Divided Jerusalem: The Struggle for the Holy City Book

Professor Bernard Wasserstein's meticulously researched Divided Jerusalem is compulsory reading for all those grappling to understand the passions and perplexities behind the Palestinian uprising. Despite--or possibly because of--its reunification in the Six-Day War of 1967, Jerusalem today, says Wasserstein, is: "the most deeply divided capital city in the world." The struggle between its two main protagonists will be resolved, "only when there dawns some genuine recognition of the reality and legitimacy of its plural character, spiritually, demographically and--all claims to sole possession notwithstanding--politically." The Holy City, he believes, is at the core of the Arab-Israeli relationship. Although prospects for a settlement look bleaker today than for many years, Wasserstein believes that the current violence cannot prevent a long term-solution. And for that solution, he sees the best hope of success in aspects of the draft final-status agreement reached, on October 31, 1995, between then Israeli deputy Foreign Minister Yossi Beilin and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, and scuppered only four days later by the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. While leaving many key questions unanswered, the so-called Beilin-Abu Mazin agreement (incorporating Abbas' nom de guerre) attempted to settle all outstanding issues between the Israelis and Palestinians and--most crucially--came close to providing a blueprint for solving the Jerusalem problem. Detailing its main points over several pages, Wasserstein describes the agreement as "a surprising achievement" and adds: "We cannot now know whether [it] could have turned into a final peace treaty. Yet the experience of its negotiators in relation to the Oslo Agreement, which had also started out as a similar back-channel document, gave them some ground for optimism." Whether its findings can be resurrected, and the optimism realised, only time will tell.-- Meir PersoffRead More