Jerusalem Unbound: Geography, History, and the Future of the Holy City

JERUSALEM UNBOUND

JERUSALEM UNBOUND

GEOGRAPHY, HISTORY, AND THE FUTURE OF THE HOLY CITY

MICHAEL DUMPER

Columbia University Press

New York

Columbia University Press

Publishers Since 1893

New York   Chichester, West Sussex

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Copyright © 2014 Columbia University Press

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E-ISBN 978-0-231-53735-3

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Dumper, Michael, author.

Geography, history, and the future of the holy city / Michael Dumper.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-231-16196-1 (cloth: alk. paper)—ISBN 978-0-231-53735-3 (e-book)

1. Jerusalem—History.   2. Jerusalem—International status.   3. Jerusalem—Boundaries.   4. Jerusalem—Ethnic relations.   5. Israeli West Bank Barrier.   6. Arab-Israeli conflict—1993—Peace.   7. Arab-Israeli conflict—1993—Territorial questions.   8. Diplomatic negotiations in international disputes.   I. Title.

DS109.15.D86 2014

956.94'42—dc23

2013039550

A Columbia University Press E-book.

CUP would be pleased to hear about your reading experience with this e-book at cup-ebook@columbia.edu.

Cover Design: Jordan Wannemacher

Cover Image: © AP Images

References to Web sites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author nor Columbia University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared.

To my brother and sister, Nicholas and Hildegard

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations

INTRODUCTION

1. THE HARD BORDERS OF THE CITY

2. THE SOFTER BORDERS OF THE CITY

3. THE SCATTERED BORDERS OF HOLINESS

4. THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY AND THE LIMITS OF SOVEREIGNTY

5. JERUSALEM IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY: WHAT PROSPECT OF PEACE?

Appendix: Web Site and Facebook Surveys

Notes

Bibliography

Index

MAP 0.1. Jerusalem and Region

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

THERE ARE SCORES of people who have helped in writing this book. Some did so directly by agreeing to be interviewed or by providing feedback, advice, and introductions to others. Others did so indirectly through informal conversations, though mealtimes at their homes with their friends and families, and by letting me share a part of their lives. I offer them all my deepest and most humble thanks for their time and effort, which they gave freely and graciously. This whole endeavor would have been much poorer without their support and interest. In particular, I would like to thank my colleagues who worked closely with me on the Conflict in Cities and the Contested State project—Wendy Pullan, Liam O’Dowd, James Anderson, Max Sternberg, Britt Baillie, Rami Nasrallah, and Haim Yaacobi. Of this excellent team I would like especially to mention three people: Craig Larkin, my research associate for the five-year duration of the project—our collaborative study of the city was a highlight of the project for me; Lefkos Kyriacou, the cartographer of the project, who put many hours into developing the maps used in this book and also supplied some of the photographs; and Razan Makhlouf, my fieldwork research assistant and photographer whose photographs are also included in this book. Much appreciation must also go to Adam Whittock for helping in the preparation of the manuscript for publication.

In Jerusalem and the region there are almost too many people to mention but in particular I would like to thank Amneh Badran, Azem Bishara, Hillel Cohen, Ray Dolphin, Fouad Hallak, Mahmoud Hawari, Kevork Hintlian, Hiba Husseini, Adnan Husseini, Huda Iman, Nazmi al-Ju’beh, Haifa Khalidi, Israel Kimhi, Menachem Klein, Ruth Lapidoth, Awad Mansour, Meir Margalit, Yusuf Natshe, Mazen Qupti, Amnon Ramon, Yitzhak Rieter, Bernard Sabella, Maha Samaan, Patricia Sellick, Danny Seideman, and Salim Tamari. Their encouragement often went beyond the call of duty, and I am grateful for their time and insights, in some cases, their friendship and hospitality. Others not resident in Jerusalem were also of great help. These include Trond Bakkevig, Marshall Breger, John Bell, Michael Bell, Rosemary Hollis, and Mike Molloy. All the aforementioned people may have contributed to my understanding of the dynamics of the city, but they are in no way responsible for any mistakes or inaccuracies. Finally I would like to thank by wife, best friend, and partner, Ann, and my two boys, Rowan and Declan, for their forbearance during the course of writing this book. When I was physically at home, I was often either locked in my study or mentally and emotionally in Jerusalem.

