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Palestinian Arabs do not recognize Israel's version of Jerusalem's municipal borders. Jerusalem suburbs built over the Green Line, like Har Homa (as well as Ramot and Gilo), are from their perspective not properly part of Jerusalem, but rather are West Bank settlements. While Palestinians speak sometimes about preserving the East Jerusalem municipality as an expression of defiance of Israel's 1967 annexation, the actual pre-1967 municipal borders decreed by Jordan are not sacred in their eyes.

Palestinians and Jordanians refer to Palestinian villages, like Abu Dis, as being located within the pre-1967 Jordanian administrative county or district (Muhafeza) of Jerusalem, that extended from just beyond its municipal borders as far as the Dead Sea. For this reason, major Palestinian leaders, like Faisal Husseini and Ahmed Qureia (Abu Ala), refuse to accept Abu Dis as an alternative capital to Jerusalem for a Palestinian state; instead, their claim is focused on the Old City. `1´

There are much wider definitions of Jerusalem, as well. The UN Partition Resolution of November 29, 1947, UN General Assembly Resolution 181 (II), recommended the establishment of Jerusalem as an internationalized corpus separatum (a separate entity) whose area would extend beyond Abu Dis in the east, to Motza in the west, to Shuafat in the north, and included Bethlehem and Beit Sahur in the south. While the Palestinian leadership of 1947-48 rejected Resolution 181, recently the PLO began to revive its interest in the 50-year-old resolution (see below).

Commuter traffic patterns can also define a metropolitan zone; within 30 minutes of downtown Jerusalem are Beit Shemesh to the west, Almog junction to the east, Ofra to the north, and Tekoa in the south. `2´ Both Israelis and Palestinian Arabs are dependent on Jerusalem's roadways to move between points in the metropolitan zone, and conversely, Jerusalem residents utilize the roadways of the periphery of the metropolitan zone to gain access to the city. Indeed, the Palestinians view Jerusalem as a key communications junction that connects the northern and southern halves of the West Bank.

Beyond the geographic issue, the Jerusalem question can be discussed on three different levels. There is the political level of who holds national sovereignty over the city, or its various parts. Related to political control is the issue of demography. During the Middle Ages, the Jewish presence in Jerusalem was repeatedly reduced or eliminated by Byzantine and Crusader rule, or as a result of military campaigns. But even before the rise of modern Zionism, a Jewish plurality was restored in Jerusalem under the Ottoman Empire in the early 19th century; in 1845, according to the Prussian Consul General in Jerusalem, there were 7,120 Jews out of a total population of 15,510. `4´ There has been a Jewish majority in Jerusalem since at least 1864, when out of a total population of 15,000 there were 8,000 Jews, 4,500 Muslims and 2,500 Christians, according to British consular sources.⁴

Thus the demand for a special international status for the holy places in Jerusalem is not a product of international convention or customary law. Rather it is due to the unique situation of Jerusalem, as a city that is holy to several major faiths, and results from the cumulative impact of centuries of struggle, beginning with the Crusades and leading up to the rise of the Jewish state. That legacy created a direct connection between political control and religious access.

Prior to the emergence of the State of Israel, political control was used mostly against Jewish religious access. Under the status quo, established by the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century, Jews were allowed to pray at the Western Wall, but were prohibited from bringing Torah scrolls, chairs, or screens for separating the sexes. Muslim-Jewish tensions over Jewish attempts to break out of these religious restrictions were one of the catalysts of the 1929 Arab riots in British Mandatory Palestine.

But it was during the period from 1948 to 1967 that Jordanian political control led to the complete denial of Jewish religious access to the holy places of Judaism. After the fall of the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem in 1948, its Jewish inhabitants were expelled; fifty-eight of its synagogues were either destroyed or desecrated by being used as stables by the Palestinian Arabs. Indeed, neither Jewish nor Muslim Israelis were permitted to visit their holy places. Jews who were citizens of other countries were also denied the right to visit the Western Wall.

Jordan and Israel disagreed over the scope of Article 8 of their General Armistice Agreement of April 3, 1949; Israel believed that a special committee was to be formed to implement Israeli access to the holy places, while the Jordanians held that the scope of the committee included further negotiation over access to Nazareth and other sites in Israel. `7´

Jordanian political control limited Christian religious access, too. Israeli Christians were allowed to visit East Jerusalem only on Christmas. `8´ Jordanian law restricted land purchases by Christian institutions and intervened in the autonomy of their educational establishments; the Christian population of Jordanian Jerusalem fell from 25,000 in 1949 to 11,000 in 1967. During this entire period the UN did not pass any resolutions concerning minority religious rights in Jordanian Jerusalem. Indeed, Jordan's harsh stand on Jewish religious access was taken when the Hashemite Kingdom was relatively weak and still under British political guidance.

The Jerusalem question not only requires that the ways in which political control have affected religious access be distinguished; it requires delineating how each faith views Jerusalem in religious terms. For Judaism, Jerusalem is a combined religious-political center of the Jewish people. No wonder it became part of the very definition of Zionism; the Second Book of Samuel (Chapter 5, Verse 7) relates how King David made the "fortress of Zion" his capital in approximately 1000 BCE.

Jerusalem served as the center of Jewish religious and national aspirations with the establishment by King Solomon of the Beit Ha-Mikdash, or the Temple, on Mt. Moriah. The Temple had a section known as the Holy of Holies, where the Ark of the Covenant, containing the Ten Commandments and the Torah, was housed. While it stood, Jews were required to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem three times a year for the hag (Hebrew for pilgrimage festival, similar to haj in Arabic). Even after its destruction, Jerusalem remained the direction of Jewish prayer. And the calendar of Jewish fast days, until modern times, followed the stages of the siege and destruction of Jerusalem by the Roman Empire, culminating in the fast on the ninth day of the Hebrew month of Av.

According to Jewish tradition the sanctity of the Temple Mount area remains intact despite the Temple's destruction. Indeed, Rabbi A. I. Kook, the first Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of the pre-state Yishuv, confirmed that the eternal sanctity of the Temple Mount continues to exist. Subsequential chief rabbis of Israel, such a I.Y. Unterman and Y. Nissim, in fact continued, after 1967, to warn Jews not to enter any part of the Temple Mount. `9´ Entry into the area where the "holy of holies" was located is absolutely forbidden by Jewish law today. A minority view put forward by the IDF Chief Rabbi, Shlomo Goren, identified areas on the Temple Mount that were clearly outside the zones that were prohibited for Jews under Jewish religiouis law.

