ISRAEL: An EU report warns that hope for two-state solution is receding, writes Nuala Haughey, in Jerusalem
Jerusalem is like an onion, says Arieh King, an Israeli businessman dedicated to expanding Jewish settlements in the Holy City's Arab eastern half, which Israel illegally annexed 38 years ago.
"The sweetest part of an onion is its heart," he says, which in the case of East Jerusalem is its historic Old City, home to Judaism's holiest site, the Temple Mount. "We need to put as many layers around the heart like an onion and the way to do that is to build rings of Jewish neighbourhoods and to eventually connect each layer to the other." King has been working since 1997 with an American millionaire financier to snap up Arab properties in East Jerusalem.
By transplanting Jewish families into Arab neighbourhoods, King says he is creating "facts on the ground" aimed at thwarting Palestinians' aspirations to make East Jerusalem the capital of any future state.
"The aim is to prevent anybody from even thinking of dividing Jerusalem," he explains, echoing the words of successive Israeli leaders, who have declared the city the eternal and undivided capital of the Jewish state.
King is among a handful of right-wing Jews working to "Judaise" East Jerusalem, driven by the conviction that God gave all biblical land of Israel to their ancestors, including the modern- day Israeli-occupied West Bank where some two million stateless Palestinians live. Such views may sound extreme in an era when Israel is officially committed to the stalled US-backed Road Map, which envisages the creation of a Palestinian state alongside a secure Israel.
But King's strategic aim is strikingly close to Israeli government policy, according to analysis by EU diplomats here who warn in an unpublished report that "prospects for a two-state solution with east Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine are receding", due to Israeli policies that flout the Road Map, and "risk radicalising" Palestinians.
The report accuses Israel of boosting Jewish settlements in and around East Jerusalem and of using the route of its separation barrier to seal off most of the city's eastern half from its West Bank hinterland in "a de-facto annexation of Palestinian land".
Some 230,000 Arabs, as well as 190,000 Jewish settlers, live in East Jerusalem which is of central economic, political and religious importance to Palestinians. Israel captured East Jerusalem in the 1967 Six Day War and annexed it as part of its undivided capital in a move not recognised internationally. Discriminatory taxation for Palestinians as well as severe restrictions on building permits, and illegal home demolitions by Israeli authorities, also come under attack in the hard-hitting report, due to be presented at a meeting of EU foreign ministers on Monday, December 12th.
"Israel's main motivation is almost certainly demographic," the report concludes. "To reduce the Palestinian population of Jerusalem, while exerting efforts to boost the number of Jewish Israelis living in the city - East and West."
These findings come as no surprise to Jeff Halper, an Israeli anthropologist and activist who also uses the onion analogy to explain how his government plans to expand and connect bands of settlements around Jerusalem that will turn Palestinian neighbourhoods into small disconnected "islands" in an overwhelmingly Jewish city.
Standing on a hilltop in East Jerusalem yesterday, Halper pointed out the stone-clad high- rise buildings in the large sprawling settlement of Pisgat Ze'ev, home to 40,000 Jews, which was built during the Oslo process.
"The settlements all fragment [ Arab] East Jerusalem and prevent it from growing as a coherent entity," he said.
Halper says the Road Map is a "dead letter" which Israel pays mere lip service to, with zoning and urban policies eliminating hopes of a two-state solution.
"I mean a real two-state solution, because if you lose Jerusalem you lose any viable Palestinian state with a functioning capital . . . Palestinians will get limited access to East Jerusalem but it won't be a functioning city in a way that's integrated into their state."
Israel's prime minister Ariel Sharon has said that if re-elected next spring he would fix permanent borders with the Palestinians, with major West Bank and East Jerusalem settlement blocs likely to remain part of the Jewish state.
An Israeli government spokesman, Mark Regev, said that because of the special historical and cultural relationship of Jews to Jerusalem, "our ability to be flexible on the issue is more limited", in any future talks.
However, he stressed Israel's commitment to the Road Map, adding that "nothing we are doing [in East Jerusalem] is preventing the possibility of the two-state solution. Israel has accepted the two-state solution and we believe the Road Map is leading to that".