MB Civic

There will be no peace in Palestine until the problem of Jerusalem is solved. Together with the fate of the Palestinian refugees of 1948, it is rightly called the heart of the conflict. But it is a heart shared by conjoined twins. Both Israel and Palestine say that they cannot live without it. So any operation designed to separate Israel from the Palestinians must be exceptionally sensitive and delicate. Worse, it must be performed from the outset in the knowledge that complete separation is out of the question. In Jerusalem at least, Israel and Palestine are doomed to remain perpetually entwined.

In the nearly 40 years since 1967, sensitivity and delicacy have not been Israel's watchwords in Jerusalem. As it happens, most orthodox Jews subscribe to a dogma that forbids Jewish access to the Temple Mount until the day of redemption. This has helped Israel leave the running of the Noble Sanctuary and its mosques in Muslim hands. But in Jerusalem as a whole Israel's policy has been to entrench its control and create facts that cannot be reversed. This has entailed reshaping the physical and demographic geography of the city, settling Jews on the Arab side of the pre-1967 border and creating vast Jewish neighbourhoods to the north, east and south.

On one level, the policy has worked. The huge physical changes render it impossible to redivide the city along the pre-1967 boundary. But on many other levels, the policy has failed. The rest of the world, including the United Nations and the United States, says still that Israel's annexation of the city, and the settling of Jews across the old border, are illegal. Moreover, in spite of sometimes ruthless Israeli efforts to turf Arabs out of their homes, demography has defied expectations. Jews have formed a majority in Jerusalem since the late 19th century. Since 1967, however, this has declined, from 74% of the reunited city in 1967 to about 67%. And for all Israel's declarations, the city has never been “reunited” in spirit. Its Palestinian residents refuse to vote in municipal elections and insist on their future as part of an independent Palestine.

Jerusalem is a microcosm. Israel has settled Jews in much of the West Bank, but these settlements are illegal too. As in Jerusalem, demography has undone the dream of a Greater Israel. Israel's incoming government acknowledges that it must fall back to shorter borders and let an independent Palestine arise behind it. But, as in Jerusalem, the old pre-1967 border has been largely erased. And the chances of negotiating a new one, now that the obdurate Islamists of Hamas have replaced the impossible Yasser Arafat, are remote. Hence the appeal of the big idea that Israelis have come to see as the next-best thing: unilateral withdrawal to borders of their own choosing. In essence, this entails building a security barrier to keep out suicide bombers, evacuating the settlements on the far side of the barrier, hunkering down and hoping for the best.

As a second-best, unilateralism has merits. By going it alone, Israel left Gaza. If Israel now evacuates more Jewish settlements in the West Bank, so much better for the prospects of an eventual Palestinian state. But even if it is better than nothing, this is no substitute for a negotiated peace.

Again, Jerusalem shows why. Israel's barrier is not just for security. It is also a land grab: an attempt to map out preferred borders. That is why, in the case of Jerusalem, the barrier ignores demography and swallows up east Jerusalem. This follows the annexation border but traps on the Israeli side hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who will be cut off from their brethren in the West Bank and may well be tempted in any new intifada to help or become suicide bombers.

Israel does not bear sole responsibility for the current impasse. The crazy human geography of Jerusalem and the West Bank has been created by more than half a century of missed opportunities on both sides, in which the Arab refusal to come to terms with Jewish statehood has played its part. Historians will argue uselessly till the end of days over which side deserves more blame. What is clear is that by redividing Jerusalem in the way it is about to, Israel is making things worse. No peace is possible unless the city remains accessible, from both its east and west. At the very least, during this period of relative calm, Israel must keep its barrier as open as possible. Sealing in and cutting off the Palestinians of Jerusalem will only make another descent into violence more likely.

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