I would also like to thank the Economic and Social Research Council for providing the funds to conduct the research on this book. The full title of the project is Conflict in Cities and the Contested State: Everyday Life and the Possibilities for Transformation in Belfast, Jerusalem and Other Divided Cities (Research Grant No: RES-060–25–0015).

.   .   .

A note on the transliteration of Arabic and Hebrew words and names into English is required. One of the main problems in arriving at a consistent transliteration system has been the crossover of Arabic and Hebrew names. Many English transliterations of Arabic names are actually transliterations of Hebrew transliterations of Arabic. A good example is the way in many English texts al-Azariyya (transliteration from the Arabic) is spelt Eizariya (English transliteration of the Hebrew transliteration of the Arabic).¹ Tracking down the actual Hebrew or Arabic spelling to transliterate is not always easy, and some inconsistencies have crept in for which I apologize. In the main this book uses the transliteration system followed by the International Journal of Middle East Studies except where English names a better known; for example, I use Bethlehem, not Bayt Lahm (Arabic), Temple Mount, not Har Habayit (Hebrew). However, I do use Haram al-Sharif rather than its English translation, the Noble Enclosure, which is not so well used and I find to be an ugly translation.

ABBREVIATIONS

INTRODUCTION

Only when borders disappear does the need arise to construct walls.

—RÉGIS DEBRAY, ÉLOGE DES FRONTIÈRES

STANDING ON THE Mount of Olives that looks down over the historic centre of Jerusalem, an observer would be struck by several contradictory impressions. At first sight, she would notice the many and varied architectural styles that are scattered throughout the valleys and ridges below and even inside the walled Old City itself. From Chalcedonian shrines to Byzantine basilicas, from Mamluk domes and minarets to Ottoman fortifications, from British colonial facades to Israeli modernist high-rises and hotels, these all reflect the consecutive conquests and occupations that the city has been subjected to. Also from this vantage point, a long-sighted observer would notice, despite its prominence in the world’s media and corridors of power, how small the city is. Comprising less than 1 million inhabitants, on a clear day one can see the outer limits of the city in all directions.¹ Indeed, when traffic is light you can drive from north to south or from east to west in less than ten minutes. The astute observer would also surely notice a revealing absence in the landscape—no chimney stacks and smoke polluting the air—both telltale signs of the lack of heavy industry, of manufacturing, and of mining industries. This would lead our observer to register the barrenness of the surrounding hills, the paucity of the agricultural hinterland especially in the dry summer months, and the absence of large stretches of parkland and trees—all indicating a scarcity of water. A reflective observer would then ponder as to why such a small city with so little obvious economic attributes and assets could be the focus of so much political interest and military strife. Thus at the heart of the study of Jerusalem lays the peculiar conundrum of the city—it has had little military or strategic value but, at the same time, it is sought after and contested by many. It is no coincidence, for example, that during his occupation of the region at the turn of the nineteenth century, Napoleon Bonaparte, the secularist from revolutionary France, ignored Jerusalem and focused his attentions on the coastal cities of Jaffa and Acre. Others, however, have expended vast resources in wealth and lives attempting to seize control over the city. Why?