Jerusalem remained over the centuries one of the central focal points of Jewish religious consciousness. Reference to Jerusalem's restoration appears in the core prayer of the Jewish religion, the Shmona Esrai, recited three times daily. Moreover, the declaration "Next Year in Jerusalem" completes the most widely celebrated holidays in the Jewish religion among the Orthodox, Conservative and Reform movements: the Passover Seder and the Ne'ilah prayer of Yom Kippur. Finally, the famous phrase of Psalm 137, "if I forget thee, Oh Jerusalem, let my right hand wither," is recited by a father at the circumcision of his son, by a bridegroom at the end of the wedding service, and is part of the weekday grace after meals.

The greatest point of sanctity in Jerusalem may be the Temple Mount, but the Jewish attachment to Jerusalem is to the city as a whole - and not just to its holy places. While Jewish political fortunes since the time of the first Jewish commonwealth have fluctuated, Jews always regarded Jerusalem as their capital. Each attempt to restore Jewish sovereignty, whether under the Bar-Kochba revolt of 135 CE or after the Persian conquest of Byzantine Judea in 614 CE, included an effort to reestablish Jerusalem as a national-religious capital.

In subsequent centuries, major figures in the Jewish world sought to settle in Jerusalem despite the risks that this entailed. Nachmanides (Ramban) left Spain to live in Jerusalem in 1267, where he established a synagogue that still stands, though he ultimately settled in Acre. From the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries Jewish scholars arrived from Morocco, Yemen, Italy, as well as the students of the Gaon from Vilna. In short, Jerusalem remained a universal site of pilgrimage for the Jewish world.

Jerusalem plays a different role in Islam. It appears in the reference to the "Further Mosque," al-Masjid al-Aqsa, in the Koran (Sura 17), where Muhammad makes his night journey (al-Isra') from Mecca while mounted on a winged beast (al-Buraq). Even if this is not an explicit reference, common interpretation by most Muslims is that the "further mosque" is located in Jerusalem. According to Islamic tradition, Muhammad ascended to Heaven from Jerusalem (al-Mi'raj) and received the commandment that Muslims pray five times a day. The event is celebrated by Muslims on the 27th of the Islamic month of Rajab. While Jerusalem has only a very limited role in the life and prophetic revelations of Muhammad, still Muslims view Jerusalem as having special importance because it is associated with other divine messengers from the pre-Islamic period who appear in the Koran, such as David, Solomon, and Jesus.

The establishment of Jerusalem as the third most important place of Muslim pilgrimage comes from the Hadith, according to Orthodox Sunni tradition. It was for a short period the direction of prayer, qiblah, in the early Islamic community, later to be replaced by Mecca. Islamic tradition attaches importance to the entire area of the Temple Mount, al-haram al-sharif, and not just to the area of the mosques alone. But the harsh restrictions of Islamic law that apply to an area designated as haram, such as the area of the Islamic Holy Land in the Hijaz, do not apply to the Jerusalem case; for example, non-Muslims are restricted from visiting Mecca, but non-Muslims may visit the mosques in Jerusalem.

The area of the Western Wall was made into an Islamic religious trust, waqf, at the time of Salah ad-Din for the benefit of Muslims of Moroccan origin, know as the Mughrabis. Indeed, the area of the Wall has significance to Muslims. By tradition, it is the area where Muhammad stabled his winged beast, al-Buraq, before he rose to heaven. Thus the area of the Western Wall is known as al-Buraq al-Sharif; campaigns for its defense against Jewish encroachments were part of the Arab-Jewish struggle in the 1920s.

While pilgrimage or haj is one of the main pillars of Islam, the commandment to make pilgrimage only applies to Mecca, not to Jerusalem. The Islamic term for coming to Jerusalem for religious purposes is ziyara, a term applied by Shi'ites for visits to their holy sites in Iraq. Muslim daily prayers contain no reference to Jerusalem; nor is Jerusalem mentioned in prayers on special holidays.

The emphasis placed on Jerusalem's centrality to Islam has tended to emanate from Muslims who were situated geographically close to the city. Thus the Umayyad caliphate, based in Damascus, had a special interest in Jerusalem, due to its competition with Mecca. Mu'awiyah had himself declared the first caliph in Jerusalem, in the year 660.¹⁰ The Umayyads went so far as to establish Jerusalem as the site of Muslim pilgrimage, when 'Abd Allah ibn az-Zubayr was elected caliph in defiance of their wishes and seized Mecca in 683. In fact, it was the Umayyad caliph, 'Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan, who built the Dome of the Rock with its great golden dome in 691, and decreed that it become an alternative to the Ka'bah in Mecca. 'Abd al-Malik's decree was annulled within a year after the reconquest of Mecca.

But beyond the core area of Syria-Palestine, there are indications that Jerusalem was not always at the heart of Islamic consciousness. This was especially true of the Abbasid caliphate, based in Baghdad, that replaced the Umayyads in 750. The great Abbasid Caliph Harun al-Rashid, who made haj to Mecca every second year, never came to Jerusalem, even though he frequented Syria because of his wars against the Byzantines. The same was true of his successor, al-Ma'mun, as well as most of the later Abbasid caliphs. `1´

The fall of Jerusalem to the Crusaders in 1099 did not bring about a strong initial reaction from the Persian-based Abbasid caliphate. `12´ Sultan Kamil, who, following upon his father who succeeded Salah ad-Din, was the Ayyubid ruler of Egypt, voluntarily surrendered Jerusalem in 1229 to the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II. `13´

Moreover, Muslim scholars, including the great Hanbali scholar, Ibn Taymiyya, who lived in Damascus, were known to criticize the excessive veneration of Jerusalem as being adopted from Judaism." `14´ The Hanbali school of Islamic law is practiced in the Arabian Peninsula, particularly in Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Thus the relationship of Islam to Jerusalem was not always uniform, especially among those who lived in other parts of the Islamic world.

