and Medina, in Islam; and it is God's
will that Muslims will be here since 1,400 years, and this is a declaration
from God. 
ELIZABETH
FARNSWORTH: He was talking about member of a small Jewish sect which
sends people onto the mount frequently -- for religious reasons, they
say -- for provocation, says Husseini. Israel has political sovereignty
here, but Palestinian Muslims have administrative and religious control
over this site. El Aksa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock are holy to
Muslims because they believe Mohammed began his ascent to heaven here.
And Adnan Husseini -- like most Palestinians we spoke to -- said Muslims
must have not only religious sovereignty over this place but political
sovereignty too. That is the nub of the issue that broke up Camp David
last month. Both sides insisted on sovereignty over this small plot
of land. Israeli archeologist Jon Seligman explained:
JON
SELIGMAN: The problem is the proximity of the all the different sites
together. I mean, if you look behind my shoulder, you can see two of
the major sites of the issue-which is the Wailing Wall -- the Western
Wall -- which of course is a major sacred site in Judaism, and just
behind it you can see the major site to Islam, which is the Dome of
the Rock and the El Aksa mosque, so these two sites are not some distance
apart, but they are right next to each other. In fact, they're not differentiated
at all, they're exactly the same site.
ELIZABETH
FARNSWORTH: Under one plan proposed at Camp David by President Clinton
and widely publicized in newspapers here, the Israelis would retain
what was called "soft" sovereignty over the Mount while Palestinians
would have "custodial" sovereignty. The rest of the Old City
is divided into four quarters; and under this plan, the Muslim and Christian
quarters would be Palestinian; the Jewish and Armenian, Israeli. Beyond
the walls of the Old City, East Jerusalem's inner neighborhoods, while
remaining Israeli, would come under what was called Palestinian "functional
autonomy;" while outer neighborhoods like these would become part
of the new state of Palestine. Under this proposal, the capital might
be just beyond the city limits here -- in Abu Dis -- where a Palestinian
Legislative Council is already under construction. A special road or
bridge would connect Abu Dis with the holy sites of the Old City, just
visible on top of the hill. None of this plan was formally accepted
by either side; but it gives a sense of what's being discussed -- even
now. Barak Cabinet Minister Yuli Tamir, who is close to the negotiations,
explained. 
YULI
TAMIR: What we're trying to do is to reexamine the notion of sovereignty
and to try to sort of divide sovereignty -- not to look at it as a holistic
term that one side has sovereignty therefore the other side has none.
And we're trying to work out a situation whereby shared sovereignty
is not territorially shared but functionally shared. 
RABBI
SHMUEL RABINOWITZ: (speaking through interpreter) No doubt it concerns
me. We remember that 33 years ago--until 1967--the Jewish people could
not approach the Western Wall. It was under Arab rule, and Jews were
prevented from going to the holiest place. Since 1967, the Jews have
allowed every Muslim, every Christian, every man to get to their holy
sites and pray their own way. I am truly a person who advocates peace,
and I am willing to give up a lot for the sake of peace. This is not
just lip service. I honestly think that it's crucial that there will
be no more bloodshed. But I would like to stress how important Jerusalem
is to us and how we cannot be separated from it because it is truly
our life source. I don't know what the solutions are, but I'm pessimistic
about finding a solution to Jerusalem. 
BISHOP
MUNIB YOUNAN: Yes. And maturity, and a matter, you know, of time. You
know, ten years ago, had I told the Americans that Mr. Arafat will meet
Mr. Rabin, they would have said that I'm a freak. Now if we ask the
Israeli public on the issue of a Palestinian state, I think you'll find
most of them are convinced that the Palestinians should have their own
state. You see, on the issue of Jerusalem, I mean, it's the same thing.
It's a matter of, you know, awareness building. 
YARON
SCHREM: It's destiny that these two people-- Arabs and Jews-- they have
to live together. That's destiny. So we have to just find a way to live
together. 
ELIZABETH
FARNSWORTH: Are you willing to accept something less than that? 
ELIZABETH
FARNSWORTH: That desire, shared by many Palestinians, makes frequent
confrontations with Israelis inevitable, even as negotiations continue.
In a melee earlier this month, Palestinians chanted, "all Jerusalem
is Arabic" as they confronted Israeli police. The police had blocked
entrance to a meeting between local Palestinian leaders and visiting
business executives from abroad. The meeting was illegal, police said,
because the Palestinian Authority, which has a kind of de-facto government
here, is not allowed to receive foreign visitors or have political meetings
in Jerusalem without a special permit. Faisal Husseini, whose grandfather,
great uncle, and great-great uncle were all mayors of Jerusalem in earlier
times, is a top Palestinian official in the city. 
BISHOP
YOUNAN: This is a turning point in our history both of Palestinians
and Israelis. If we don't seize the moment and really find a negotiable
solution where it gives everybody their equal rights, I think there
will be a deep crisis. 
is no redemption and no apocalypse.