Ha’aretz, Israel
Fri., September 21, 2007

No one in Kadima is asking if J’lem will be divided, just how

By Nadav Shragai

Serious differences of opinion have erupted in Kadima over the
possibility that the agreement of principles Israel is now negotiating
with the Palestinians will determine the final-status deal on
Jerusalem.

Seven years after the Camp David summit in 2000 and the cabinet’s
subsequent decision to adopt, with reservations, then U.S. president
Bill Clinton’s plan to divide the capital, no one in Kadima is asking
if Jerusalem will be redivided. The only question is how it will be
redivided.

Vice Premier Haim Ramon is promoting a plan to Palestinian Prime
Minister Salam Fayad in which almost all Palestinian neighborhoods of
East Jerusalem would be subtracted from the Israeli city and become
part of a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem. The areas inhabited
by Jews, including the new neighborhoods south, north and east of the
Green Line that divided the city until 1967, will remain under
Israel’s jurisdiction.

The plan would also divide the Old City between Israeli and
Palestinian sovereignty, with the Muslim and Christian Quarters under
Palestinian rule, and the Armenian and Jewish Quarters under Israeli
rule. Sovereignty over the Temple Mount would be divided between
Palestinians and Jews as well.

Ramon proposes handing over three neighborhoods soon after the
agreement of principles is signed, if Israel is convinced that the
Palestinian Authority can control them: Shuafat, in northern
Jerusalem, near Pisgat Ze’ev and Atarot; Suahra, on the edge of the
Judean desert; and Wallijeh, a village near the Massuah neighborhood
overlooking the railway to Tel Aviv.

In recent weeks, however, a counter-coalition inside Kadima has sprung
up, headed by MK Otniel Schneller. Schneller is unwilling to give up
Israeli sovereignty over the Old City and the Temple Mount, but will
accept religious management of the holy sites. He is also willing to
give up neighborhoods on the outskirts of the city – mostly to the
north, such as Al-Ram, Qalandiyah and Kafr Akeb (most of which are
already outside the separation fence) – as well as parts of a few
other neighborhoods.

However, Schneller stays away from calling his plan "division." He
will not accept any substantial concession on the Temple Mount and
demands that in the final Jerusalem arrangement, space be allocated on
the Temple Mount for Jewish prayer – a demand former prime minister
Ehud Barak raised at Camp David in 2000.

Schneller believes that decisions about the future of Jerusalem should
be made by representatives of the entire Jewish people, not just the
Israeli public. He also believes that if the Ramon plan is adopted,
Kadima will disintegrate, as many parliamentarians will be unable to
support it.

Kadima’s mayoral candidate in the capital, businessman Nir Barkat, has
already said that he is considering leaving the party due to the Ramon
plan. Barkat wrote to Ramon this week saying that he had not been
authorized by either the government or the party to propose plans on
Jerusalem, and that Jerusalem and the rest of the country are entitled
to know if this is the new Kadima position, and whether Ramon is
acting on Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s authority.

That, in a nutshell, is the key question: What does Olmert think? Back
when he was mayor of Jerusalem, Olmert rejected any proposal for
division – of the Temple Mount, the Old City or East Jerusalem as a
whole. But Olmert is remaining mum, and his associates say that Ramon
has permission but not authority.

Many politicians believe this obscurantist formula means that Olmert
is using Ramon’s plan as a trial balloon. If it does not explode,
Olmert is likely to adopt large sections of the plan.

The battle inside Kadima over whether Jerusalem will be divided has
already been decided. The question now is how – and also whether the
party, as Ramon has, will call the spade a spade: division.