In the Jewish tradition, Jerusalem served as both a political and a spiritual capital. In the Islamic tradition, Jerusalem served as a spiritual center, but not a political center. `15´ The administrative center of Palestine after the Islamic conquests was Ramle, not Jerusalem. And subsequently Jerusalem became subservient to Muslim empires based in Damascus, Baghdad, Cairo, or Istanbul, but never served as an Islamic capital by itself.

Originally the Christian attitude, both Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox, was far harsher to Jews in Jerusalem than the Islamic approach. Under Byzantine rule, Jews were explicitly forbidden to live in Jerusalem, according to the convention established by the Roman Emperor Hadrian in the second century. Only once a year, on the ninth of Av, did the Byzantines permit Jews to gather at the Western Wall to mourn the destruction of the Temple.

During the Persian and Arab conquests of Jerusalem in the seventh century, Jewish resettlement of Jerusalem was permitted. But after the Christian conquest of Jerusalem by the Crusaders in 1099, Jews were again banned from Jerusalem. The Jewish community only began to recover after Saladin took Jerusalem from the Crusaders. While Jerusalem was the location of the teachings and crucifixion of Jesus, Christianity (unlike Islam and Judaism) underwent a process of "de-territorialization" over the centuries, that began with St. Augustine, but also continued with Luther and Calvin. `16´

In many respects, the Christian connection to Jerusalem today poses far fewer difficulties than the Jewish clash with the Muslim world over the last decades. In the 20th century the Vatican position has undergone considerable evolution. During the 1940s the Vatican opposed Jewish control of holy sites. At the time of the debate over the Partition Plan and even following the War of Independence, it supported internationalization of the city. After 1967, however, it dropped this position in favor of internationalization of the Old City alone.

Archbishop Renato Martino, Permanent Observer of the Vatican in the UN, gave an address at Fordham University on April 1989 in which he proposed a special regime for the Old City that would guarantee the equality of rights of the three major religions. The question of sovereignty now appeared less important. By December 1993 the Vatican itself confirmed this view: the original Vatican position calling for internationalization and the rejection of Israeli sovereignty was modified in favor of international guarantees. On December 30, 1993, the "Fundamental Agreement between the Holy See and the State of Israel" was signed, by which they established diplomatic relations. In it, Israel affirmed "its continuing commitment to maintain and respect the 'status quo' in the Christian holy places." In October 1994, the Vatican created formal links with the PLO that fell short of full diplomatic relations. `1´

Despite the fact that the League of Nations was formally terminated in April 1946, the rights of the Jewish people in Palestine (and in Jerusalem particularly) were preserved by the successor organization to the League of Nations, the United Nations, through Article 80 of the UN Charter. According to Article 80, the existing rights of states, peoples, "or the terms of existing international instruments" were protected. True, the UN General Assembly subsequently voted in November 1947, according to Resolution 181, to create an internationalized corpus separatum for the Jerusalem area, but, like all General Assembly resolutions, this was only a recommendation rather than an internationally legally binding instrument like the League of Nations' mandate for Palestine.

Resolution 181 presented a painful dilemma to the leadership of the Zionist movement. While offering UN support for the idea of a Jewish state, it required internationalization of Jerusalem, the center of Jewish historical aspirations. However, while the Zionist movement accepted Resolution 181 and the corpus separatum for Jerusalem that it contained, at least this was not a permanent concession of Jerusalem. According to Resolution 181, the special international regime for the city was to "remain in force in the first instance for a period of ten years."

Moreover, the resolution stipulated that at that time, "the residents of the City shall be free to express by means of a referendum their wishes as to possible modification of the regime of the City." Finally, in 1947, the Jewish population constituted two-thirds of Jerusalem's population. Thus, Jerusalem could well be incorporated into the Jewish state in the future. In any case, the leadership of the Zionist movement, at the time, knew that the Arab world, including the Palestinian Arabs, firmly rejected the Partition Plan.

The entry of Arab armies into the nascent State of Israel in May 1948 made the corpus separatum for Jerusalem a dead letter. In a letter to the members of the UN Security Council, UN Secretary-General Trygve Lie defined these military moves as "the first armed aggression which the world has seen since the end of the war (Second World War)."

After the siege and invasion of Jerusalem was broken by the efforts of the Israel Defense Forces (and not the UN) during Israel's War of Independence, Israel's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, declared in the Knesset on December 3, 1949 after the war's end: "...we can no longer regard the UN Resolution of the 29th of November as having any moral force. After the UN failed to implement its own resolution, we regard the resolution of the 29th of November concerning Jerusalem to be null and void."

Moreover, as Ambassador Abba Eban told the UN Trusteeship Council on 20 February 1950, even after the withdrawal of Britain's Mandatory government from Jerusalem on 14 May 1948, "the General Assembly simultaneously decided not to confer any international capacity upon it (Jerusalem)." In short, no other sovereignty or trusteeship superceded the rights of the Jewish people that had been acknowledged by the Mandate.

Already Jordan had massed most of its army (9 out of 12 brigades) along strategic positions in the West Bank and had given permission to Iraq to move an expeditionary army across Jordanian territory toward Israel. Within an hour Prime Minister Levi Eshkol sent a message to King Hussein through General Odd Bull, the commander of the UN Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO), that Israel would not move against Jordan if Jordan would "not open hostilities." As Foreign Minister Abba Eban noted, "we decided to give King Hussein an ultimate chance to turn back." Jordanian attacks only intensified, including the movement of armor and infantry; forward Iraqi formations had reached the Jordan River. Israel only moved against Jordan at 12:45 p.m. on June 5 after Jerusalem had clearly come under attack.

With the liberation of the Old City of Jerusalem as a result of the Six-Day War, the Eshkol government, with the backing of the Knesset, extended Israeli law, jurisdiction, and administration to the eastern part of Jerusalem on June 27, 1967. New municipal boundaries were created that included strategic points in the West Bank which had been exploited by the Jordanians.

Before the international community, Israel argued that it had not actually "annexed" East Jerusalem. Clearly, this was done in order to assuage states that firmly opposed unilateral Israeli acts after the war. But, according to Israel's Supreme Court, the eastern section of Jerusalem had in fact become an integral part of the State of Israel. The Supreme Court did not have to take into account diplomatic considerations in its ruling, but rather legal realities. Palestinian Arabs in East Jerusalem were not forced to acquire Israeli citizenship or surrender their Jordanian passports, but did have the right to apply and receive Israeli citizenship.

