POLITICS : Israel, PLO in a New Struggle for an Ancient City

Two years before they have agreed to discuss the future of Jerusalem, Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization are stating their claims to the 5,000-year-old city with vigorous cries of righteous possession that ring, often literally, from the battlements of its ancient stone walls.

PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat, wanting to broaden support for the transitional but controversial accord on Palestinian self-government, has pledged to continue a jihad , which he explained as “a holy struggle,” to make Jerusalem the capital of an independent Palestine.

Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, believing that Israelis will give up a lot of territory for peace but not yield an inch in Jerusalem, launched a campaign to prevent the PLO from “creating facts on the ground” and warned that he would not allow Palestinian institutions to turn the city into their de facto capital.

Mayor Ehud Olmert, an opponent of the autonomy accord, is threatening to bring hundreds of thousands of Israelis into Jerusalem to block any attempt by Arafat to pray here at Al Aqsa mosque, one of Islam’s holiest shrines. An initial protest by just 2,000 paralyzed the city center.

Other Israelis have hung big banners from the walls of the Old City proclaiming Jerusalem “the eternal and undivided capital of the State of Israel and the Jewish people”--and, to the cheers of Palestinian youths, Israeli police have had to climb up the ramparts to remove them. In addition, hoping to outflank Arafat, Rabin allowed former Mayor Teddy Kollek to invite Jordan’s King Hussein, who regards himself as the protector of Jerusalem’s Islamic holy places and resents Arafat’s attempts to play on Muslim sympathies, to come and pray at Al Aqsa.

“The battle for Jerusalem has already begun,” Israeli political commentator Yoel Marcus observed, noting that the emotions of both Israelis and Palestinians over Jerusalem make it unlikely that the issue can be postponed as agreed until 1996, when Israel and the PLO will negotiate Palestinian independence.

More than that, Marcus argued, many immediate questions--participation in Palestinian elections in the autumn, the borders of the West Bank when it gains self-rule, offices for the Palestinian Authority itself--put the future of Jerusalem on the agenda today.

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Palestinians envision Jerusalem as a united city but the capital of two nations, Palestine and Israel. For Israelis, in the words of Rabin to a parliamentary committee, “Jerusalem is a closed issue--the Palestinians can dream, we can discuss it even, but Israel will not budge--it will remain united and under Israeli sovereignty.”

At Rabin’s order, the government is considering new legislation to limit Palestinian political activities in East Jerusalem--there are already about 200 Palestinian organizations with offices in the city--but its own lawyers quickly found that the 1967 incorporation of Arab neighborhoods into the Jerusalem municipality and the extension of Israeli law to them made it difficult to deny what are civil rights throughout Israel.

Palestinians complain that they are being forced out of Jerusalem by Israeli policies. A survey by a demographer at Bethlehem University found that more than 50,000 Palestinians had moved out of the city since 1967 because of Israeli controls. The Palestinian Human Rights Information Center said that Palestinians may build on only 14% of the land in Arab neighborhoods because of government confiscation of land and tight zoning.

“Israel has been ‘creating facts on the ground’ for 27 years,” Faisal Husseini, a member of the new Palestinian Authority governing the Gaza Strip and Jericho in the West Bank, said last week. “We are acting to counter those moves and simply to assert the Palestinian reality here. . . .

“We are for a united Jerusalem, an open Jerusalem, a Jerusalem that is the capital of both our nations, a Jerusalem that is home to Judaism, Christianity and Islam, a Jerusalem that is a city of peace.”

The Battle for Jerusalem

The rhetoric over the future of Jerusalem is heating up two years before Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization are supposed to discuss the situation.

PALESTINIAN SIDE

“We are for a united Jerusalem, an open Jerusalem, a Jerusalem that is the capital of both our nations, a Jerusalem that is home to Judaism, Christianity and Islam, a Jerusalem that is a city of peace.”

--Faisal Husseini, a member of the new Palestinian Authority governing the Gaza Strip and the Jericho District on the West Bank

ISRAELI SIDE

“Jerusalem is a closed issue--the Palestinians can dream, we can discuss it even, but Israel will not budge--it will remain united and under Israeli sovereignty.”

--Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin