Magazine Article

One City under God

Prince-Gibson, Eetta

2007

Overview

\"We have failed miserably,\" [Moshe Amirav] continues, \"because of our short-sighted policy of 'unification' - you can't unify Jerusalem, because it's too big and too diverse for one owner. I love this city; I was wounded fighting for this city in 1967. And because I love the city, I know that the division of Jerusalem as a political approach will accomplish more for us Israelis than the anachronistic political approach of the 'unification of Jerusalem.'\" Yet for four decades, politicians have avoided coming to terms with potential solutions that deviate from the \"United Jerusalem\" theme. Political pundits maintain that Shimon Peres lost the 1996 elections due, at least in part, to a successful Likud campaign that accused Peres of intending \"to divide Jerusalem.\" Even the Oslo Accords left Jerusalem \"for last,\" while it is widely accepted that [Ehud Barak]'s and [Yasser Arafat]'s unwillingness to confront their constituencies regarding the possibility of compromise over Jerusalem was one of the major reasons that the 2000 Camp David Summit failed. Neither Palestinian nor Israeli leaders have ever been willing to lead their people toward even reconsidering the mantras that have shaped the discourse about Jerusalem. Yet the politicians may be trailing behind public opinion. [Shlomo Hasson] argues that numerous surveys have repeatedly shown that when the question of Jerusalem is approached in a disaggregated fashion that avoids the term \"Jerusalem as the united capital of Israel\" and relates to specific neighborhoods within the city, a minimum of 72 percent of Israeli Jews, including a majority of Jewish Jerusalemites, are willing to consider transferring to Palestinian sovereignty those non-Jewish areas of the city, which have only limited importance in their subjective \"map\" of what constitutes Jerusalem.

• Publisher: Jerusalem Report
• Subject: Amirav, Moshe / Hasson, Shlomo / Lapidoth, Ruth / Nasrallah, Rami