The answer to this conundrum and the set of contradictory images I have just described really lies closer to the foreground of the observer’s gaze—almost at her feet. Looking down the hill, one can see the ancient Jewish cemetery stretching down to the Garden of Gethsemane, which in turn borders the Muslim cemetery abutting the walls of the Old City. The Old City of Jerusalem!—the walled core of the city which is both the key to the kingdom of a peaceful agreement between Israelis and Palestinians and also the eye of its never-ending storm. For Jerusalem is a city that is uniquely sacred: it contains the holiest sites of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—the dual Muslim-Jewish site of the Temple Mount and the Haram al-Sharif and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. These are all to be found in the Old City, which, on one hand, has profound eschatological significance as the site of the end of days and, on the other, is deemed holy in toto—not just specific sites, but the whole city, and not just to one religion but to all three. Furthermore, as it is clear from our vantage point on the Mount of Olives, the holy sites of these religions are not only close beside each other but also on top of each other, are reluctantly shared by each other and, alas, at the same time, deeply contested. The ramifications of this enduring fact are the core of the study of this book.

This will be my third book on Jerusalem and the need for another to accompany my first two requires some explanation.² In the early 1990s, when I first started researching and writing on Jerusalem, there was a dearth of both primary and secondary sources to work from. The study by the former Israeli deputy mayor of Jerusalem, Meron Benvenisti, The Torn City, was the only book of much value to a researcher.³ There were a number of microstudies carried out by the Israeli research center, the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies, and an anthropological study by Michael Roman and Alex Weingrod, but apart from these very little else.⁴ However, since the Oslo Accord in 1993—and the opening up of the possibility of some sort of political reconfiguration of the city to allow for a formal Palestinian political presence in the city—there has been a plethora of books on the city’s past, present, and future.⁵ Menachem Klein’s Jerusalem: The Contested City is an excellent in-depth study and complemented my first book on the city, The Politics of Jerusalem Since 1967, very well.⁶ Then, due to the large number of discussion fora and conferences on the topic of the city, there emerged in the late 1990s and early 2000s several compilations that have added a great deal to our understanding of the dynamics in the city. Marshall Breger and Ora Ahimeir’s Jerusalem: A City and Its Future and Philipp Misselwitz and Tim Rieniets’s City of Collision are particularly noteworthy.⁷ These studies, which take a broader and more encompassing approach to the study of the city, have also been supplemented by narrower and more focused studies. In the same category one should mention Yitzhak Rieter’s study of the role of the Islamic movement in Jerusalem, Sami Musallem’s Palestinian perspective of the struggle over Jerusalem, and the controversy over the reconstruction of the Jewish Quarter in the Old City by Simone Ricca.⁸ In addition, Jerusalem has become the subject of numerous reports by governmental and nongovernmental bodies, international agencies such as the UN, and research institutes, almost too many to absorb and process.⁹ Finally, there have been a large number of excellent journal articles that have stood the test of time and are worthy of repeat readings. Perhaps the most influential on my own understanding of the political dynamics unfolding in the city have been two (no less) by Ian Lustick, the first entitled Has Israel Annexed Jerusalem? and the second, Reinventing Jerusalem.¹⁰

WHY ANOTHER BOOK ON JERUSALEM?

In the light of all this research and publications why is there a need for another tome on the city. I have three reasons for wishing to write another study of the city. First, events in Jerusalem move rapidly and it is already ten years since Klein brought out his book—the last significant and sole-authored overall study of the contemporary city. The study of the city is in urgent need of an update, particularly in the light of the impasse in the negotiations between the two sides. What would be useful to policy makers, researchers, students, the media, and activists is a kind of stocktaking exercise which incorporates the research of the past decade and outlines the main directions of travel in the emerging social, economic, and political trends. A second reason for undertaking this work is that for the past five years I have been part of a project entitled Conflict in Cities and the Contested State.¹¹ Funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council, the project focuses on both Belfast and Jerusalem as primary targets of research, and, with my colleague from Cambridge University’s School of Architecture, Dr. Wendy Pullan, I have been responsible for much of the Jerusalem research, supervising a research fellow and a research assistant on three discrete research modules. The result has been a series of working papers, journal articles, conference papers, seminar presentations, and huge quantities of fieldwork notes, site observations, and interview notes. This material is original and is crying out for a synthesis and deeper analysis.

