Since September 28, the profound significance of Jerusalem has been made vividly manifest. That day's 'visit' by Ariel Sharon to Temple Mount in Jerusalem catalyzed a firestorm of violence, which has engulfed both Palestinians and Israelis.

Sharon's intent was obvious; to demonstrate Israel's exclusive sovereignty over Jerusalem, and to challenge Ehud Barak, his political rival and Israel's prime minister. Barak had, just weeks before at Camp David, broached a compromise on Israel's exclusive sovereignty over Jerusalem.

The conflagration started just moments after Sharon and Likud party members departed. Palestinian stone throwers were fired on by the 1,000 (or more) Israeli police (in full riot gear) who had accompanied Sharon's group.

The violence spread rapidly throughout the occupied territories and into Israel itself, with Arab citizens taking to the streets with stones, slingshots and Molotov cocktails. They were countered by the guns of Israeli troops.

Protests spread across the Muslim world, from Morocco to Indonesia to Kenya, as anti-Israel demonstrators took to the streets. As Iran's Foreign Minister told reporters in a visit to Lebanon on October 14, "The issue of Jerusalem is not only important for the Palestinians, but all the Muslims of the world."

Numerous attempts to quell the violence and resume direct negotiations under U.S. auspices failed. Many observers now discount the ability of the United auspices failed. Many observers now discount the ability of the United States to continue as sole mediator. The newly elected Administration will surely re-examine the current approach to Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking.

During this crisis, the necessity and wisdom of opening the peace-making talks to other international actors has become clear. To convene the Sharm el-Sheikh summit on October 17, it took Egypt's president, the King of Jordan, and the Secretaries General of the United Nations and the European Union.

The U.S. has convinced Israel to compromise on its insistence that only the United States could conduct an impartial fact-finding inquiry into the cause of the upheaval. That inquiry panel, named on November 7, is headed by former senator George Mitchell, but also includes the foreign minister of Norway, the former president of Turkey, and the foreign policy chief of the European Union.

The Slaughter of Sacred Cows

The American Jewish newspaper, Forward, reporting on the July Camp David summit, called Jerusalem the "prize heifer" of Israel's sacred cows. "Mr. Barak has been forced to confront a bitter truth: he can get peace, or he can keep the holy city whole, but he cannot have both, not at the same time." There had been a widely held view among Israelis and American Jews that Jerusalem's status as the "eternal, undivided capital of Israel" was not subject to compromise. That view was cast by Forward as "its favorite illusion."

Israeli and Palestinian negotiators had not even discussed Jerusalem (designed in the Oslo accords as a final status issue) until the two-week-long meeting with President Clinton at Camp David. Some progress was made: the concept of sharing the city and actual proposals were raised, including U.N. Security Council sovereignty over the Temple Mount/Noble Sanctuary site. But the aftermath showed that the Palestinian people and the Arab countries would have rejected any agreement that Israel maintain sovereignty over that holy site and much of East Jerusalem (which, according to international law, are part of the territory occupied by Israel during the 1967 war).

The notion that the status of Jerusalem could be resolved solely through U.S.-directed bilateral negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority has ended with the violence of late September.

Underlying Causes

While Sharon's visit to the holy site sparked the Palestinian outrage, it was fueled by the widespread perception among Palestinians that the Oslo peace process had been a ruse. It left them worse off economically, doomed to live in enclaves surrounded by Israeli soldiers and settlements, and not even allowed to go into Jerusalem without permits.

Even though Israeli soldiers no longer patrolled the Palestinian soldiers no longer patrolled the Palestinian cities and villages in Area A-those locales where the PNA has full civil and military control-the continuation of the occupation was nevertheless evident to all. Palestinians saw the cranes and bulldozers engaged in building new houses in settlements and carving new bypass roads that would carry only Jewish travelers. The settlements, built with the stated intention of creating facts on the ground that would make impossible the return of land occupied in 1967, actually have grown more under Mr. Barak's government than under Mr. Netanyahu.

