Israel Offers Outline to Divide Jerusalem

Israel Offers Outline to Divide Jerusalem

By RAMIT PLUSHNICK-MASTI, Associated Press WriterThu May 4, 4:39 PM ET

Israel's new government is drawing up a blueprint for dividing the holy city of Jerusalem — a once inconceivable notion — giving the Palestinians nearly all the Arab neighborhoods while holding onto Jewish areas and disputed holy shrines.

Otniel Schneller, an architect of the plan, described it in interviews this week with The Associated Press, giving the clearest picture yet of how Israel plans to separate from the Palestinians, abandoning most of the West Bank.

"We will not divide Jerusalem, we will share it," he said.

Most of Jerusalem's Arab neighborhoods would go to the Palestinians, he said. "Those same neighborhoods will, in my assessment, be central to the makeup of the Palestinian capital ... al-Quds," Schneller said, calling Jerusalem by its Arabic name.

Israel would keep Jerusalem's Old City with its shrines sacred to Jews, Muslims and Christians alike — an unacceptable plan to Palestinians, particularly if carried out unilaterally.

Still, with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert determined to draw Israel's final borders by 2010, likely without waiting for Palestinian agreement, a division of Jerusalem looks realistic for the first time.

The plan reflects a sea change in the thinking of most Israelis, who once considered sacrilegious the idea of abandoning any part of the holy city.

Since Israel captured east Jerusalem from Jordan in the 1967 Mideast War, Israelis had been in broad agreement that the city could never again be divided. But after five years of intefadeh bloodshed, Israeli voters swept Olmert's Kadima Party into office in March 28 elections on a platform to separate from the Palestinians for the good of the Jewish state.

A plan to divide Jerusalem was first brought up in 2000 peace talks but failed to materialize. Schneller — a Kadima lawmaker — is reviving that plan with his blueprint. But he cautioned that the ideas are still in the planning stages, require international backing and that there's no clear timetable for carrying them out.

Under the plan, which would be executed unilaterally if efforts to resume peace talks fail, Jerusalem's Old City, its holy shrines and the adjacent neighborhoods, would become a "special region with special understandings" but remain under Israeli sovereignty, said Schneller.

The Old City and the adjacent "holy basin," which includes the predominantly Arab neighborhoods of Silwan and Sheik Jarrah, would fall on the Israeli side of the separation barrier Israel is building in the West Bank, another Israeli official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because plans are not final.

The plan also calls for moving the barrier westward. That means much of East Jerusalem would no longer be cut off from the West Bank and most Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem could become part of a future Palestinian state on the eastern side of the barrier, the official said.

The United States has long held the position that "borders and Jerusalem and all final status issues ... ultimately have to be decided in negotiations between the parties," U.S. Embassy spokesman Stewart Tuttle said.

But Washington is not likely to oppose unilateral Israeli pullouts from the West Bank.

Olmert's plan involves dismantling dozens of Jewish settlements in the West Bank with tens of thousands of people and moving them to larger settlement blocs in the territory that Israel hopes to hold onto under a final peace deal.

Israel has said it will give the Hamas-led Palestinian government time to agree to international demands to recognize Israel, accept past peace deals and renounce violence. More than a month into its rule, Hamas has rejected the demands, Israel has cut off all ties with what it has labeled an enemy entity, and it appears increasingly likely the Jewish state will draw its borders on its own.

"The continuation of the scattered settlements throughout the West Bank creates an inseparable mix of populations that will threaten the existence of the state of Israel as a Jewish state," Olmert told parliament as he presented his government Thursday.

If necessary, he said, "we will also act without the Palestinian Authority's agreement to reach an understanding that will first and foremost be based on the correct definition of Israel's borders."

That's a position hotly rejected by the Palestinians, who say the result will be a truncated territory on which it will be impossible to build a viable state.

"President Mahmoud Abbas refuses to accept any unilateral steps and rejects any provisional solutions," said Nabil Abu Rdeneh, a senior spokesman for Abbas, a moderate who wields considerable power as president even though Hamas controls the parliament and Cabinet.

Under Olmert's plan, the 460-mile West Bank separation barrier will roughly serve as the border, with some alterations. The barrier, as envisioned now, puts some 9.5 percent of the West Bank inside Israel, including Jewish settlement blocs and other areas Israel considers to be strategically important.

Schneller, himself a West Bank settler, would not say which settlements or how many settlers would be evacuated under Olmert's plan — although he said it would be fewer than the 70,000 settlers Israeli media had speculated.

Schneller said Israel plans to hold on to two main settlement blocs near Jerusalem, Maaleh Adumim and Gush Etzion, and the large Ariel settlement bloc jutting deep into the West Bank. Israel also plans to hold on to the Jordan River Valley as a security border. Settlements on the eastern side of the barrier, including Schneller's, will likely go.