A particular feature of the Conflict in Cities project is that it is interdisciplinary, involving sociologists, urban planners, political geographers, anthropologists, architects, and architectural historians. Their insights, drawn from theoretical frameworks and methodologies that are quite different from mine as a political scientist, have opened my eyes to new approaches to and new relationships between the sets of empirical data. For example, my analysis of the separation barrier bisecting Jerusalem (or the Wall, as it is sometimes referred to) was quite conventional. But, after listening to my architectural and geography colleagues, I was able to see how the physical erection of the barrier itself, intimidating as it is, grotesquely rupturing communities and neighborhoods and destroying businesses, is, nevertheless, not the whole story. As my project colleague Wendy Pullan has noted, in construction terms it has no foundations. The Wall simply rests on a wide concrete base, but is not secured into the ground and thus could be easily removed (or tipped over in an earthquake!).¹² I now realize that, in studying the barrier, what is also important to focus on is the enforced reorientation of the daily life of the inhabitants in the vicinity of the barrier away from it. This can be most obviously seen in the network of new roads and new services and amenities that have been built as a result of its construction. The barrier or wall may be temporary, but the roads and new institutions will lead to lasting changes as people build their lives around them. This kind of insight comes from interacting with those who have knowledge of engineering, structural design, urban planning, and sociology. As a political scientist focusing on power and political groupings, I would have missed this broader picture. There are many other insights that debates with my colleagues from the Conflict in Cities team have stimulated. It has changed by perspective on Jerusalem and has enriched my understanding of the complex dynamics in the city. In writing this book, it is from this well of inspiration that I intend to draw.

The third reason for writing a third book on the city is that I wish to develop and explore a new argument, which I believe will contribute to the rational debate over the city’s future. The main argument of this book will be that as a consequence of its rich, complex history and the intersecting religious and political interests in the city, Jerusalem is what can be termed a many-bordered city. Before I explain this idea further, I should make sure that the reader is familiar with the various geographic areas included in the designation Jerusalem. The Palestinian Arab name for Jerusalem is al-Quds (or the holy) and refers to a range of different areas. These can at different times include the walled Old City of Jerusalem, the Jerusalem of the British mandate, which comprises both the new city to the West and the older parts to the east, the six square kilometers of the area of the Arab municipality that existed during the Jordanian period between 1949 and 1967, and the wider East Jerusalem area of seventy square kilometres added after the Israeli occupation in 1967. More recently, the Palestinian designated Jerusalem governorate has comprised a Jerusalem 1 and a Jerusalem 2 sector with the former being an electoral district almost congruent with the borders of East Jerusalem (see the maps in chapter 1) For Israelis, Jerusalem is called Yerushalayim (the abode of peace) which comprises, like the Palestinians, different delineations of the city over different periods. In this way it includes the walled Old City, the new city of the British Mandate period, West Jerusalem of the partition period, and now the wider post-1967 area. More recently, the notion of Greater Jerusalem encompasses satellite suburbs such as Mevaseret Zion in the west and at least three Israeli settlements built since 1967 in the eastern edges of the city: Maale Adumim, Givat Ze’ev, and Gush Etzion.¹³

