EU Playing With Fire On Jerusalem

by Stewart Ain
Staff Writer

An angry Netanyahu administration warned the European Union this week that it is playing with fire if it goes ahead next week with plans to adopt a resolution calling for east Jerusalem to be the capital of a future independent Palestinian state.

“The process being led by Sweden harms the European Union’s ability to take part as a significant mediator in the political process between Israel and the Palestinians,” said a statement Tuesday by Israel’s Foreign Ministry.

The proposed resolution is expected to be approved during a two-day meeting beginning Monday of EU foreign ministers in Brussels. The meeting will focus on the Middle East peace process, and this week the Israeli newspaper Haaretz printed a copy of the draft resolution.

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The meeting is one of the EU’s first acts under the Lisbon reform treaty that took effect Tuesday after its ratification by all 27 member states. It is intended in part to give the EU a greater role on the world stage and provide for a more consistent and effective foreign policy after years of a presidency that rotated among members.

“It’s a way to inaugurate a new era in foreign affairs of the EU,” said Alfred Tovias, a professor of international relations at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. “It will give the EU new international status by making this important declaration of foreign policy.”

But Tovias said he believes Israel is making a mistake by “reacting hysterically” to the proposed resolution.

“It is badly advised to make such a fuss because if you pay attention to what the EU is saying, it is that the capital of a Palestinian state should be in east Jerusalem — but they don’t say where that is,” he explained. “And in my opinion they will not say it, because it is up to the parties to say.”

Tovias pointed out that not even Israelis are in agreement about the boundary between east and west Jerusalem.

“Some say it is Jerusalem before June 5, 1967, others say it is simply Abu Dis,” he said, referring to a Palestinian village east of the Jerusalem municipal border.

Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Blidt, whose country took over the presidency of the EU in July, is pushing the resolution. Tovias said Blidt is “considered a friend of Israel. ...He could have been one of the two top leaders of Europe, which means the declaration has a lot of weight. Israel is obliged to take this into consideration.”

But Dore Gold, president of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and a former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, said he believes that any EU initiative “to prejudge the outcome of future negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians by determining the status of Jerusalem would undercut the entire peace process ... [and] raise serious doubts about any European role” in the peace process.
“The position of the State of Israel as enunciated by Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu is that Jerusalem must remain united under Israeli sovereignty,” he pointed out. “Israel is not about to turn over the holy sites of Judaism, Christianity or Islam to the uncertainty of Palestinian rule.”

Gold pointed out that under a treaty signed by then Israeli Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin and Jordan’s King Hussein, Jordan is to administer the Muslim shrines on the Temple Mount.
Asked how a Palestinian state in eastern areas of Jerusalem that were always Arab would adversely impact Israel, Gold replied: “The Palestinian goal in any diplomacy over Jerusalem will be the Temple Mount and not some innocuous villages on the outskirts of Jerusalem.”

“The eastern part of Jerusalem is like a checkerboard with black and white squares and you can’t assign different sovereignty on the basis of ethnic distribution,” he continued. “There are Israelis who make the argument that they don’t drive in east Jerusalem, therefore what do they care [about it]. But that’s like saying you don’t drive to 135th Street and Broadway [in Manhattan] — traffic patterns don’t determine sovereignty.”

The draft EU resolution reportedly expresses concern over the inability to renew peace talks and says the goal of the talks is “an independent, democratic, contiguous and viable state of Palestine, comprising the West Bank and Gaza and with East Jerusalem as its capital. ... If there is to be a genuine peace, a way must be found to resolve the status of Jerusalem as the capital of two states.”

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman flew to Europe this week for more than 20 meetings with European leaders to explain that Israel has taken steps to prove its interest in resuming peace talks. Among the steps is a 10-month freeze on settlement construction in the West Bank.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry said Lieberman would tell European leaders that the Palestinians are “not interested in negotiating with Israel, and their stated desire to achieve an agreement with Israel is mere lip service.”

But Yossi Alpher, an Israeli political analyst and co-editor of the Israeli-Palestinian Web site BitterLemons.org, countered that without east Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state, “there will be no peace process. If Israel is not pressured into allowing it, there cannot be a two-state solution” that both sides say they want.

“It is clear that Netanyahu is not prepared to move on this at all,” he said. “You have Netanyahu defiantly refusing to take any action to stop the building of neighborhoods for Jews in east Jerusalem, geographically cutting off the [future] capital of the Palestinians. ... His position invites this pressure.”
In peace talks, Alpher said, arrangements can be made so that Jerusalem is not divided “if people live peacefully with one another.”

Alpher said he does not believe the EU action will bring the two sides back to the bargaining table.
“The process will only move if there is concerted American pressure on this particular issue,” Alpher said.

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