On August 11, the New York Times published an article by Stephen Erlanger on the divided road the Israelis are building around Jerusalem. This road combines two roads - one for the Palestinians to be able to move from the Northern West Bank to the Southern West Bank and back - and one for the Israelis. A high wall separates the roads. For the Israelis, there are a number of exits that allow travelers to go into Jerusalem or down into the Jordan Valley. For the Palestinians, there are no exits except at the terminal points. The road is not news, nor is the concept. It is, instead the fulfillment of former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s vision of the future for the Palestinian entities in Judea and Samaria. The US administration has always thought that there had to be real territorial unity between the Northern and Southern parts of the West Bank and that the Palestinian State had to have a presence in Jerusalem.
But Sharon never saw the West Bank as one contiguous Palestinian entity that could form the basis of a State. He spoke of the contiguity of movement - not territory. His vision was of a series of tunnels and restricted access roads that would tie the various Palestinian parcels of land together. Meanwhile, Israel would dominate the high points and strategic crossing points to ensure Israel’s security in the future. Sharon, who drove the settlement process, placed these Israeli outposts as a guarantee against the possibility of a terrorist dominated Palestinian entity and invasion from the East.
Sharon never contemplated giving up Jerusalem either. The new divided road physically isolates Palestinians neighborhoods of Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank. From the earliest days, in 1980, during autonomy negotiations Sharon made it clear he wanted to start with the Jerusalem question because once the Palestinians accepted Israeli sovereignty over all of Jerusalem, he believed it would be relatively easy to reach a settlement of other issues. He never answered the question of how we were to get the Palestinians, let alone the Islamic world, to agree to such a solution.
The settlements that Israel has built around Jerusalem are in reality mini cities and permanent fixtures. Their imposing presence convinced both Presidents Clinton and Bush that the Palestinians would have to accept the facts on the ground. And that very acceptance has pointed the way for Israel’s political leadership toward constructing - literally - a unilateral final resolution of the Jerusalem question. There is still some more building to do to fill in the gaps that exist, but I have little doubt that in ten years time Arab parts of Jerusalem will be merely an isolated island in the middle of a sprawling Israeli city.
This story has a long history. In the 1960s Israel was establishing settlements in the Jordan valley as military outposts, designed to pin down the border with Jordan and to secure the heights against future attack from the East. Gradually they metamorphosed into civilian settlements.
From that point on, the US has watched and done nothing as the Israelis have built hundreds of settlements all over the West Bank in violation of earlier peace agreements. We have been particularly passive when it comes to Jerusalem. Once in a while we have protested or sent our Ambassadors in to complain, but the Israelis know full well that we are not going to press the point. It has always been inconvenient to press the Israelis on what was seen as the secondary question of the settlements when the more important issue of a final peace agreement was at stake. And yet it is this very secondary question that has gradually excluded an increasingly large area of Palestinian land from any possible agreement and may put the possibility of any final agreement out of reach forever.
How could a Palestinian agree to a settlement that did not have Jerusalem as an integral component? Yet I have not yet seen a US administration that has the political will to stop the permanent acquisition of Jerusalem as the undivided eternal capital of Israel. The Israelis know very well that when the issue is Jerusalem, Congress will go their way and the President will not be far behind. Objections based on the impact on our interests in the region will melt away in the glow of American politics. It is not inevitable, but it is certainly possible if we do not address now Palestinian statehood and an Arab stake in Jerusalem.
Edward S. Walker, Jr, adjunct scholar at the Middle East Institute, is a former US ambassador to Israel and Egypt and also served as Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs. He was president of the Middle East Institute from 2001 to 2006 and currently teaches at Hamilton College.
Disclaimer: Assertions and opinions in this Commentary are solely those of the above-mentioned author(s) and do not reflect necessarily the views of the Middle East Institute, which expressly does not take positions on Middle East policy.
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On August 11, the New York Times published an article by Stephen Erlanger on the divided road the Israelis are building around Jerusalem. This road combines two roads - one for the Palestinians to be able to move from the Northern West Bank to the Southern West Bank and back - and one for the Israelis. A high wall separates the roads. For the Israelis, there are a number of exits that allow travelers to go into Jerusalem or down into the Jordan Valley. For the Palestinians, there are no exits except at the terminal points. The road is not news, nor is the concept. It is, instead the fulfillment of former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s vision of the future for the Palestinian entities in Judea and Samaria. The US administration has always thought that there had to be real territorial unity between the Northern and Southern parts of the West Bank and that the Palestinian State had to have a presence in Jerusalem.
But Sharon never saw the West Bank as one contiguous Palestinian entity that could form the basis of a State. He spoke of the contiguity of movement - not territory. His vision was of a series of tunnels and restricted access roads that would tie the various Palestinian parcels of land together. Meanwhile, Israel would dominate the high points and strategic crossing points to ensure Israel’s security in the future. Sharon, who drove the settlement process, placed these Israeli outposts as a guarantee against the possibility of a terrorist dominated Palestinian entity and invasion from the East.
Sharon never contemplated giving up Jerusalem either. The new divided road physically isolates Palestinians neighborhoods of Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank. From the earliest days, in 1980, during autonomy negotiations Sharon made it clear he wanted to start with the Jerusalem question because once the Palestinians accepted Israeli sovereignty over all of Jerusalem, he believed it would be relatively easy to reach a settlement of other issues. He never answered the question of how we were to get the Palestinians, let alone the Islamic world, to agree to such a solution.
The settlements that Israel has built around Jerusalem are in reality mini cities and permanent fixtures. Their imposing presence convinced both Presidents Clinton and Bush that the Palestinians would have to accept the facts on the ground. And that very acceptance has pointed the way for Israel’s political leadership toward constructing - literally - a unilateral final resolution of the Jerusalem question. There is still some more building to do to fill in the gaps that exist, but I have little doubt that in ten years time Arab parts of Jerusalem will be merely an isolated island in the middle of a sprawling Israeli city.
This story has a long history. In the 1960s Israel was establishing settlements in the Jordan valley as military outposts, designed to pin down the border with Jordan and to secure the heights against future attack from the East. Gradually they metamorphosed into civilian settlements.
From that point on, the US has watched and done nothing as the Israelis have built hundreds of settlements all over the West Bank in violation of earlier peace agreements. We have been particularly passive when it comes to Jerusalem. Once in a while we have protested or sent our Ambassadors in to complain, but the Israelis know full well that we are not going to press the point. It has always been inconvenient to press the Israelis on what was seen as the secondary question of the settlements when the more important issue of a final peace agreement was at stake. And yet it is this very secondary question that has gradually excluded an increasingly large area of Palestinian land from any possible agreement and may put the possibility of any final agreement out of reach forever.
How could a Palestinian agree to a settlement that did not have Jerusalem as an integral component? Yet I have not yet seen a US administration that has the political will to stop the permanent acquisition of Jerusalem as the undivided eternal capital of Israel. The Israelis know very well that when the issue is Jerusalem, Congress will go their way and the President will not be far behind. Objections based on the impact on our interests in the region will melt away in the glow of American politics. It is not inevitable, but it is certainly possible if we do not address now Palestinian statehood and an Arab stake in Jerusalem.
Edward S. Walker, Jr, adjunct scholar at the Middle East Institute, is a former US ambassador to Israel and Egypt and also served as Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs. He was president of the Middle East Institute from 2001 to 2006 and currently teaches at Hamilton College.