Several news outlets reported on Saturday that Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister Riyad al-Malki, to quote the Associated Press, “said that the Palestinian Authority is ready to cooperate with U.S. President-elect Joe Biden, on the basis of achieving a Palestinian state with east Jerusalem as its capital on territory Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war.”
Most of those who read this news will be unlikely to notice that, just as “literally” can now mean “figuratively,” the statement, in fact, means the opposite of what it purports to convey. This is because, though it appears to call for an agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, it contains within it a poison pill that effectively precludes any such agreement — the demand for eastern Jerusalem to serve as the Palestinian capital.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has made this demand before. In 2018, addressing the United Nations, he said, “peace in our region cannot be realized without an independent Palestinian State, with East Jerusalem as its capital and with all of its holy sites. … East Jerusalem that was occupied in 1967 is our capital.” Then, as now, it’s a non-starter.
Palestinians have never in history had sovereignty over any part of Jerusalem, nor has it ever been an Arab capital. When Jordan conquered the Old City area in 1948, it expelled the Jewish population that had lived there continuously for three millennia, since the time of King David. During the 19 years of its control, Jordan denied Jews access to their holiest sites — the Temple Mount, the Western Wall, and the Mount of Olives.
In contrast, under Israeli sovereignty, Muslims have full access to their holy sites located in the city – greater access, in fact, than Jews. Christians, too, have full access to their own holy sites located within the city.
President Abbas, as well as his government ministers, must be aware that in light of this history, there is no conceivable Israeli government that would offer them greater rights in Jerusalem than what was already offered to them, and rejected by them, in 2000 and in 2008. The Clinton parameters that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak accepted, and that then-Palestinian Authority President Yassir Arafat rejected in 2000-2001 included Palestinian control over Jerusalem’s Arab neighborhoods along with the Temple Mount (on which sits the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa Mosque). In 2008, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert offered Abbas division of the city along the lines of its Jewish and Arab neighborhoods, along with shared control over the city’s holy sites through a special committee that would also include representatives from Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the United States, and Israel. Both times the Palestinians passed up the opportunity for statehood.
While some Israeli politicians have called for a shared capital in eastern Jerusalem, it’s not immediately clear how that could work. Only one nation can have sovereignty over a geographic area. Only one nation can apply and enforce its laws. While it would be possible to put Palestinian government offices there, making it the seat of the Palestinian government, it seems safe to assume that Palestinian government offices in an area under Israeli sovereignty is not what the Palestinians have in mind when they demand eastern Jerusalem as their capital city.
Because it insists on a condition that the Palestinians know to be impossible, the conciliatory-sounding claim, then, that “the Palestinian Authority is ready to cooperate with U.S. President-elect Joe Biden, on the basis of achieving a Palestinian state with east Jerusalem as its capital on territory Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war,” is no more than subterfuge. In fact, it is a call to bury any chance at peace, along with the statehood Palestinians claim to want, and continue the conflict.
Karen Bekker is assistant director of the media response team for CAMERA.
