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July 14, 2000/11 Tammuz 5760, Vol. 52, No.44
On the table: the carving of Jerusalem
DAVID LANDAU
Jewish Telegraphic agency
JERUSALEM - As Prime Minister Ehud Barak engages this week in Middle East summitry, there is one issue on which he can afford to make the fewest concessions: Jerusalem.
Struggling to hold together the vestiges of his governing majority before he left for Camp David on July 10, Barak assured the nation on the eve of his departure that Jerusalem would remain undivided under Israeli sovereignty in any peace treaty with the Palestinians.
This, the premier declared in a live television appearance, was one of his guiding principles as he entered the historic and crucial negotiations.
Meanwhile, however, Israeli politicians and pundits were busily swapping what they considered reliable information about the concessions Barak is ready to make regarding Jerusalem and other key issues.
As evidence, they pointed to the premier's reluctance to share his "red lines" - the limits of his negotiating stance - with the leader of fervently Orthodox Shas Party.
Along with Shas officials, Interior Minister Natan Sharansky of the Yisrael Ba'Aliyah Party has complained that Barak has refused to share his negotiating plans with his coalition partners. On July 9, Shas, Yisrael Ba'Aliyah and the National Religious Party resigned from the government.
Barak's office, however, maintained that, along with his Jerusalem stance, the premier made his other red lines abundantly clear during his televised address July 9:
- No return to the borders that existed prior to the 1967 Six-Day War;
- No foreign army inside the West Bank;
- The majority of Jewish settlers would live under Israeli sovereignty;
- No acceptance by Israel of legal or moral responsibility for the creation of the Palestinian refugee problem.
When Barak arrived July 11 at Camp David, he was seriously weakened politically.
A day earlier, he survived a no-confidence motion in the Knesset - but only barely.
Barak told the Knesset on Monday he had an overwhelming mandate from the public to pursue the peace process.
But if Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat sticks to his public demand for a return to the 1967 boundaries, there will be no agreement.
It is believed that Israel will be able to annex three settlement blocs close to the old border - although the Palestinians are said to be demanding compensatory slices of Israeli territory alongside the Gaza Strip.
Since 1995, Israel has turned a blind eye to the Palestinians' construction of a building in Abu Dis that is intended to serve as their parliament.
This annexation was originally proposed in an informal accord negotiated during 1995 between Yossi Beilin, now Barak's justice minister, and Abu Mazen, Arafat's second-in-command.
The Beilin-Abu Mazen accord envisaged a Palestinian capital, to be called "al-Quds" - or "holy city," the Arabic name for Jerusalem - alongside Jerusalem's present boundaries.
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