Last update - 00:00 14/05/2007
A commission of inquiry on Jerusalem
The state commission of inquiry that will one day be established to investigate how Jerusalem was redivided will not deal with the age-old dreams, the city's Jewish heritage or Israelis' consciousness of Jerusalem. It will not touch on the fundamental failure - the failure to install all of these in the general Jewish public. Inquiry commissions generally avoid investigating educational and consciousness-raising failures. Nevertheless, the commission that studies the question of how the Jewish state missed an opportunity to unite Jerusalem will be left with more than enough failures in the practical realm to keep it busy.
At the very beginning of their report, commission members will discuss the intolerable gap between the high-flown but empty rhetoric of Israel's leaders and the reality on the ground. They will have no trouble amassing examples from the wealth of speeches about Jerusalem being ours "eternally" and "forever." Then, against the background of this verbiage, the commission will describe to the public how the state tried to have its cake and eat it, too: claiming sovereignty over the entire united city, but simultaneously abandoning responsibility for one-third of its residents - the Arabs. The appendix detailing the gaps between East and West Jerusalem in terms of services and infrastructure will shock many people, making them realize that on a long list of parameters, such as sewage lines, electricity, water, roads and schools, the gap amounts to hundreds and even thousands of percent.
The goal, the report will say, was worthy: preserving Jerusalem's Jewish majority. But the means, it will continue, led to chaos and anarchy, especially in the field of construction. Illegal Arab building in Jerusalem turned from construction aimed at alleviating distress to a deliberate challenge to the Israeli government. East Jerusalem Arabs have virtually ceased to apply for building permits. Some 40,000 buildings or parts of buildings have been erected in East Jerusalem without a permit. The planning chaos forestalled any possibility of orderly development, in either the Jewish or the Arab sectors.
The chapter on security will describe how Israel agreed in the past to allow the Palestinian Authority's security services to operate independently in Jerusalem, and how, over the years, this golem turned on its creator. It will also describe how Palestinian government offices began operating in the capital alongside the PA's various security and intelligence services.
The question of the Temple Mount - the Jewish people's holiest site - might be covered in the report's classified section, but a few sentences will nevertheless leak out. These will explain that the Muslims never expected in 1967 that Israel would grant them autonomy on the mount and forbid Jews to exercise their right to pray there. They will further note that Israel then allowed the status quo on the mount, which it initially upheld, to slip from its hands as well, by ignoring the construction of two additional underground mosques in the Temple Mount compound and acquiescing in the destruction of the remnants of the Jewish past at the Jewish people's holiest site.
A particularly painful chapter will address demography and the danger that Jerusalem's Jewish majority will be lost: Some 16,000 Jews abandon the city every year because of the high cost of housing and poor employment opportunities, even as dozens of plans for halting this negative migration gather dust on the shelves.
This decidedly downbeat report will also devote a few personal words to one man in particular: Ehud Barak, the first prime minister who publicly agreed to divide Jerusalem and the Old City and give the Palestinians sovereignty even over the Temple Mount. In recent years, the commission will write, Israeli leaders have raised the expectations of the conflict's other side to intolerable heights. They "wasted" the relatively broad consensus on the issue of Jerusalem that prevailed among Jews both here and abroad. They also astonished our best friend, the United States, with their light-mindedness when they unilaterally conceded the understanding that existed in Washington regarding Israel's Jewish interests in Jerusalem. The failure, the judges will conclude, was systemic. But their conclusion is likely to surprise: that instead of shrugging our shoulders in light of the city's "divided reality" and accepting it perforce, it is necessary to work to change this reality by taking steps to reunite Jerusalem. It is not yet too late.