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Israel to Accept Sharing Sovereignty in East Jerusalem
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak had agreed to share sovereignty with the Palestinians over East Jerusalem, which may clear the way for reaching a comprehensive Israeli-Palestinian peace deal, a senior Israeli official said Friday.
Rabbi Michael Melchior, minister without portfolio and one of the Israeli negotiators at Camp David, confirmed through telephone interview by Israel Radio that Israel will accept such a bridging proposal made by the United States pertaining the Jerusalem issue.
According to the proposal, Israel would annex several Jewish settlements near Jerusalem, including the largest one in the West Bank Ma'aleh Adumim, into a bigger Jerusalem municipality.
In return, Palestinian National Authority could share sovereignty in Arab East Jerusalem, while Israel will maintain security control over the areas.
Israel will also agree to grant some safe passage for providing Arab pilgrims access to the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the holiest Muslim site in the stone-walled Old City.
Meanwhile, the status quo in the Old City, which is swarmed with famous religious sites of the three world religions, Christian, Muslim, or Jewish, will be maintained for several years, during which a final solution could be found.
The model is something like granting administration-plus sovereignty of East Jerusalem to the Palestinians, the report concluded.
Melchior stressed that the proposal is definitely within the red lines of Barak, who said that Jerusalem will remain united and under Israeli sovereignty.
The Camp David summit, attended by Barak, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and U.S. President Bill Clinton, began on July 11 and tried to resolve all the core issues between the two sides, including the thorny Jerusalem issue.
It appears recently that the issue had been the major stumbling block in the peace talks, due to both sides' uncompromising stands on the Holy City.
Israel regards Jerusalem as its "eternal and undivided capital,"while the Palestinians want to see at least the eastern part of the city, which Israel captured during the 1967 Middle East war, as the capital of their future state.
So far, there was no report that Palestinians had accepted the proposal. However, some Palestinian officials had said before that the bridging proposal is too close to Israel's stands. They also claimed that without full sovereignty in East Jerusalem, there would be no deal.
Some Palestinian officials also suggested a solution to the Jerusalem issue in sovereignty sharing model, according to a report published by Israel's Jerusalem Post daily Friday morning.
Under the plan submitted by Bassam Abu Sharif, an adviser to Arafat, the Palestinians will be offered some functional sovereignty in East Jerusalem, especially the old city and its Muslim and Christian religious sites, according to the report.
That functional sovereignty, Sharif said, will include religious, political, and civilian-matter sovereignty, while the Israelis could keep the security responsibility.
Sharif argued that the proposal will let both sides have limited sovereignty in East Jerusalem without dividing the city and the Palestinians could claim East Jerusalem as the capital of its future state.
Both leaders, thus, could return to their constituents with a claim that they had not compromised on this sensitive issue, Sharif said.
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