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Join Craig von Buseck weekdays as he shares his perspective on the major trends and news affecting the Body of Christ today.

 

october 8, 2007

Report: Israel May Propose Division of Jerusalem

The Associated Press is reporting that a confidant of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Monday that his government would support a division of Jerusalem. This declaration is reportedly a key component of an Israeli-Palestinian declaration to be made at a U.S.-sponsored Mideast peace conference next month.

The AP reports that as part of recent negotiations, Deputy Vice Prime Minister Haim Ramon has proposed turning over many of the Arab neighborhoods of east Jerusalem to the Palestinians. Ramon said the Palestinians could establish the capital of a future state in the sector of the city, which Israel captured from Jordan in the 1967 Mideast war.

In return, Israel would receive the recognition of the international community, including Arab states, of its sovereignty over Jewish neighborhoods and the existence of its capital there, Ramon said.

Ramon claimed that even hawkish elements of Olmert's coalition, like Cabinet Minister Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu Party, would back such an Israeli concession. The centrist Labor Party would also support the proposal, Ramon said.

"There are two central parties that agree to this," Ramon told Army Radio. "The most important thing is to preserve the state of Israel Jewish and democratic."

Under his proposal, neighborhoods in east Jerusalem where about 170,000 Palestinians live would be transferred to Palestinian sovereignty, Ramon said.

But Israel would not transfer control of the Holy City and neighborhoods around it to the Palestinians, he said. He did not elaborate, but media reports have said that he has proposed Israel relinquish some sovereignty in the area that contains the most contentious sites in the 60-year-conflict.

Nabil Abu Rdainah, an aide to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, told the official WAFA news agency that the talks are meant to chart a course toward comprehensive peace. Diplomatic failure, he said, could "drown the region in violence".

Reuter's is reporting that Ramon's public comments on the most sensitive issues in the conflict have stoked speculation he is floating trial balloons on behalf of Olmert ahead of the international gathering expected to take place in Annapolis, Maryland.

"Wouldn't it be the right deal today for the Palestinians, the Western world and the international community to recognize (Israel's) annexation of ... (Jewish) neighbourhoods as part of Jerusalem, and for us to quit the Arab neighbourhoods," Ramon told Israel Radio.

He said talk of ceding control over holy sites in Jerusalem's Old City, which he referred to as the "holy basin", was premature for now. But Ramon added: "We need to say there will be a special regime in the 'holy basin', which we will talk about in the future."

Olmert and Abbas agreed last week the joint document would be the basis for final-status negotiations that would begin after the conference in mid-to-late November.

Reuters reports that Abbas wants to bring any deal before the Palestinian people for a referendum, but it is unclear how that would be done with his secular Fatah faction in control only in the occupied West Bank after Hamas Islamists seized the Gaza Strip in June.

Ramon is one of Olmert's closest confidants, but the prime minister, weakened by corruption scandals and last year's Lebanon war, has not committed publicly to his deputy's ideas.

Olmert has sought to lower expectations for the conference, seeking a broadbrush joint statement to deflect pressure from coalition partners who oppose dividing Jerusalem and making moves to bolster Abbas, who wants a more detailed document.

Strategic Affairs Minister Avigdor Lieberman, the leading right-wing member of Olmert's centrist coalition government, said he was prepared to trade some Palestinian areas within Jerusalem for Jewish settlement blocs in the occupied West Bank.

But Lieberman ruled out dividing or ceding authority over the Old City, site of Judaism's Western Wall and Islam's al-Aqsa mosque and Dome of the Rock.

Ramon said Olmert's government would not accept a formal "right to return" for Palestinian refugees to what is now Israel. But he said some Palestinians could request permission to return to Israel "on the basis of charity and mercy."

Ramon expressed hope that his proposals would win support within Olmert's cabinet, both from leading left-leaning and right-wing parties. "It seems to me that it's reasonable and not too far-fetched," he said.

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