My contention in this book is that examination of these areas and formal political borders will not reveal the full dynamics of power and control in the city and that a more nuanced approach of disaggregating the functional, political, and social borders is required. This has had a profound impact on its current development and politics, the planning of its future, and on how residents of the city work, play, shop, and pray. For example, the Israeli checkpoints, which used to ring the entry and exit points to the city and which are now supplemented or replaced by the separation barrier, constitute a security border as impermeable as any international frontier. However, what is very important to understand is that they are not congruent with the political border declared by Israel in 1967—the Israeli municipal border within which certain civic services are provided and throughout which Israel has sought to impose its legal jurisdiction. This lack of congruity leaves many areas of occupied East Jerusalem in a twilight zone where citizenship, property rights, and the enforcement of the rule of law are ambiguous. At the same time, it also suggests areas of greater flexibility over a negotiated agreement on the city. Another example of the many-bordered phenomenon is what can be termed the education borders, that is, the distinct areas where either the Jordanian-Palestinian or the Israeli curriculum is taught in schools, which reveal a pattern of ongoing segregation despite over forty years of Israeli domination in East Jerusalem. In many areas there is no difference between the urban areas of the West Bank (under Palestinian jurisdiction) and East Jerusalem (under Israeli jurisdiction) as the Palestinian curriculum is taught right up to the Armistice Lines of 1949 (the Green Line) and does not stop further east, as most other Israeli laws do, at the Israeli municipal borders created in 1967. In this sense one can say that there is a separate Palestinian education border that ignores the political and security borders and remains at the Green Line. These overlapping functional and political borders indicate that there needs to be a highly complex and multilayered division of responsibilities in any peace agreement. A study of the recently constructed security barrier or wall will be analyzed in this broader context.

FOUR THEMES

Within this overall argument, four main themes will be explored which are both derived from the many-bordered character of the city and, at the same time, contribute to the emergence of such overlapping and diverging borders. The first theme draws attention to the paradox at the heart of the Jerusalem question. Whereas Israelis and Palestinians both aspire for the city to be their national capital, thus to assert their national sovereignties over the city, the religious and highly internationalized nature of the city places extensive limitations on state sovereignty. Even with complete military control, Israel has not been free to act with impunity in the city and is obliged to accommodate historical precedents and international law while exercising its sovereignty. The book will explore this paradoxical theme through the notion of the many-bordered city, an argument that runs through all the chapters of the book.

The second theme is the pattern of resacralization of the city. Perhaps a more accurate term is the religious reclamation of the city, since the city has always been religious and holy. However, there is a contemporary tenor to religious contestation in the city which needs to be distinguished from that which preceded it. Here the start and end point of the theme may be the management and development of the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim holy places, but it also encompasses the penetration of the Israeli settler movement, with its messianic agenda, into the different agencies of the Israeli state concerned with Jerusalem. Not only have they acquired Jewish heritage sites as bridgeheads for further expansion in Palestinian residential areas, but their supporters have attained important positions in the Israeli Jerusalem Municipality and National Parks Authority, the Jewish National Fund, and the Israeli Antiquities Authority. A mirroring dynamic has been the growing importance of Muslim holy sites in the mobilization of Palestinian nationalist sentiment and the emergence of Palestinian Islamists from inside Israel as a significant political force as defenders of the al-Aqsa Mosque. The prominence given to religious claims in the city will increase what conflict resolution theorists refer to as the problem of indivisibility—that is, how does one negotiate or trade goods that are so deeply associated with identity and values?¹⁴ I intend to draw on my personal involvement in interreligious dialogue fora and with off-the-record discussions between Israeli and Palestinian policy makers and their advisers (known as Track 2 discussions) on the holy sites to examine these issues in greater detail.

The third theme places Jerusalem as both a divided city and a partially occupied city in comparative perspective. Cities divided along ethnic, religious, and linguistic lines are not so uncommon. Johannesburg, Montreal, Bradford, and Baghdad are frequently cited examples.¹⁵ But cities which are both divided and are also located in states whose presence in the city is contested and whose borders are disputed are a subcategory of divided cities of special significance. These are cities where a national or ethnopolitical conflict is manifested in their urban space. Such cities include Belfast, Mostar, Kirkuk, and Nicosia, possibly Beirut and Brussels. How these cities are affected by conflict, and how, in turn, the divisions in these cities have an impact on a conflict, present some useful and interesting comparisons with Jerusalem. For example, Mostar, a city that suffered terribly in the civil war of former Yugoslavia between 1992–95, continues to be divided residentially, religiously, economically, educationally, and electorally—despite the formation of the Croat-Serb-Bosniak federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Muslim Bosniaks fear their role in the city is being constrained by the desire of the Bosniak Sarajevo political elite to offer their Croat partners a regional capital in the same way that the Bosnians Serbs have Banja Luka and the Bosniaks have Sarajevo. Thus the reconstruction and reconciliation processes are hampered at city level by the compromises being delivered at the national level. The relationship between the divided city and the contested state is highly volatile and can spin into either virtuous or vicious spirals. The role played by external regional and international actors, by religious leaders, by the policies of residential segregation and the discriminatory use of public shared space are all important factors such cities hold in common. Yet what are as interesting and revealing are the differences, rather than the similarities, within this subcategory. This perspective will be used to delineate those features in Jerusalem which are shared by other similar cities and those which may remain unique to the city.