Considering that Jordan's position in Jerusalem had resulted from its 1948 invasion of the city, which was defined by the UN Secretary-General at the time as an act of "aggression" (see above), while Israel's standing in Jerusalem resulted from a war of self-defense, Israel could claim that it had a superior title to unified Jerusalem. This line of argument was largely consistent with the analysis of major international legal experts like State Department Legal Advisor Stephen Schwebel, who would later head the International Court of Justice in The Hague. Schwebel indeed argued in 1970 that "Israel has better title in the territory of what was Palestine, including the whole of Jerusalem (emphasis added), than do Jordan and Egypt.¹⁸ Indeed, the UN Security Council refused to agree to a Soviet initiative on June 14, 1967, to have Israel branded as the aggressor in the Six-Day War. The situation of Jordan in 1948 and Israel in 1967 thus stood in stark contrast.

In fact, UN Security Council Resolution 242 of November 1967 did not even mention Jerusalem and did not insist on a full withdrawal to the pre-1967 lines in the resolution's operative language (only a withdrawal from "territories" to "secure and recognized boundaries"). True, Resolution 242 contains "the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war" in its preamble, but this language did not preclude changes in the pre-1967 lines that would result in "secure boundaries." `19´ This dovetailed with Israeli legal claims to parts of the territories that it captured, including Jerusalem.

Despite Israel's new legal position in East Jerusalem, the Eshkol government did not interfere with the administration of the Muslim Holy Sites on the Temple Mount by the East Jerusalem Waqf, whose officials continued to be appointed by Jordan. Yet Israel did not surrender its sovereignty regarding the Waqf. In its decision to expropriate the areas around the Western Wall and the Jewish Quarter, Israel was ready to assert its sovereignty vis-a-vis Waqf properties.

Nationalization of Waqf properties and compensation have occurred in Arab states like Jordan, too. But since the recovery of the Western Wall and the Jewish Quarter, Israel has rarely exercised its sovereign rights vis-a-vis the Waqf. In effect, a new status quo has arisen under which Israel could in theory intervene heavily, but in practice rarely intervenes at all. `20´

Israeli diplomatic policy on Jerusalem was established at the time of the annexation of East Jerusalem by the Eshkol government. While confirming Israel's political sovereignty over the entire city, Eshkol announced before a group of religious leaders that "it is our intention to place the international administration and organization of the Holy Places in the hands of the respective religious leaders." `21´

The Israeli position had two dimensions. As Foreign Minister Abba Eban wrote several weeks later, in a July 10 letter to the Secretary General of the United Nations: "It is evident from the United Nations discussions and documents that the international interest in Jerusalem has always been understood to derive from the presence of the Holy Places." `22´ The letter continued by stating that Israel "ensured that the Holy Places of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam be administered [emphasis added] under the responsibility of the religions which hold them sacred." Eban drafted the letter with the assistance of two ministerial colleagues, Menachem Begin (Gahal-Herut) and Zerach Warhaftig (Mizrachi). `23´

Prime Minister Golda Meir continued this line of policy by stating in October 1971: "Israel is prepared to conclude agreements with the religious authorities of Christianity and Islam so as to ensure the religious status and the universal character of the sites holy to the various religions." `24´ Thus Israel was willing to work out inter-religious arrangements with respect to these holy places. The terminology of these arrangements referred to administration, but not sovereignty. To the extent that Israel was prepared to make concessions in East Jerusalem, these were highly qualified and were circumscribed to the inter-religious level, and in no way compromised Israeli sovereignty in the city.

The Holst letter stated that "all Palestinian [sic] institutions of East Jerusalem, including the economic, social, educational, and cultural, and the holy Christian and Moslem places, are performing an essential task for the Palestinian [sic] population."²⁶ Israel undertook "not to hamper their activity" and had this assurance relayed to the PLO. By recognizing the PLO as a party with regard to the Muslim holy places, the Israeli government was contradicting the status quo that had existed with Jordan for many years.

It also opened up the possibility of functional understandings in Jerusalem regarding the Palestinian population, instead of the narrowly confined inter-religious understandings over the administration of holy places that were proposed by the Eshkol government. At least one leading voice in the Rabin government has made statements that indicate the possibility of flexibility in the future on the issue of Jerusalem. Thus Deputy Foreign Minister Yossi Beilin has stated, "I'm not saying Israel is ready to compromise on Jerusalem now, but I think that since we are ready to go a long way with the Palestinians for many other issues, we can solve the problem of Jerusalem too." `27´

The expansion of the negotiating agenda on Jerusalem that occurred with the Holst letter was somewhat corrected in the Washington Declaration of July 1994 by Prime Minister Rabin and King Hussein. The Israeli-Jordanian statement said that: "Israel respects the present special role of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in Muslim holy shrines in Jerusalem. When negotiations on the permanent status will take place, Israel will give high priority to the Jordanian historic role in these shrines. In addition, the two sides have agreed to act together to promote interfaith relations among the three monotheistic religions." `28´

The Israeli position still held that a unified Jerusalem was to remain under Israeli sovereignty. But with respect to the Palestinians, the Rabin government had made the PLO an interlocutor regarding a variety of issues affecting the Palestinian population. As for Jordan, it was an interlocutor on Jerusalem with regard to Muslim shrines alone. This latter approach was closer to traditional Israeli policy that accepted the administration of the holy places by the various religions, even if Jerusalem was to remain united under Israeli sovereignty.

It is important to add that, in approving the Washington Declaration on August 3, 1994, the Knesset also voted on a Likud party proposed statement recalling that a united Jerusalem, under Israeli sovereignty, would remain Israel's "eternal and exclusive capital." This added statement was approved by a majority of 77 to 9, and was supported by all the ministers of the Rabin government, including those from Meretz. It clearly precluded the idea of making Jerusalem a dual capital, both of Israel and of another political entity.

