'Unlike war, peace is always a tormenting victory of one's own
self' (Eli Sanbar).
Jerusalem is the city of so many mirrors, often not harmonizing the
light, shadows and darkness, even causing blindness. The
observation of the Carthaginian Tertullianus to provincial
governors (197ce) gnaws: "Two species of blindness easily combine:
of those who see not what is, and of those who see what is
not."
It's so hard to think rationally about Jerusalem, because feelings
also count, and they often dominate. Political perceptions are
shaped by flawed reason and passion. They clothe naked facts.
Jerusalem symbolizes more than the geographical fact, for "the
political imagination often invents its own geography" (Amos Elon).
In the diffusion of historical data, images and myths about
Jerusalem, all forms of print and the electronic media, of
literature, theater and cinema, of textbooks and other education
materials are so powerful. Whoever controls the data and images of
Jerusalem, their analyses and interpretations, wields power equal
to military might. In these quasi-wars, truth is usually the first
casualty, and exaggerated statistics, fragmented narratives and
selective indignations become false intimidations which are, in W.
A. Auden's words, "like a frost that halts the flood of
thinking."
The Israeli-Palestinian and Jewish-Arab conflict, in all its
dimensions, is realized, condensed and symbolized in Jerusalem. The
city is blessed and cursed by its religious, political and military
history, and by present divergent, indeed, conflicting claims to
its future from cousins who vie for their heritage.
Jerusalem, on the one hand, has become a magnet which draws
compulsive seekers for slick solutions, producing a cottage
industry which too often grinds out perfect answers before even
asking the questions, right or wrong. On the other hand, the
majority of Israelis and Palestinians gloomily claim that there is
no workable solution to Jerusalem's future status. They even fear
for the inevitable item in the negotiations. It's a bit like death,
observes international lawyer John V. Whitbeck: "Everyone knows
that it is at the end of the road, but virtually no one wants to
talk about it because virtually no one can see any solution or
happy ending."
The Human Face
Is Jerusalem, in Meron Benvenisti's somewhat cynical phrase, "an
enigma without a solution"? The reality of Jerusalem is not neat,
nor will the political solution be neat. Perhaps the initial
solution should not be too detailed in finalities, but allow an
evolving process itself to be the solution. The Latin solutio,
derived from chemistry, is not the end of a breach, but the process
of dissolving disparate, even conflicting elements. And the
elements in the Jerusalem pot are not simple minerals or chemicals
but interrelated human beings - primarily Israelis and
Palestinians, Jews, Muslims and Christians.
Can Jews, Palestinians and other residents, together for the common
good of Jerusalem, allow the city to become human? Can we all
breathe in an atmosphere throughout the entire city that helps
people, despite the odds, to discover in each other the human face
and the human heart, and to respect and rejoice in our human
diversities? Such a friendly environment presupposes at least the
political institutionalization of equity.
''Jerusalem will never be divided." The city is already de facto
divided.
The question is, can it ever be united?
West Jerusalem, bereft of Arabs, remains in advantageous isolation;
it never had been the object of urban planning for new Arab or
mixed (Jewish/Arab) neighborhoods. But East Jerusalem is
intentionally divided by Bantustan-¬style physical enclaves of
Jews and of Arabs. The municipality openly plans linkage between
the Jewish ones, as well as new neighborhoods "for Jews only," for
example, at Ras Al-Amud and on south Jerusalem's quiet, undefiled
sugarloaf of Har Homa (Jabal Abu Ghneim), which I name Jerusalem's
"Mount Tabor." In the jargon of the times, these projects would
become stubborn "new facts on the ground" before the final
negotiations.
Is Israel's self-proclaimed democracy in fact "working"? The
measure of democracy, anywhere, is the equitable ways in which the
majority relates to the minorities, beyond patriotic rhetoric. Does
the public good of Jerusalem include its Arabs?
Promises and Facts
Christian Jerusalemites seldom talk about their holy sites, but
lament over their experienced discriminations, not because they are
Christians, but because they are non-Jews. Does the Jewish majority
accept the working principle that Jerusalem's Arab tax-paying
citizens have a right to equal treatment, an equitable share in the
common resources? For example, despite occasional governmental and
municipal promises, unlike Jewish sections of Jerusalem, most Arab
sectors face unpaved streets, infrequent garbage pickups,
inadequate water lines, smaller school subsidies and withheld
building permits. One compares Gilo with Beit Safafa in south
Jerusalem and, in the north, French Hill with Beit Hanina. At last
October's [1996] opening of Arab Culture and Book Week, Jerusalem
Mayor Ehud Olmert promised a multimillion-shekel plan "to make sure
that Arab residents feel like they are being treated fairly."