A final theme has already been touched upon and that is the role of external actors in the history and the future plans for Jerusalem. Much attention has been given to the role of the U.S. and the EU and their attempts to keep alive the Palestinian-Israeli negotiations over the city. What has received less scrutiny has been the involvement of less overtly political actors such as the Islamic Development Bank and Christian and Jewish diaspora organizations and NGOs. These have all had a significant impact upon alleviating poverty conditions, providing training and education, and indirectly contributing to the resilience of both of the main ethnic communities in the city. An important role has also been played by intergovernmental organizations such as UNESCO; its controversial inscription of the Old City on its World Heritage List has drawn the UN agency into the minutiae of the excavation, restoration, and planning issues in the city, bringing upon it the criticism and opprobrium of both parties to the conflict who feel their interests are not being protected sufficiently. Nevertheless, as holder of the global and universal benchmarks for preservation and the management of cultural sites, it is well placed to have an important monitoring and supervisory role. Examining the role of these external actors at their different levels of operation will both contextualize their engagement but also allow us to evaluate their impact and effectiveness in conflict resolution.

CHAPTER OUTLINES

These four themes and the main argument that Jerusalem is a city of many and shifting borders weave in and out of the five chapters of this book. Although focusing largely on the post-1967 period, and in particular the period after the collapse of the last significant political negotiations, the Camp David summit of 2000, it will also make reference to earlier periods. The different chapters will each highlight examples of the many borders of Jerusalem, examining the range of factors that impinge upon the urban and political fabric of the city and the fluidity of the situation on the ground. They will also explore in greater detail the four themes I have described: the constraints on secular power, the resacralization of the city, comparative perspectives on its divided and occupied nature, and the role of external actors. Chapter 1, for example, will concentrate on the visible or hard borders of the city, taking as its starting point the separation barrier under construction around parts of the city since 2003.¹⁶ It will examine the debates around the barrier, its impact on the hinterland, and the positive and negative results that have flowed from its construction in both urban and political terms. In order to explain the construction of the barrier, the chapter will then proceed to examine the question of the city’s political and security borders more deeply. It will examine the expansion of the city’s borders from 1948, and its establishment of the national capital of the Israeli state, through to the dramatic growth of the city after 1967. The main focus will be the tension between the attempt by the Israeli government to assert its political control over the new borders and its inability to consolidate a hegemonic presence in the eastern part of the city. All four themes play an important in our understanding of these dynamics.

Chapter 2 will turn the reader’s attention to the more subtle phenomenon of the porosity of these borders on other levels. To be more specific, the chapter will focus on a range of subnational, functional, and residential borders which are to most people invisible. By examining the lived-in city and how patterns of residence, of employment, of commerce have evolved and changed, one can delineate the impact this has had on the way the city is governed. The lack of congruence between political and military borders, on the one hand, and these social and functional borders, on the other, plays an important part in understanding how and why Jerusalem is a many-bordered city. It also points to the likelihood of complex structures of coordination between Israelis and Palestinians in any future political agreement.¹⁷ While clearly echoing the experience of other divided cities, the main themes that emerge from this chapter are the constraints of secular power and the role of external actors, particularly in the form of international law.

