[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 108 (Thursday, June 29, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S9470-S9471]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                    AN ARAB IDENTITY IN THE CAPITAL

 Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, one of the issues that will 
eventually have to be confronted is the status of Jerusalem.
  No Israeli Government can survive that divides Jerusalem. We should 
understand that, and we should not create false impressions among our 
Arab friends that there is going to be any other status.
  Unfortunately, we have seen a recent President and Secretary of State 
unnecessarily raise doubts about Jerusalem.
  But there will have to be some practical, symbolic adjustments made. 
Recently, I saw an article in the Jerusalem Post by Abraham Rabinovich, 
a member of the Jerusalem Post editorial staff, which had some 
observations. I am not, at this point, ready to endorse those 
observations, but what they do involve is fresh and practical thinking 
on this issue.
  My own guess is that the current peace negotiations will stumble 
ahead. It will not be a graceful march, but Israel will be ahead and 
the Arab people, of whatever nationality, will be ahead. A full-scale 
war will gradually diminish as a probability.
  But wars can erupt again and frequently erupt over symbols as much as 
over substance. The Rabinovich article is one that, I believe, merits 
reading by people who are looking for practical answers.
  I ask that it be printed in the Record.
  The article follows:

                [From the Jerusalem Post, May 27, 1995]

                    An Arab Identity in the Capital

                        (By Abraham Rabinovich)

       The terrifying scent of sanctity mixing with politics in 
     the mountain air probably accounts for the fatuousness from 
     normally sober politicians on the subject of Jerusalem.
       Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin sought to justify this month's 
     expropriations in east Jerusalem as an attempt to meet the 
     needs 

[[Page S 9471]]
     of an expanding population. Foreign Minister Shimon Peres suggested 
     that it was an evenhanded taking from Jews and Arabs in order 
     to build for Jews and Arabs. Mayor Ehud Olmert said that any 
     housing shortage in the Arab sector is their fault--even as 
     he raises funds for Jewish messianists who, like detonators, 
     insert themselves ever deeper into Arab quarters. The 
     expropriations, of course, have nothing to do with urban 
     considerations or even-handedness. They are the opening shots 
     in what Housing Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer has called the 
     battle for Jerusalem.
       What makes this relatively small expropriation different 
     from previous massive ones is that the latter were made in a 
     context of political confrontation, while the current one 
     comes in the midst of a delicate and troubled peace process. 
     The controversy may serve a useful purpose, however, if it 
     jars us collectively into beginning to think about the 
     unthinkable: finding a political solution for Jerusalem.
       An undivided city under Israeli sovereignty is a slogan, 
     not a solution. There will be no solution unless Arab and 
     Moslem sensitivies concerning Jerusalem are taken into 
     account. Rabin's pledge of religious freedom will not carry 
     far. The Arabs, who have lived here for 1,400 years, want 
     political rights too, not just religious rights.
       Jerusalem's Arabs are already entitled to almost 30% of the 
     seals on the City Council, although they have thus far chosen 
     not to take up the option. It is entirely conceivable that, 
     in the not-too-distant future, an Arab-haredi coalition will 
     leave Israel's capital in the hands of a non-Zionist city 
     governments (a possibility hastened by the current 
     expropriation, which the government says is intended for 
     haredim and Arabs).
       The Arabs, however, want more than that. They want an 
     expression of their national identity in Jerusalem as well. 
     It is possible to give it to them without endangering 
     Israel's dominant status.
       Creative diplomacy could permit the Palestinians to have 
     their capital in a place called Jerusalem without negating 
     Israel's position that it will not share its capital with 
     them.
       Eizariya, for instance, is outside the city limits--outside 
     Israel, in fact--but is closer to the Old City, the heart of 
     Jerusalem, than is the Knesset.
       What if the Palestinians were to call this Jerusalem too--
     even if Israel does not acknowledge it as such--and establish 
     their seat of governance there?
       Boroughs and areas of jurisdiction that partly overlap and 
     partly don't are other elements that have been proposed for a 
     Jerusalem solution. The Temple Mount remains the core of the 
     problem. Moshe Dayan's proposal to permit an Arab flag to fly 
     there is still one of the most constructive on the table. The 
     current boundaries of Jerusalem are not biblical writ. They 
     were drawn up in our own time by mortal men, guided by 
     strategic and demographic, not religious, considerations. The 
     new boundaries of 1967 tripled the size of Israeli Jerusalem 
     by incorporating not only Jordanian Jerusalem, but numerous 
     Arab villages around it. There is no reason those boundaries 
     could not be fuzzed in working out a solution both sides can 
     live with. Israeli construction in east Jerusalem has far 
     surpassed what was envisioned in the immediate aftermath of 
     the Six Day War. The main objective then was to link west 
     Jerusalem--via Ramat Eshkol and French Hill--with the 
     isolated Hebrew University campus on Mount Scopus. When this 
     had been achieved and the diplomatic sky did not fall, bolder 
     expropriations were carried out.
       Eventually one-third of east Jerusalem was expropriated. In 
     addition, a corridor left open east of Jerusalem in 
     anticipation of a Jordanian solution was eventually sealed 
     off by Ma'aleh Adumim. As geo-political strategy, this policy 
     worked brilliantly. The main-stream Palestinian camp, 
     watching the hills in Jerusalem and the territories being 
     covered with Israeli housing finally sued for peace. Such 
     heavily charged skirmishing, however, and even war itself or 
     intifada, seems simple compared to the prospect of Jews and 
     Arabs trying to share the city in political peace.
       The absence of an assertive Arab political voice since 1967 
     has made it relatively easy for Israel to run Jerusalem. A 
     Jewish-Arab council is easier to imagine as a cockpit of 
     rancorous conflict than of co-existence. (It is rancorous 
     enough, let it be said, as an all-Jewish council.) For the 
     Arabs, there will be an ongoing grievance at least as massive 
     as the Jewish housing estates covering the hills around 
     Jerusalem. For the Jews, the most authentic Arab voice will 
     long remain the one that drifted over the walls of the Old 
     City from the Temple Mount loudspeakers on the first dawn of 
     the Six Day War--itbach alyahud, slaughter the Jews.
       It will not be easy. With wise leadership on both sides, 
     ever mindful that we are lying down and rising up together in 
     a mine field, it may be possible.
     

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