A Way to Peace: Share Power in Jerusalem

There will never be a durable peace in the Middle East without a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict acceptable both to most Israelis and to most Palestinians. That is a fact.

There will also never be a lasting resolution of the conflict without a solution to the status of Jerusalem acceptable both to most Israelis and to most Palestinians. That is also a fact, one which, particularly after the breakdown in relations caused by Israel’s decision in March 1997 to begin constructing the huge Har Homa settlement in expanded East Jerusalem, is increasingly difficult (and dangerous) for anyone to ignore.

Prospects for peace have not improved since that time, given Israel’s recently announced plans to extend further the boundaries of Jerusalem, plans that the U.S. State Department has labeled “extremely provocative” and “unfathomable” and that the U.N. Security Council has unimously declared “a serious and damaging development.” (Treating the United States with the contempt until recently reserved for the rest of the world, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed these criticisms as “ridiculous.”)

While it is widely assumed that no solution to the status of Jerusalem (and hence to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict) exists, there is one potential solution which has a real chance of being acceptable both to most Israelis and to most Palestinians. It involves sharing sovereignty over Jerusalem.

When Israelis and Palestinians speak about Jerusalem, they are not simply establishing negotiating positions; Jerusalem commands too tight a grip on hearts and minds. Their repeated and virtually unanimous positions must be taken seriously. If one accepts, as one must, that no Israeli government could ever accept a redivision of Jerusalem, and if one accepts, as one must, that no Palestinian leadership could ever accept a permanent status solution that gave the Palestinian state (and, through it, the Arab and Islamic worlds) no share of sovereignty in Jerusalem, then only one solution is conceivable: joint sovereignty over an undivided city.

In the context of a two-state solution, Jerusalem could form an undivided part of both states, constitute the capital of both states and be administered by an umbrella municipal council and local district councils. In the proper terminology of international law, Jerusalem would be a “condominium” of Israel and Palestine.

Condominiums, while rare, are not without precedent. Chandigarh is the joint undivided capital of two neighboring Indian states. For half a century prior to its independence in 1956, Sudan was a condominium of Britain and Egypt, officially named “Anglo-Egyptian Sudan.” For more than 70 years, the Pacific nation of Vanuatu (formerly the New Hebrides Condominium) was under the joint undivided sovereignty of Britain and France. For more than 700 years, until a 1993 constitutional revision, the Principality of Andorra was under the joint undivided sovereignty of French and Spanish “co-princes.”

In a sense, Jerusalem can be viewed as a cake that could be sliced either vertically or horizontally. Either way, the Palestinians would get a share of the cake, but, while most Israelis could never voluntarily swallow a vertical slice, they might just be able to swallow a horizontal slice, that is, shared power. Indeed, by doing so, Israel would finally achieve international recognition of Jerusalem as its capital.

Jerusalem is both a municipality on the ground and a symbol in hearts and minds. Undivided but shared in this way, Jerusalem could be a symbol of reconciliation and hope for Jews, Muslims, Christians and the world as a whole.

“Joint undivided sovereignty” is a concept that even highly intelligent people are often unable to comprehend. Perhaps, paradoxically, it is too simple to be easily understood. While sovereignty is commonly viewed as the state-level equivalent of ownership, joint undivided ownership of land or a house (between husband and wife or, through inheritance, among distant cousins) is scarcely uncommon. Such joint undivided ownership is clear as a matter of law and comprehensible as a matter of practice. Joint owners must determine how their common property is to be administered.

In seeking a solution to the status of Jerusalem, it is essential to distinguish between sovereignty and municipal administration. While municipal administration involves numerous practical questions, sovereignty over Jerusalem is fundamentally a symbolic, psychological and virtually theological question--more so than with any other city on Earth. It is important to recognize that this is the nature of the question.

Assigning sovereignty over an undivided city both to Israel and to Palestine should satisfy to the maximum degree possible the symbolic and psychological needs of both Israelis and Palestinians. It could also generate profound positive psychological benefits for the quality of “life after peace” by requiring in spirit and in practice a sharing of the city and cooperation with “the other” rather than a new partitioning of the city and mere toleration of “the other” or the continuing domination of one people over another, with all the poisonous frictions that such domination inevitably provokes.

Realistically, there are only three alternative endings to the search for Israeli-Palestinian peace: 1) Israel and Palestine agree on a basis for dividing Jerusalem, and peace is achieved on that basis; 2) Israel and Palestine agree to share an undivided Jerusalem, and peace is achieved on that basis; or 3) Israel and Palestine fail to agree on Jerusalem’s status, and there is no peace.

Netanyahu and his political allies have categorically ruled out dividing Jerusalem, and the Labor Party, whether in power or in opposition, has promised no greater flexibility toward the possibility of dividing the city.

That leaves only the second and third alternatives, a sobering reality which should, logically, stimulate interest among peace-seekers in exploring the potential of the condominium solution. It should also stimulate interest in trying to persuade Israeli public opinion that the Holy City so central to the lives of both Israelis and Palestinians, as well as to believers in the three great monotheistic religions throughout the world, can be shared, that a winner-take-all approach produces only losers and that both Israelis and Palestinians must be winners or both will continue to be losers.

If Israelis and Palestinians can agree--and soon--that a mutually acceptable solution for the status of Jerusalem does exist, all the other pieces in the delicate peace puzzle could still fall into place. Without a mutually acceptable solution for the status of Jerusalem, everything will fall apart. That cannot be permitted to happen.

The road to “interim self-rule” may have started in Gaza and Jericho and been extended to other West Bank cities, but any road to peace must start in Jerusalem.