Another promise. One awaits "new facts on the ground."
The city is already divided also by psychological walls, a web of
mutual antagonisms and fears. These walls are far more threatening
and divisive than a Berlin Wall, a Gaza fence, or a checkpoint.
Whether fears are imaginary (what could always happen), or real
(what did happen - crude stabbings of the innocent, obscene
Jerusalem bus bombs, arrogant military / police brutalities on
Salah Eddin), they create much less porous walls than designated
boundaries.
I pay no compliment to the city that, as a Czech-American, I feel
less threatened than Jew or Arab when I freely move about Jerusalem
to receive its urban gifts - concerts in the Jerusalem Theater on
Chopin Street and in the Palestine National Theater (Al-Hakawati),
stores on Ben-Yehuda or Azzahra, strolls through Gilo or Sur Baher,
and raptured silence before Islamic art and calligraphy in the
museums of the Mayer Institute (on Emek Refa'im) and on the
Al-Haram Al-Sharif.
The biblical inscription on the bell in the Liberty Bell Garden
"proclaims liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants
thereof." Israelis seek security above all and before anything
else, especially in Jerusalem. Its Arabs seek security and equity.
Liberty or secured freedom of movement "throughout all Jerusalem
unto all the inhabitants thereof."
Transition to Coexistence
How to safeguard and foster the identity of the Arab minority in
Jerusalem and their brothers and sisters who are living in West
Bank areas which I presume will form the Palestinian State? I
presume, because the transition towards dignified coexistence
between neighbors no longer enemies begins with a separation into
two states, with some measure of equality. Each enjoys one's own
space, each would lose something by abusing the space and its
inhabitants. But the fence, so to speak, between Israel and
Palestine requires a bridge in Jerusalem, the hub of both Israeli
and Palestinian identities.
The historic "feeling" of the Jews about their Jerusalem was
heightened by its unnatural partition between 1948 and 1967, in
particular by the exclusive Jordanian governing of the Old City, to
the exclusion of all Jews within the walls. But Palestinians also
have "feelings" about their Jerusalem, and reason supports them by
a glance at a map. The city is the Palestinian geographical heart,
whose arteries connect the southern and northern West Bank. It is
the center of their intellectual, commercial and political lives,
and the meeting place of extended families and friends. Without a
self-governing home or administrative center in Jerusalem,
Palestine would be an unnatural collection of towns and villages.
The pervasive localism in Palestinian society would rule,
increasing the rivalry between Gaza, Jericho and the West Bank, and
within the latter, between Hebron and Nablus.
Only through Compromise
Who defines Jerusalem and determines its borders? Who decides who
goes "up to Jerusalem"? Who judges how opened or closed should be
its gates? Historically, successive exclusive governing claims over
Jerusalem by those in political power never "worked," even when
(alas, not always) governors had granted limited guarantees and
protected status to the minorities, including free access to their
holy sites. Can an exception realistically "work" by the dominant
Israeli claim: "Jerusalem should remain the unified and eternal
capital of the State of Israel, under the absolute sovereignty of
Israel alone"? This is a slogan. Is it a solution? Equally a
slogan: "East Jerusalem (including the Old City) should be solely
Palestinian-ruled." Is it a solution? Political slogans may draw
votes in election campaigns, but they never "work" at bargaining
tables.
Israeli/Palestinian shared authority in Jerusalem and limited
sovereignties over it - whether territorial, functional or both -
would be by pragmatic political compromise. Only a compromise,
inevitably resented as "unjust" by some Israelis and some
Palestinians, can be a correct or "just" solution, as it will take
into account, not impossible dreams, but at least the minimum
legitimate, sometimes competing vital national (and religious)
interests of both Israelis and Palestinians.
For ten years (1960-1970) I lived in Italy's Rome and worked
outside Italy, in a Vatican office, also in Rome. The 1929 Lateran
Pacts between the Vatican and Italy were a political compromise.
They structured a relationship between initially hostile parties of
fascist Italy and the earthly Catholic Church, whose headquarters,
called the Holy See, have been recognized since 1815 (Congress of
Vienna) as a sovereign subject of international law. Nobody judged
the treaty to be the permanent solution. It was only a necessary
first structured step to begin the long process of harmonious
relations. In the one unified Rome, the two parties mutually
recognize and abide by several carefully detailed areas of shared
authority, as well as functional and territorial sovereignties. Not
only do the 109 acres of Vatican City enjoy autonomy, but,
throughout Rome, so do several buildings of Vatican offices and
major basilicas (holy sites). I worked in one of these "Orient
Houses" outside of Vatican City. Two identities within the one
identity of being truly Roman.
