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January 5, 2001/Tevet 17, 5761, Vol. 53, No.14
Concessions force soul-search
DAVID LANDAU
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
JERUSALEM - The angry, anguished cry of "Uganda" is filling the air in Israel these days.
It doesn't mean much to the uninitiated. But for those schooled in the fundamentals of Zionist history, this esoteric code word says it all.
Uganda was where the Zionist movement, back in 1903, considered setting up a Jewish homeland. But the plan was considered and rejected, as the majority of the movement overruled founder Theodor Herzl and held that only Zion, the biblical name for Jerusalem, could be the legitimate and practical goal of Zionism.
From the Knesset plenum to coffee shops to private homes, Israelis are again conducting the wrenching, back-to-basics argument over the heart and soul of their national project.
The Temple Mount and the walled Old City of Jerusalem, focal points of Jewish longing over the centuries, have been placed squarely on the negotiating table. Most people here find that shocking, after 33 years of assurances from politicians of all stripes that Israeli sovereignty over the Holy City is nonnegotiable.
The Camp David summit in July, for example, appeared to founder over Prime Minister Ehud Barak's unwillingness to give up Israeli control of the Temple Mount.
While his flexibility on Jerusalem went far beyond the Israeli consensus, Barak still appeared to be searching for ways to give the Palestinians a say in running Arab neighborhoods without divvying up sovereignty in the city.
Many Israelis say they are unhappy with the thought of Jerusalem being carved into a latticework of sovereignties. Fewer seem overly perturbed by the idea of ceding sovereignty over the Temple Mount, site of the biblical Jewish temples and today home to the Al-Aksa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock.
Barak this week said he would not sign the Temple Mount over to the Palestinians, but left open the possibility that sovereignty could be transferred to a third party. Leaders of the religious Zionist movement, which largely abides by the halachic prohibition on visiting the mount, regard Barak's readiness to bargain over the area as heretical.
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