by Nadav Shragai
The Palestinians call the offer of an alternative capital in the village of Abu Dis, east of Jerusalem, the "slap of the century," conveniently overlooking the fact that they rejected much more generous offers made by previous Israeli governments.
|
Abu Dis could have
been the Palestinians' point of entry to the
Temple Mount
Photo: Moshe Shai
The
abandoned Palestinian parliament building in Abu Dis is 2.8 kilometers
(1.7 miles) east of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem's Old City. The
Knesset is the same distance west of the holy site.
Back when Palestinian Authority President
Mahmoud Abbas was serving as deputy to PLO founder Yasser Arafat, Abu
Dis was known as "the second Jerusalem," a temporary substitute before
the anticipated permanent division of the city. At the time, Abbas was
willing to swallow this bitter pill, and even see Abu Dis decked out
with various Palestinian government institutions.
But today the Trump administration is
trying to put Abu Dis back on the table as part of the "deal of the
century," and Abbas is denigrating it as the "slap of the century."
The penny dropped for Abbas when he met
with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman in December. In that
meeting, he heard for the first time that U.S. President Donald Trump
was offering the Palestinians Abu Dis instead of Jerusalem as their
capital. That was when Abbas decided to hand the current White House its
walking papers, which he did a month later.
Abbas sees the proposal as embarrassing,
not to say humiliating. After two Israeli prime ministers – Ehud Barak
and Ehud Olmert – put the division of Jerusalem on the table (Barak at
Camp David in 2000 and Olmert in 2008), the offer of Abu Dis as a
capital comes a little too late. Jerusalem was nearly in their grasp,
and now someone is pushing them back in time.
It is unclear who gave the Americans the
idea to revert to the Abu Dis option. What is clear is that the
village's not-very-distant-past status as an alternative to Jerusalem as
the Palestinian capital, especially Abbas' place in that option, gave
the Americans grounds to assume they should give it another try.
Twenty years ago, Abbas and Israeli former
minister Yossi Beilin worked together to draft their famous document of
"understandings." It was not an agreement, merely an unofficial document
that sketched out parameters for a permanent peace deal. When it came
to Jerusalem, the two suggested expanding the city and establishing an
umbrella municipality that would be managed by two sub-municipalities:
Jewish Jerusalem and Arab Al-Quds.
Abu Dis was given a prominent place in
these understandings. Israelis were already calling it "the second
Jerusalem." The Palestinians saw it as another rung on the ladder but
began treating it as an alternative, temporary seat of government. They
set up a number of Palestinian governmental entities there: the
headquarters of the Palestinian security establishment; local government
offices; and the crown jewel, a five-story parliament building with
an opulent 132-seat hall for the members of the Palestinian Legislative
Council and roomy offices – never occupied – for the heads of the PLO
and the Palestinian parliament.
But fate has a sense of humor: The
Palestinian parliament building was built on land owned by the Jewish
National Fund, a third of which lies within the municipal boundaries of
Jerusalem, but Israel ignored that. The JNF land, along with another 450
dunams (112 acres) of Jewish-owned land purchased by residents of the
Mea Shearim neighborhood 90 years ago, remains outside Israel's security
barrier, which divided Abu Dis into two unequal sections based on the
municipal boundaries established in 1967. Ninety percent of the town was
transferred to the civil control of the Palestinian Authority and
classed as Area B (jointly administered by the Palestinian Authority and
Israel) and only 10% is still within the borders of Jerusalem and the
Green Line.
On the Israeli side of Abu Dis, some 60
dunams (15 acres) of the land originally bought by the people of Mea
Shearim remain. Jewish financier Irving Moskowitz purchased some of it
and housed eight Jewish families there. For 15 years, they have been
living on the Jewish side of Abu Dis, in an area relatively sparsely
populated by Arabs. For years, the families have been waiting in vain
for the implementation of the Kidmat Zion (Advancement of Zion) plan,
which calls for the building of 300 housing units on the Jewish land of
Abu Dis. The plan is stalled in the Jerusalem District Planning and
Construction Committee, as per orders from the political echelon and
American pressure.
The main reason the plan is frozen is the
Trump administration's decision to reintroduce the Abu Dis option. Even
before the Beilin-Abbas understandings, Abu Dis was part of a peace plan
that international officials and various Israeli governments had
seriously considered that would create a safe "corridor" under
Palestinian sovereignty that would connect the Jericho area to the
Temple Mount. The corridor would consist of a road, a tunnel, and
possibly even a bridge, and Abu Dis was to be its eastern entry point
and safe crossing point for Palestinians going to Al-Aqsa mosque. One of
the earlier versions of the plan even floated the possibility that the
corridor would fall under Saudi or Jordanian sovereignty.
When Barak won government in 1999, he tried
to give Abu Dis to the Palestinians and make it part of Area A, under
full Palestinian control. Spiritual mentor to the Shas party Rabbi
Ovadia Yosef and Ariel Sharon worked together and managed to torpedo
that move. Events played into their hands: A day before the territory
was supposed to have been handed over to the Palestinians, a wave of
violence that foreshadowed the Second Intifada broke out. Then-Labor and
Social Welfare Minister Eli Yishai suggested that Barak hold off a few
days on transferring the territory to the Palestinians, and the
temporary hold became permanent. Abu Dis is still part of Area B.
Nineteen years later, the Palestinians'
demonstrated offense at the attempt to reintroduce the idea of Abu Dis
as their capital throws two issues into sharp relief: First, there is
apparently zero chance of implementing the idea as long as Abbas is in
power, and second, the gap between the Abu Dis plan and the far-reaching
concessions that Barak and Olmert were prepared to make on Jerusalem is
immense. The Palestinians have yet to realize that in the era of Trump
and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the parameters have changed.
In 2000, the Barak government agreed in
principle to a framework plan proposed by then-U.S. President Bill
Clinton, who suggested handing the Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem over
to the Palestinian Authority and leaving the Jewish neighborhoods
(including those built after the 1967 Six-Day War) under Israeli
sovereignty and control. Eight years later, a mere five days before he
resigned as prime minister, Olmert showed Abbas a map of his plan to
divide Jerusalem. The map, like the Clinton framework plan, split up
Jewish and Arab neighborhoods and divided the oversight of the cradle of
holiness – including the Old City – between five countries: Israel, the
U.S., Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and a future Palestinian state.
Olmert hoped Abbas would accept the plan.
He planned to present it immediately for approval by the U.N. Security
Council, the European Union, and both houses of the U.S. Congress,
then sign it at the White House. But Abbas rejected the most generous
plan any Israeli leader had ever offered.
Now that the idea of Abu Dis as the
Palestinian capital has been raised again, Abbas is using it to serve
two purposes: as a way of goading the U.S. as part of his face-off with
Trump after the president in December recognized Jerusalem as the
capital of Israel, and as a measure showing how far the Palestinians of
today have moved away from the idea after rejecting much more generous
offers from Barak and Olmert.
Nadav Shragai
Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/2018/02/16/abu-dis-information/
Follow Middle East and Terrorism on Twitter
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
No comments:
Post a Comment