For the Jerusalem question, I suspect an analogous solution would
"work," wherever the terrain of Palestinian Al-Quds would be and
wherever its "extra-territorial" administration offices may be
located throughout the city, West or East. Two identities preserved
by the one identity of being Jerusalemite.
A pragmatic compromise would result in initial coexistence between
Israel and the new Palestinian State. If Israel and Palestine will
not compromise over Jerusalem, I fear the Holy City could become
the only place in the land which would be cursed by increased
divisions, unholy tensions, indeed, recurring violence.
A Universal City
But earthly Jerusalem is more than a provincial city. It bears a
universal character and evokes a unique religious dimension of the
human, as does Florence evoke in art, Zurich in business, Oxford in
intellectual culture, and Salzburg in music. Earthly Jerusalem
mirrors the meeting place between God and the human, the eternal
and history, in particular for the children of Abraham - Jews,
Christians and Muslims who, together, are called in their own ways
"to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just" (Gen.
18:19). This historical religious vocation of Jerusalem is to be a
peaceful meeting place or shared living room, not a battlefield,
not a house of locked rooms.
The city, especially the Old City, often mirrors too much of
politicized religion, too little of authentic faith. Aberrations of
piety move quickly into the political arena, and politics corrupts
the pieties. The religious dreams of one become the nightmares of
the other. As the philosopher-theologian Rabbi David Hartman
remarks, "The claustrophobic geography of the Old City is an apt
metaphor for the cramped ideological space in which Judaism,
Christianity and Islam interact...The basic problem is not space,
but control."
Jerusalem (West and East) is the only city in the world where a
very small Christian minority lives with those of the two other
monotheistic faiths, both in a majority. Within a total population
of 600,000, 11,000 are Christians. They have few votes to deliver.
Christians seek political influence, not to dominate, but only to
survive, through civil recognition of their inherent and historical
rights as religious communities and as individuals, and through
representation, lest those recognized rights be ignored or
violated.(1)
The Old City bears a far more heightened religious dimension than
other sections, for example, Ben-Yehuda Street or Nablus Road. With
realism, the Jerusalem Christian leaders join the Vatican (and
others) in proposing for the walled City a special juridical and
political statute, stable and permanent, which the international
community guarantees: "Jerusalem is too precious to be dependent
solely on municipal or national political authorities, whoever
they may be."
The Paradox of Politics
This plea is based on distrust of future decisions of those who
have the power and the coffers. The demographic trends of Jerusalem
will continue without surprising shifts. The religious Jews will
predominate. Most of them will obediently vote in municipal
elections. The city's government will continue to be a fragile
coalition which includes religious political parties with clout.
One can realistically suspect they will not be overly sensitive to
the needs of Muslims and Christians. Likewise on the Palestinian
side.1t will always be an Islamic majority. It could happen that
Muslim extremists would be in positions of coalition-power which
threaten the Christian minority with de facto
discriminations.
In the paradox of politics as the art of the possible, the first
step of institutionalized political equity allows for the further,
far more critical, steps in creating an environment where it
becomes easier to depoliticize human existence; that is, not to
reduce persons and human communities to their political and ethnic
dimensions. Human beings and human communities are wonderfully
complex and mysterious, not mere digits on any computer, especially
the political counter and the passport surveyor. The human is not
limited to what makes immediate political sense.
Thus, whatever the "final" political solution may be, the immediate
dividend is not loving relations between Israelis and Palestinians,
but the structured normalization of their collective urban
existence, a network of those routine relations which characterize
most cities, most of the time, in most of the world. The political
can condition but not dictate the non-political, especially the
social-psychological dimensions of an already divided conflictual
Jerusalem. The dissolving of hostility, and the solving of the
"winning of hearts" can come about only by a slow, relentless
process, not by a stop-watch. It may never be "final," but it can
move beyond initial coexistence. Coexistence means that one only
tolerates the other as the lesser of two evils. If not enemies,
they still remain nervous strangers to each other. Not quite truly
human, is it?
Endnote
1. Cf T. Stransky, "Civil Rights to Religious Freedom: Christian
Claims," in Religion and State in Israeli and Palestinian Society,
ed. Natasha Dudinski (Jerusalem: IPCRl, 1996), pp. 67-f,9. Silvio
Ferrari, "The Religious Significance of Jerusalem in the Middle
East Peace Process: Some Legal Implications," in The Future of
Jerusalem Symposium, a special issue of the Catholic University of
America Law Review 45 (3),1996, pp. 733-743.
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