Rabin himself remained firm on retaining Israeli sovereignty over all of Jerusalem; he told a group of Tel Aviv schoolchildren on June 27, 1995: "If they told us that peace is the price of giving up on a united Jerusalem under Israeli sovereignty, my reply would be 'let's do without peace.'" `29´

However, there was still a contradiction between the commitments made by Israel to the PLO in the Holst letter and in the Washington Declaration. The former sought to assure the PLO that Israel would encourage the continuation and even the growth of Palestinian interests in "holy...Moslem places"; the latter gave assurances to Jordan about its role in the very same holy sites. The PLO clearly pushed open the door that the Holst letter created, when it established on September 19, 1994, the Ministry for Waqf Affairs of the Palestinian Authority in East Jerusalem under Hasan Tahbub.

The following month, after the Jerusalem Mufti, Sulaiman al-Jabari, passed away, the Jordanian-PLO rivalry intensified. Jordan appointed a new Mufti, Sheikh 'Abd al-Kadir 'Abadin. The PLO appointed its own Mufti, Sheikh Ekrima Sabri. The PLO was clearly moving into an area that had been previously under Jordan's special jurisdiction. But the Israeli government did not intervene in the controversy, even if it preferred Jordan as an interlocutor on Jerusalem and not the PLO.

With the implementation of the Oslo Agreements, through the September 28, 1995 Interim Agreement, there were two further important developments in Israeli policy under the Rabin government. First, Rabin's concept of "Greater Jerusalem" was circumscribed as Ramallah and Bethlehem went over to full Palestinian control and were designated Area A territories. The Palestinians had hoped that Rabin would turn over Abu Dis, as well, as part of the Bethlehem withdrawal. But Rabin refused to give Abu Dis Area A status and instead made it an Area B territory in which Israeli security forces still had freedom of movement. Second, under the Interim Agreement, Palestinians residing in Jerusalem could vote in the elections for the Palestinian Council; yet the Jerusalem Palestinians were to only vote at Israeli post offices in East Jerusalem. Israel could claim that the Palestinians were no different than other foreign nationals who voted by absentee ballot in foreign national elections.

The next major development in Jerusalem policy under the Rabin government was the Stockholm channel on permanent status, run by Deputy Foreign Minister Yossi Beilin and Arafat's deputy, Abu Mazen. Their joint paper, reached on October 30, 1995, proposed a Palestinian capital in Abu Dis, but no recognition of Israeli sovereignty in East Jerusalem, whose final status would be determined in subsequent negotiations. A Palestinian flag - not a Jordanian flag - would fly in the area of the Temple Mount. The Beilin-Abu Mazen paper was not signed. Neither Arafat nor Rabin's successor, Shimon Peres, accepted its terms. Peres had already articulated in 1994 a vision for Jerusalem different from the Beilin-Abu Mazen paper:

What I mean is that Jerusalem is politically closed, religiously open. No serious person will suggest to make out of Jerusalem another Berlin, to have a wall, a split. Jerusalem is united politically, is the capital of Israel, and you cannot have two capitals in one city. It is under Israeli sovereignty. But when it comes to the religious sites - not that we are going to share, (but) we are going to respect completely, fully, responsibly the rights, the hopes and the worship of the Christians and the Muslims. `30´

Arafat was only willing to call the paper "a basis for further negotiations." Palestinian negotiators viewed Abu Dis as a vehicle for absorbing East Jerusalem by "osmosis." Subsequently, Abu Mazen claimed in discussions with the author that he never agreed to the document. Nevertheless, despite the refusal of Prime Minister Peres to accept the Beilen-Abu Mazen paper, it represented a further erosion of Israel's diplomatic position in Jerusalem as presented before Palestinian representatives. At the same time a myth persisted that Abu Dis was an acceptable substitute for Jerusalem, from the Palestinian perspective, leading many Israelis to overestimate the extent to which the issue of Jerusalem was soluable.

The basis of the PLO's declaration of statehood is UN General Assembly Resolution 181. According to Yasir Arafat's declaration of November 15, 1988, "this resolution still provides conditions for international legitimacy to guarantee the right of the Palestinian Arab people to sovereignty and national independence." Arafat continued his declaration by announcing "the PNC declares in the name of God and in the name of the Palestinian Arab people, the emergence of the State of Palestine over our Palestinian soil and its capital holy Jerusalem." Several months earlier, in his Palestinian independence document, Faisal al-Husseini also spoke about "Jerusalem, capital of Palestine."

Unqualified references to Jerusalem raise the question of whether the PLO claim is to East Jerusalem alone, or whether it extends to parts of West Jerusalem as well, especially since Resolution 181 did not apportion the western half of the city to Israel, but rather sought to erect a separate international regime for the city as a whole. `31´

The PLO's international diplomacy, moreover, has not always sought to distinguish between the eastern and western parts of the city. PLO proposed UN resolutions, whether in the Security Council, the General Assembly, or the UN specialized agencies, make explicit reference to all of Jerusalem. Formal resolutions have deplored Israeli actions in "Arab territories occupied by Israel since 1967, including Jerusalem." Yet this qualification of territories taken since 1967 did not always appear in earlier drafts.

Privately, well-connected Palestinian academics admit that they still have claims to parts of the western half of the city. They refer to destroyed Arab villages on the western side of Jerusalem. Some still explicitly support "complete internationalization of the city including East and West Jerusalem." `32´

During 1998-99, Palestinian spokesmen made strong efforts, in fact, to revive these political claims on the basis of UN General Assembly Resolution 181. Thus Abu 'Ala wrote in al-Hayat al-Jadida on December 21, 1998: "...it should be emphasized that the [Palestinian] state has internationally recognized borders, which are the borders set in the [1947] partition resolution."

This revival of Resolution 181 had implications for Jerusalem, especially when critical elements of the international community responded. For example, on March 1, 1999, the German ambassador to Israel, in his capacity as representing the presidency of the European Union, sent a Note Verbale to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Israel stating: "The European Union reaffirms its known position concerning the specific status of Jerusalem as a corpus separatum (emphasis added)." The EU statement only radicalized the Palestinian position. Again, Abu 'Ala was quoted in al-Ayyam on March 14, stating: "The [EU's] letter asserts that Jerusalem in both its parts - the Western and the Eastern - is a land under occupation."

Reinforced by the European position on Resolution 181, PLO chairman Yasser Arafat brought his campaign on this issue to the United Nations. On March 23, 1999, he met with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and raised Resolution 181. Upon leaving Annan's office he told reporters in Arabic:

I remind the world that the decision calling for the establishment of the Palestinian state is Resolution 181, which refers to a Palestinian state, then to a Jewish state which later came to be called Israel.

