Israel reveals early plans for land division

Israel’s new government is drawing up plans to divide the holy city of Jerusalem, according to officials.

The news provides the clearest picture yet of how the Jewish state plans to separate from the Palestinians, pulling out from much of the West Bank but keeping the bigger Jewish settlements there.

Otniel Schneller – an architect of the plan – said in interviews this week that his blueprint would give most of Jerusalem’s Arab neighbourhoods to the Palestinians while keeping the predominantly Jewish areas for Israel.

“Those same neighbourhoods will, in my assessment, be central to the makeup of the Palestinian capital … al-Quds,” Schneller said, calling Jerusalem by its Arabic name.

“We will not divide Jerusalem. We will share it,” he insisted.

But Israel would keep Jerusalem’s Old City with its shrines sacred to Jews, Muslims and Christians alike – an unacceptable plan to Palestinians, particularly if carried out unilaterally.

Still, with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert determined to draw Israel’s final borders by 2010, likely without waiting for Palestinian agreement, a division of Jerusalem looks possible for the first time.

The plan to divide Jerusalem reflects a sea change in the thinking of most Israelis, who once considered sacrilegious even the idea of abandoning part of the holy city.

Since Israel captured east Jerusalem from Jordan in the 1967 Six-Day War, Israelis had been in broad agreement that the city could never again be divided. But after five years of tit-for-tat bloodshed, Israeli voters swept Olmert’s Kadima Party into office in March 28 elections on a platform to separate from the Palestinians.

A plan to divide Jerusalem was first brought up in 2000 peace talks but failed to materialise.

Schneller – a Kadima MP – is reviving that plan with his blueprint. But he cautioned that the ideas – which are still in the planning stages – require international backing and that there’s no clear timetable for carrying them out.

Under the plan, which would be executed unilaterally if efforts to resume peace talks fail, Jerusalem's Old City, its holy shrines and the adjacent neighbourhoods, would become a “special region with special understandings”, but remain under Israeli sovereignty, said Schneller.

The Old City and the adjacent “holy basin”, which includes the predominantly Arab neighbourhoods of Silwan and Sheikh Jarrah, would fall on the Israeli side of the separation barrier Israel is building in the West Bank, another Israeli official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because plans have not been finalised.

The plan also calls for moving the barrier westward. That means much of East Jerusalem would no longer be cut off from the West Bank and most Arab neighbourhoods of Jerusalem could become part of a future Palestinian state on the eastern side of the barrier, the official said.

The US has long held the position that “borders and Jerusalem and all final status issues … ultimately have to be decided in negotiations between the parties,” US Embassy spokesman Stewart Tuttle said.

But Washington is not likely to oppose unilateral Israeli pullouts from the West Bank.

Olmert’s plan involves dismantling dozens of Jewish settlements in the West Bank with tens of thousands of people and moving them to larger settlement blocs in the territory that Israel plans to hold onto under a final peace deal.

Israel has said it will give the new Hamas-led Palestinian government time to agree to international demands to recognise Israel, accept past peace deals and renounce violence. But Prime Minister Olmert has said Israel will act unilaterally if the Palestinians do not agree to the plans.

More than a month into its reign, Hamas has rejected the demands, Israel has cut off all ties with what it has labelled an enemy entity and it appears increasingly likely the Jewish state will draw its borders on its own.

The plan currently would return most of Jerusalem’s Arab neighbourhoods, including a-Ram, Anata, Abu Dis, Tsur Baher and Jabel Mukaber, to the Palestinians, while keeping the predominantly Jewish areas for Israel.

Olmert has said the 460-mile West Bank separation barrier will roughly serve as the border, with some alterations.

The barrier, as now planned, puts some 9.5% of the West Bank inside Israel, including the Jewish settlement blocs and other areas Israel considers to be strategically important.