Chapter 3 explores the impact of the presence of the holy sites on the politics and urban development of the city. It is a chapter where all the four themes outlined here have an important role to play. The chapter also forms a discrete case study of the many-borders thesis in that it highlights how the religious sites of the city have created an archipelago of semiautonomous enclaves in the city that, in turn, have placed restrictions on the exercise of state sovereignty. While it is an argument that has been explored in my second book on Jerusalem, The Politics of Sacred Space, this chapter will present new research focusing on how such restrictions on state power have opened up a highly contested political space in which religious groups are competing for control. The chapter will explore the exploitation of these religious enclaves for political ends by focusing on the role of Israeli settlers, the use of archaeology and conservation, and the growing involvement of radical Islamist groups in direct action in an attempt to reverse the encroachments by the settlers. The response of the Israeli government in the form of heightened security presence, the contracting out of some security services to private companies, and the domination of settler groups in key state institutions concerned with land use in Jerusalem will also be examined, which will suggest revealing parallels with the situation in Hebron—a similarly divided city with internal security and political borders.

Chapter 4 further develops the argument of Jerusalem being a city of many borders by turning to the last theme in more detail. The reader’s attention is drawn to the critical role played by the international community in supporting or undermining specific developments in the city. There are few other cities in the world where the international community, especially the U.S., UN, EU, and the Arab and Islamic world, has demonstrated such an interest in how a city is governed. While ostensibly playing the role of facilitators, these important actors are in many ways both competing with each other and with the main protagonists, the Israeli government and the PLO, in attempting to frame the agenda for discussing the city’s future and its borders. The focus of this chapter will be on the diplomatic maneuvering that has taken place since 2000, with an emphasis on discussion concerning the relevance of previously internationally agreed borders and armistice lines. Debates concerning the controversial recommendations of the EU Heads of Mission Reports on Jerusalem, the relocating of the U.S. embassy, the work of UN bodies, such as UNESCO’s reinforced monitoring mechanism, and the role of the donor communities all reveal the engagement of these actors in the minutiae of the configurations of the city.

The fifth and concluding chapter will examine developments in political negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians since 1993 in light of the research presented in this book. It will include a dissection of the various proposals mooted at both the formal peace negotiations—Camp David, Taba, Annapolis, the Mitchell process, etc.—but also those put forward by civil society organizations such as the Geneva Initiative and the Jerusalem Old City Initiative. Borders are at the heart of their discussions. The intention will be to link these political discussions to a detailed knowledge of the impact they will have on the ground. A section of the chapter will suggest a possible formulation for bridging the different concerns and aspirations of the two parties. The chapter closes by attempting to identify the key trends that are emerging both on the ground in the city but also in the corridors of power. The primary aim of such a task will be to peer over the horizon, so to speak, in order to sketch out the likely contours of, on one hand, a durable political agreement over the city and, on the other, the likely consequences if such an agreement is not reached.

This book is entitled Jerusalem Unbound: Geography, History, and the Future of the Holy City. The focus on Jerusalem should be explained more fully. In essence, I in common with many others are convinced that without a peace agreement on Jerusalem there will not be a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, nor between Israel and the rest of the Arab world. In fact, the absence of an agreement will not just mean the absence of peace and the continuation of the current stasis. It will mean more than that. It will mean ongoing conflict in and around the city, year after year of low-level violence with spasms of conflagration and high-intensity conflict breaking out. The situation in the city is not stable, and its links to the wider conflict draw both outside forces and the conflict in the region into the city. But, by elevating Jerusalem to this status as deal breaker, I am not overlooking the other issues, such as borders, security, water, Israeli settlements, etc. (known in the Middle East peace process as the permanent status issues) that have yet to be resolved. In particular, I am aware of the huge chasm that separates the two sides over the Palestinian refugee issue and the inconceivable probability that Israel will allow even a small fraction of the refugees languishing in camps in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Sinai, the West Bank, and Gaza Strip to return to their ancestral homes.¹⁸ However, it is much likelier that those problems will be finessed and resolved if the conflict over Jerusalem issue is resolved, and the converse is not true. If those problems are resolved, their resolution will not impinge on the resolution