Arafat's UN representative, the PLO Permanent Observer, continued the campaign two days later in a letter to the Secretary-General that was turned into a press release:

Yesterday, the Israeli representative to the United Nations made some comments to the media on the issue of General Assembly Resolution 181 (II) of 29 November 1947, as well as on a statement previously made by President Arafat on the subject. The Israeli representative repeated what the Israeli Foreign Minister said a few days ago; namely that Resolution 181 (II) was 'null and void.' These are pathetic statements involving illegal positions....Moreover, we believe that Israel must still explain to the international community the measures it took illegally to extend its laws and regulations to the territory it occupied in the war of 1948, beyond the territory allocated to the Jewish state in Resolution 181 (II). Such a situation has not been accepted by the international community (emphasis added).

Clearly, the PLO letter to the Secretary-General sought to open up for discussion all Israeli territory between the partition lines and the 1949 Armistice Agreements. But also, the letter, in effect, sought to open up the issue of Jerusalem, and Israeli control of territories that had been planned in 1947 to fall under the corpus separatum. As noted in the PLO letter, Israeli Foreign Minister Ariel Sharon had repeated Ben-Gurion's determination from 1949 that 181 was "null and void."

At the UN, Israel's response, on March 30, 1999, described before the international community the PLO effort as a "transparent effort to belatedly derive benefit from a resolution which the Palestinian leadership itself violently rejected 50 years ago." The Israeli ambassador's letter stated that the PLO "seeks to broaden the parameters of the discussion of Jerusalem far beyond what was ever conceived in the Oslo Accords."

The EU position on Jerusalem, which had set off this flurry of diplomatic activity, was praised in parts of the Arab world. Osama el-Baz, Egyptian president Husni Mubarak's advisor, stated that Egypt welcomed the move. Equally, the Egyptians were critical of Israel's counter-moves against Resolution 181. Al-Akhbar reported on its front page on April 4, 1999, that Israel had taken "another bite" of the peace process with the rejection by Israel's UN Ambassador of the applicability of Resolution 181 today. Palestinian and European moves were hardening Arab positions across the Middle East.

At times, Arafat himself has even denied the Israeli right to a capital in Jerusalem, even in its western half. In his famous Johannesburg speech on May 10, 1994, he asserted: "I'm saying this to give proof that what they (the Israelis) are saying that it is their capital. No it is not their capital, it is our capital."³³ This was not the only statement of this kind; a few months later in early August, Arafat declared: "Jerusalem was and will remain the capital of Palestine, all of it is Palestinian." `34´ More recently, Faisal Husseini stated that the Palestinians have claims to land and property in Western Jerusalem, particularly in the neighborhoods of Katamon and Talbieh. He estimated that 70% of the land in Western Jerusalem was Palestinian-owned; and noted Palestinian claims to villages like Lifta and Dir Yassin. `35´

Attempts to raise the issue of the western half of the city are implicit in the proposals of Hanna Siniora, pro-Fatah editor-in-chief of Al-Fajr:

We felt that, using the 1947 Partition Plan divisions, all the institutions of both peoples could be located in the Greater Jerusalem area. West Jerusalem would have the Knesset, the seat of the Israeli government and all other Israeli government institutions, and in East Jerusalem we would have the Palestinian National Council, the seat of the Palestinian government and all other Palestinian government institutions. Our plan calls for the mutual agreement between the two countries to suspend the issue of sovereignty over the entire area of Greater Jerusalem [both east and west - D.G.] or the Metropolitan Council of Jerusalem. `36´

Siniora hopes that his model will permit the enlargement of the Palestinian presence in the western side of Jerusalem. He envisions "Palestinian neighborhoods/settlements in the Greater Area of West Jerusalem" as a means of compensating the Palestinians for the huge Israeli neighborhoods like Ramot or Gilo that have been erected on the eastern side.

While not formally representing the PLO, Walid Khalidi has suggested proposals for Jerusalem that reflect lines of thinking within the organization. Khalidi proposed in a 1988 Foreign Affairs article "the designation of West Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, East Jerusalem the capital of Palestine. Extraterritorial status and access to the Jewish holy places would be assured, and a Grand Ecumenical Council formed to represent the three monotheistic faiths (with rotating chairmanship), to oversee inter-religious harmony. Reciprocal rights of movement and residence between the two capitals within agreed-upon limits would be negotiated." `3´

Khalidi's proposals indicate two important elements of Palestinian thought. First, there is no indication of territorial compromise in Jerusalem, other than on the basis of a return to the 1967 lines. His offer of extraterritorial status for the Jewish holy places is within an Old City that reverts to Arab rule. This point is made repeatedly by leading Palestinians in public and private meetings. Second, like Siniora, Khalidi seeks ways of compensating for the Israeli-Jewish population on the eastern side by establishing a reciprocal Palestinian right of residence on the western side of Jerusalem.

As noted above, Jordan's political control over the eastern parts of Jerusalem ended in 1967, but its religious role continued nonetheless. The Israeli government left the functions of religious affairs under the East Jerusalem Waqf from the Jordanian administration. Thus the Jordanian Ministry of Awqaf (Waqf-pl. Arabic) and not the Israeli Ministry of Religious Affairs managed the matters of the East Jerusalem Waqf. The Waqf existed under Jordanian law and Jordan appointed its officials, who generally came from pro-Jordanian segments of the Palestinian Arab population. More recent tensions between Jordan and the Palestinians in this regard are detailed below.

Jordan provided considerable funding to the Waqf as well. Moreover, the relative role of Jordan in the Waqf budget increased over the years: in 1977, for example, Waqf expenditures of 951,356 dinars came from Waqf income of 382,389 dinars and a Jordanian contribution of 568,967 dinars. By 1982, as Waqf expenditure increased to 2,607,486 dinars, the relative contribution of Waqf income fell to 362,437 dinars, while the Jordanian contribution rose to 2,245,049 dinars. `39´

Jordan's decision of July 31, 1988, to sever the Hashemite Kingdom's administrative ties to the West Bank did not affect the connections of its Ministry of Religious Endowments and Religious Affairs to the Waqf.⁴⁰ These connections continued into 1994. Most recently, King Hussein allotted about 8 million dollars for repair work on the Temple Mount mosques.

