Is East Jerusalem part of Israel’s capital?
By J. Zel Lurie
DELRAY BEACH, Florida– Secretaryof State Hillary Rodham Clinton knows she’s right. The Israeli-Palestinian status quo is unsustainable, she told the large audience, greeted by some cheers, at the recent AIPAC conference in Washington. “New construction in East Jerusalem,” she continued, “undermines America’s unique ability to play a role — an essential role, I might add — in the peace process.” Scattered applause from part of the audience.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu can’t admit she’s right. He knows that if he agrees completely he will lose his right-wing government. So he spars with Clinton for 43 minutes on the phone from Israel followed a few days later by 75 minutes at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington and a face to face talk with President Obama the next day.
Netanyahu sticks to a false demagogic slogan: “A Jew can build in Jerusalem as in Tel Aviv.” He knows that the major portion of East Jerusalem consists of a score of rural West Bank villages which we annexed to the Holy City in 1967. Looking at East Jerusalem from the sky you see a town of two story houses sprawling over hill and valley. It is surrounded on the East by the walled Old City and to the North and South by hi-rise apartment houses on wide streets. These Jewish neighborhoods were built on Palestinian-owned land. To continue to build on them, as Netanyahu demands, would, in Clinton’s opnion, be a provocation that would harm the proximity talks.
To the West is the large Jewish city of Jerusalem, the true capital of Israel, which Netanyahu talked about at the AIPAC conference.The aura of the capital does not cover East Jerusalem where the Palestinians are NOT citizens of Israel. Netanyahu says that a Jew can build in (East) Jerusalem like in Tel Aviv. The reality is that a Palestinian can build legally in Tel Aviv but he can’t get a permit to enlarge his house for his married son in his native village of Beit Hanina or Umm Tuba or Issawiya which are among the many villages that were annexed to East Jerusalem in 1967.
In the forty-odd years since 1967 no zoning plan was established for the rural villages in East Jerusalem which were suddenly urbanized. Very few building permits were handed out so thousands of two-story homes were built illegally. Right wing Mayor Nir Barkat threatend to demolish all illegally built homes. Clinton called Netanyahu and this threat against thousands of Palestinian homes was scotched. Netanyahu’s reining in the Jerusalem mayor under American pressure proves that Bibi gives in up to a point.
Let’s look at the record. Under pressure, Netanyahu reluctantly accepted the two-state solution. Under constant pressure to stop new Jewishsetttlement construction on the West Bank and Jerusalem he finally agreed on a ten month settlement freeze on the West Bamk excluding Jerusalem. Who knows how far he will go in the proximity talks without losing his government.
I do know that the right wing ministers enjoy the money and privileges of government so they tolerate Bibi’s concessions to Clinton but they won’t let him go all the way. Still, Clinton has definitely ended the George Bush era of a tolerant bystander. “We can’t want peace more than the parties do,” is no longer our policy. We want peace. The lack of peace is harming both Arabs and Jews and is responsible for the killing of American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan say American generals. The status quo is unsustainable. Therefore, says Hillary Clinton, we will take an active role in the proximity talks.
Four out of five American Jews support this policy according to a J Street poll. A good portion of the AIPAC crowd also supports it. AIPAC was scheduled to choose as its new president last week a 53 year old wealthy Chicagoan who served on Obama’s Finance Committee. The pro-settlement people who have run AIPAC for years are now quiescent. Israel is divided between the pro-settlemnt government and the majority of the population. A poll published two weeks ago by Yediot Ahronot, Israel’s largest daily, found that 64 percent of the people say that the government does not represent them.
When this column appears in print I will be part of that Israeli majority. I will have celebrated the Seder with both my daughters, my four grandkids, including my seven month pregnant Israeli granddaughter, my 6-year-old great grandson. I’m returning to Delray Beach in mid-April.
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Lurie is a freelance writer based in Florida. His articles appear in the Jewish Times of Southern Florida
