Review 22.3
1 March - 21 March, 1997

The current controversy over the building of housing for Jewish residents of Jerusalem has centred on alleged "colonisation", which could sabotage the peace process. Such an interpretation would have been unthinkable if the previous Labor government of Shimon Peres, or his predecessor Yitzhak Rabin, was still in power. Yet the development of Har Homa, which is incidentally tied to the construction of 3500 additional units for Palestinian residents of the city, is a project begun almost 30 years ago by Levi Eshkol's government, arguably the most dovish in Israeli history.

Projects such as Har Homa enjoy broad support among the Israeli public and political parties, for an understandable reason. The unity of Jerusalem is a fundamental Israeli interest and a commitment that transcends political boundaries. Israelis are willing to make great strategic and other sacrifices to make peace, but it should not be assumed that this genuine desire over-rides all other considerations. Senior Labor Party MK Ra'anan Cohen threatened only in recent weeks to initiate a "no confidence" motion in the Netanyahu government if it did not proceed quickly in implementing Har Homa. The delay in the project, far from being due to external factors or the Oslo peace process, was due to a legal dispute between the government and the (predominantly) Jewish owners of the land acquired for the project.

It would actually be a change in the "status" of Jerusalem if Israel ceased to act as the sovereign power over the city. And no Israeli government, Labor or Likud, has ever agreed to suspend all Jewish building in Jerusalem, as Palestinians demand. Further, Palestinian claims that Israel is seeking to "Judaise" the city with new settlements are nonsense. Even before the Oslo peace process began, the eastern part of Jerusalem had a Jewish majority. Nor has the demographic balance of the city changed under Israeli rule; there is today almost exactly the same ratio of Jews to Arabs in the city as a whole as there was in 1967. Arab building in the Jerusalem area has been booming in recent years. This rests quite apart from Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu's promise that thousands of Arab houses will be built in Jerusalem at the same time as the Har Homa neighbourhood, whilst continuing to maintain the city's demographic balance.

Arafat has recently claimed that "there can be no peace without Jerusalem and no peace with settlements." The PLO has clear goals which in the Oslo negotiations, which have been frequently enunciated by a variety of Palestinian leaders. They include obtaining a fully sovereign state including all of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem and, arguing that all Jewish residence in these areas is somehow illegitimate, they wish to obtain these areas without their Jewish population.

It is likely that, when final status negotiations are complete, the minimum the Palestinians will obtain will bear some resemblance to these goals. The most important major issues to be resolved between Israel and the Palestinians are: the settlements, Jerusalem and the legal status of a future Palestinian "entity".

The PLO leadership is manoeuvring to place itself in the strongest possible negotiating position to obtain its full program. It has engineered a series of crises designed to highlight the Palestinian claim and strengthen their hand, especially in the court of world opinion and has pushed for Israel to agree to status quo provisions, which essentially concede the Palestinian program in advance.

On the other hand, despite Israel's right to continue building Jewish settlements as they wish, the Netanyahu government has shown exceptional restraint. Land due to be transferred to the Palestinian Authority accounts for 65 percent of the West Bank, with Palestinian villages and fields encompassing the remaining 27 percent. No West Bank settlement is being expanded into confiscated private land - all are built on unowned public land and Palestinians have full access to the Israeli courts if disputes arise regarding land ownership. In many cases, Palestinians have successfully obtained court rulings barring settlement construction. Claims that Israel is using settlements to secure large areas of the West Bank before the final status talks are pure propaganda for the Palestinian case. The historic 10 to 7 Cabinet vote on March 8, to transfer 9 percent of West Bank territory immediately to the Palestinians shows how pragmatic Netanyahu has become.

The Palestinian agenda was clear in the recent furore over plans to restore the Jewish quarter of Hebron. These plans have never involved more than rebuilding existing dilapidated Jewish dwellings. Quite simply, Palestinian Authority objections to Jewish renovation in Hebron are based on their profound desire to get Jewish settlers out of the city. As PLO security chief Jibril Rajoub announced upon the handover of Hebron recently, the PLO wants to cleanse the West Bank of Jews.

The PLO cannot simply declare that it wants to make the West Bank "Jew-Free"; everyone in the West would recognise such a proposal as a form of ethnic cleansing, after all Jewish communities have lived in the West Bank since time immemorial. Instead the claim is to promote a stereotype that the actual settlers are themselves all violent extremists. Applying this claim to over 100,000 men, women and children borders on the ridiculous. While there may be some violent extremists among the settlers, to insist this problem be solved by mass expulsion on ethnic lines would be a gross violation of human rights.

The Palestinians may seek a sovereign state in the West Bank and Gaza, but if it comes to be, it will be a new entity. Jordan annexed this area in 1948, but this was never recognised by the world community, and was in any case renounced by Jordan in 1987. So the Palestinian assertion that all the West Bank is "Palestinian Land" in which only Palestinians can live, has no basis in international law, and is palpably false. The Arab-Israeli peace process is in reasonably good shape, despite the periodic crises engineered by the PLO to better the Palestinian bargaining position and call attention to their claims. The major danger remains the PLO's continuous assertions of a right to renew "armed struggle" and threats by senior PLO leaders to sanction violence if various demands are not met. Fortunately, Arafat seems to have learned some lessons from last September's violence, and protests to date about the Har Homa issue have been peaceful. As long as they remain so, the peace process is relatively healthy.