Jordan's policy regarding Jerusalem went through significant developments due to the DOP. King Hussein reconfirmed his kingdom's responsibility for the Islamic holy sites in the eastern parts of the city. His public statements indicated a willingness to look at the issue of Jerusalem as primarily a religious issue: "With regard to the Islamic holy places of Jerusalem in particular, our position remains unchanged....We did not, nor will we ever, recognize any sovereignty over them, except by almighty God, as indeed with the holy places of all believers in God in this most holy city." `41´ A day after signing the Israeli-Jordanian Peace Treaty, in October 1994, he addressed his parliament, saying: "we will never relinquish our religious responsibilities toward the holy sites, under all circumstances." `42´

By the time of the Casablanca Conference of November 1994, Former Crown Prince Hasan added new elements to the definition of Jordan's role in Jerusalem. He explained on November 1 that Jordan exercised "holy authority" or "moral authority" over holy shrines within the walls of the Old City. Yet the Jordanian role was now circumscribed in time: "in the final status negotiations, when jurisdiction (over the Old City) is transferred to the Palestinian side, this responsibility in its entirely will be transferred to those concerned."⁴³ He stated that current arrangements were for the interim period alone

Two elements could be inferred from Hasan's statement. First, while expressing a willingness to modify the current interim arrangements in the holy places, Hasan only stated that Jordan's responsibility for holy sites would be transferred "to those concerned"; he did not make explicit reference to a Palestinian authority. Jordan could still fit into the category of a concerned party. Second, by stating that present arrangements would be modified only if a final status territorial settlement was reached between Israel and the Palestinians, Jordan now conceivably had an interest in final status agreements never being reached.

Both of these possibilities were contained in statements by then Prime Minister 'Abd al-Salim al-Majali to MBC on October 30, 1994: "As to what the final solution will be, there will be a role for Jordan in any final solution. In other words, we shall submit our viewpoint when the issue is resolved in the final phase. On Jordan's behalf, I affirm to you that on the day when Israel's political sovereignty over Jerusalem ends and the brother Palestinians take over sovereignty, we shall seriously consider abandoning this jurisdiction."⁴⁴ Thus neither Crown Prince Hasan nor Prime Minister al-Majali precluded a continuing Jordanian religious role in final status. They opened up the possibility that the claims of others could be considered.

Under King Abdullah, Jordanian efforts to come to a modus vivendi with the PLO have accelerated and insistence on retaining Jordan's exclusive role has been modified. Not long after taking office, in May 1999 Abdullah still referred to Jordan being a partner in determining the final status of Jerusalem: "Well, Jerusalem is extremely important to me as a Hashemite, as a Muslem, as a Jordanian. And I believe that whether we reach final status discussions that I hope that Jordan will have a voice on the future of Jerusalem."⁴⁵ King Abdullah did not speak specifically about the Washington Declaration and Jordan's special role as caretaker of the mosques on the Temple Mount.

The basic American terms of reference on the Jerusalem issue are not the 1967 Six-Day War and Resolution 242, as in the case of other disputed territories. The US formally is still on record supporting Resolution 181 of the United Nations from November 1947, that called for the partition of British Mandatory Palestine and the creation of a special international regime for Jerusalem as a whole.⁴⁸ Resolution 181 stated: "The City of Jerusalem shall be established as a corpus separatum under a special international regime and shall be administered by the United Nations." After Israel's War of Independence, the US dropped its support for the corpus separatum and instead proposed a more limited form of internationalization under a UN Commissioner.⁴⁹

Thus in July 1952, the Truman administration notified the Israeli government that "the Government of the United States has adhered and continues to adhere to the policy that there should be a special international regime for Jerusalem." And in April 1960, the US notified Jordan that it "has adhered and continues to adhere to a policy which respects the interest of the United Nations in Jerusalem." In the intervening years, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles had softened the official American line when he stated in 1953 that Israel and Jordan could have "some political status" in the city.⁵⁰

After the 1967 Six-Day War, the American preference for an international regime barely survived as an undercurrent of US policy. For example, on June 28, 1967, one day after Israel's annexation of East Jerusalem, the Department of State released a statement saying, "the United States has never recognized such unilateral actions by any states of the area as governing the international status of Jerusalem."⁵¹ This was incorporated into the statement of Ambassador Arthur J. Goldberg before the UN General Assembly the following month; Goldberg's language became a basic reference point for US statements on Jerusalem for the next decade.

Secretary of State William Rogers announced in December 1969, "certain principles" for a Jerusalem settlement. He spoke about the need for a "unified city," open access for persons of all faiths, and "roles for both Israel and Jordan in the civic, economic and religious life of the city" - a more detailed elaboration of Dulles's "some political status." Administrative arrangements for the city, however, were to take into account the interests of "all its inhabitants" as well as of the Jewish, Islamic, and Christian communities. The international regime could still be read into American policy pronouncements at the time of the Rogers Plan.

At the time of the Camp David Accords, the US government made special efforts to reassure various Arab parties about the future of Jerusalem. As already noted, President Carter wrote to President Sadat referring him to the Goldberg statement of July 1967 (see above). But a far more detailed description of US policy was provided by President Carter to King Hussein in a series of answers to Jordanian questions in October 1978.⁵²

Carter first explained that "we believe a distinction must be made between Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank because of the City's special status and circumstances. We would envisage, therefore, a negotiated solution for the final status of Jerusalem that could be different in character in some respects from that of the rest of the West Bank." What did "different in character" mean? It could be Israeli sovereignty and Arab administration, it could mean limited Arab sovereignty with international administration, or international sovereignty with Arab administration, along the line of Dulles's "some political status." The phraseology was deliberately vague.

During the Camp David autonomy regime, Carter wrote, he supported proposals "that would permit Arab inhabitants of East Jerusalem who are not Israeli citizens to participate in the elections to constitute the self-governing authority and in the work of the self-governing authority itself." Carter warned that "it is probably not realistic to expect that the full scope [emphasis added] of the self-governing authority can be extended to East Jerusalem during the transitional period."

This indicated Carter's appraisal of Israeli public opinion rather than his preference. Concerning the US position on final status, Carter simply stated that "whatever solution is agreed upon should preserve Jerusalem as a physically [emphasis added] undivided city." He spoke about free access to holy places and the basic rights of the city's residents. The only international regime hinted at was that "the holy places of each faith should be under the full authority of their representatives."

Thus Carter seemed to be breaking away from any hint of internationalization and moving toward ultimately dividing sovereignty in Jerusalem, without a physical wall. The issue of an international regime seemed now to focus on the holy places themselves, and not on territorial sovereignty in Jerusalem.

US policy on Jerusalem was affected by the larger question of US policy towards settlement activity in the West Bank and Gaza. During the Carter years, the US determined that settlement activity was "inconsistent with international law." This conclusion was based on the determination of the State Department Legal Advisor, Herbert J. Hansell, that Article 49 of the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention applied to the case of the territories Israel administered since 1967; Article 49 stated "the occupying power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies."

The Israeli argument that the Fourth Geneva Convention did not apply to the case of Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza, because Jordan and Egypt previously occupied those territories as aggressors and hence had no sovereign rights, was not accepted: "the paramount purposes (of the Geneva Convention) are protecting the civilian population of an occupied territory." Nor did the argument that the 1949 Geneva Conventions grew out of the history of mass expulsion in Nazi-occupied Europe affect the judgment of the legal advisor.

The test of the Carter administration's position came when the UN Security Council voted for Resolution 465, on March 1, 1980, which affirmed that the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention applied to "Arab territories occupied by Israel since 1967, including Jerusalem (emphasis added). The US supported the resolution, but subsequently, two days later, President Carter stated that given the reference to Jerusalem, the US vote in the Security Council was a mistake.

During the Reagan administration these sorts of problems were averted; settlement activity was no longer viewed as a violation of international law, essentially because Washington decided to deal with the question in practical terms rather than get tied down to a debate in principle. At the UN, Ambassador Jeanne Kirkpatrick refused to continue the past policy of the Carter team which supported a General Assembly resolution "strongly deploring" Israel's refusal to accept de jure application of the Fourth Geneva Convention to the West Bank and Gaza. The US shifted its affirmative vote to an abstention. 53 Thus the question of US policy toward its applicability to Jerusalem became a moot point.

Under President Bush, US policy reverted to the Carter years as US criticism over Israeli settlement policy included references to Jerusalem, as well. Thus, Bush stated on March 3, 1990: "...the foreign policy of the United States says we do not believe there should be new settlements in the West Bank or in East Jerusalem." At the opening of the Madrid Peace Conference on October 30, 1991, Bush did not say a word about Jerusalem; nonetheless he introduced territorial flexibility, with implications for Jerusalem, when he stated that "territorial compromise is essential for peace."

The Clinton administration moved forward in expressing gradual acceptance of Israel's position in Jerusalem. Just before the 1992 elections, Clinton gave an interview to Middle East Insight in which he stated, "I do recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital, and Jerusalem ought to remain an undivided city."54 Once in office, Clinton's team softened official US language on Jerusalem considerably. After the deportation of Palestinians from territories back in early 1988, UN Security Council Resolution 608 was passed with American support that referred to the West Bank as a whole as "occupied Palestinian territories."

But in March 1994, the Clinton administration formally retreated from using this language when the motion to condemn the Hebron massacre came up for a vote. US Ambassador to the UN Madeleine Albright explained: "we are today voting against a resolution precisely because it implies that Jerusalem is occupied Palestinian territory. We simply do not support the description of the territories occupied by Israel in the 1967 war as occupied Palestinian territory."55

Clinton's team has been only partially supportive of Israel's view that Jerusalem should not serve as an administrative center of any sort for the PLO's self-governing institutions. On the one hand, the administration "categorically ruled out" opening an office in East Jerusalem to administer financial assistance to the Palestinians through the Agency for International Development. `56´

But on the other hand, US officials did not stop visiting Orient House to conduct political discussions that went beyond the narrow local interests of Palestinians living in East Jerusalem. For example, US Peace Process Coordinator Dennis Ross met with Palestinian representatives in Orient House on January 17, 1994. US Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown followed two days later, meeting Palestinian delegates to the peace process. More importantly, a US-Palestinian memorandum was signed in Orient House on February 2, 1994, covering the financing of a construction project for the Gaza Strip.´57´

The Clinton administration has unquestionably affected the evolution of the American position on Jerusalem by its sponsorship of peace accords between Israel and the PLO, on the one hand, and Israel and Jordan, on the other. By backing the DOP, the administration only gave its backing to the procedural point that the issue of Jerusalem would be a subject of negotiations in final status talks. But in the case of the Washington Declaration, the Clinton administration was lending its support to a point of real substance about the future of Jerusalem: that Jordan should receive "high priority" when the issue of the Muslim shrines of Jerusalem come up during permanent status negotiations. And by specifically backing the Israeli-Jordanian agreement, the Clinton administration opened the possibility that American policy might consider a religious solution in Jerusalem and not just a territorial solution.

In the meantime, the administration staunchly refused to allow other diplomatic initiatives to surface on the Jerusalem issue, outside of the bilateral peace process between the parties. On May 17, 1995, the US vetoed a UN Security Council resolution on Israeli land expropriations in Jerusalem; the next day, May 18, the US opposed a Palestinian proposal for a multilateral working group on Jerusalem, that was raised during the Montreux meeting of the Steering Group for the Middle East Peace Process. The administration faced competition on the Jerusalem issue from Congress; a letter dated February 3, 1995, that called for the transfer of the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, was signed by 93 US senators (only 50 senators supported a similar initiative in 1984). The administration opposed congressional efforts to move to mandatory legislation.

The US took upon itself a more active and engaged role on Jerusalem matters during the negotiations leading up to the Hebron Protocols in 1996-97. In September 1996, the Clinton administration initially pressured the Netanyahu government to close the Hasmonean tunnel, the opening of one side of which was followed by widespread rioting. Later, however, the US became a guarantor of Israel's demand of the Palestinians to close Palestinian Authority offices in East Jerusalem; the Note for the Record, which contained the specific clause for closing these offices, was, in fact, signed by US Peace Coordinator Dennis Ross.