It is at the contact points between Palestinians areas and the settlements' military checkpoints where the violence most often erupts. Settlers rampage neighboring Palestinian villages: Palestinians attack settlers and their children in school buses.

Palestinians stopped believing in the peacemaking intentions of the Israelis. In 1999, when one family and three dogs camped at Metzpia Ha'jit, Mr. Barak called the new settlement illegal. But in July 2000 the Israeli Civil Administration announced plans to build a tourist center at Metzpia Ha'jit. The land belonged to the Palestinian village of Deir Debwah, east of Ramallah.

It is not just the humiliation of the checkpoints or the continuing loss of their precious land that embitters the Palestinians. There is the matter of international law, and the historic pledge taken at the White House in September 1993 to negotiate a permanent status agreement to implement U.N. Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338:

Calling for the withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the 1967 war,

A just settlement of the refugee problem, and

The right of states (including Israel) to live in peace within recognized boundaries.

The dismissal of international law by Israel, coupled with the refusal of the United States to demand Israel's compliance with UNSC resolutions, eroded Palestinian confidence in both the Oslo process and the role of the United States as honest broker.

This unwillingness of the U.S. to require Israel's compliance became even more galling as sympathy grew worldwide for the Iraqi people (suffering under U.N. Security Council economic sanctions) while the U.S. insisted on compliance by the government of Iraq.

Additionally, growing numbers of Palestinians resented the heavy hand of President Arafat and the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), it numerous security agencies and the domination of the economy by quasi-monopolies controlled by the PNA. Their stifling of the Palestinian press and the Palestinian Legislative Council are well known.

In December 1999, associates for Churches for Middle East Peace (an advocacy coalition, which includes the PCUSA,) wrote to the Washington representative of the PNA following the arrests of prominent Palestinians who had signed a critical public statement. That letter, in part, stated: "We encourage the PNA to regard the right of free expression of opinion, even if it is strongly critical of persons or practices, as fundamental to democratic governance."

It seemed to a great many Palestinians that the Oslo peace process (built on a strategy of interim agreements leading to a final status that would implement UNSC 242 and the establishments of independent Palestine) had reached a dead end. Ariel Sharon's provocative tour of the gardens and plaza near the Dome of the Rock in the hallowed center of old Jerusalem set in motion the dynamics that could prove to be a turning point.

The Spiral of Violence

This popular revolt by the Palestinians differs in many respects from the intifadeh, which began in 1987 and lasted until the Madrid peace conference of 1991. Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) members were now back from exile in Tunis. Relations were strained between these 'Tunisians' and the local leaders who had emerged during the intifadeh-academics, young street fighters and scions of notable families. Security, focused on harnessing the opponents of peacemaking, became a top priority for the new PNA, who armed the various rival security agencies.

With the Palestinian arsenal of stones now including guns, Israeli troops turned to antitank rockets, grenades and helicopter gunships, resulting in U.N. Security Council Resolution 1322-which condemned the "excessive use of forces against Palestinians."

But it was pictures broadcast into living rooms everywhere that most affected the public worldwide-of a child in Gaza shot as his father tried to protect him; of the bloody mob-killing of two Israelis in Ramallah. Nonexistent in 1987, there are now independent Arab TV stations, the PA's TV and radio stations, and CNN, which all provide dramatic coverage of the clashes. Israelis and Palestinians alike, many of whom were dedicated to peacemaking, have come to doubt that hate can be overcome that trust can ever be renewed, that peace is possible.

Another important change is the 'Hezbollah phenoma.' The campaign of ambushes and roadside bombings by Lebanon's Shiite Muslim militia against Israelis occupying southern Lebanon has provided a new model of violence for Palestinian resistance.

And for Israelis, the rapid spread of protests to Jaffa and to the Galilee in Israel itself was stunning. The one million Arabs of Israel, bystanders during the earlier intifadeh, protested with an intensity and in such numbers that the hostility they feel as second class citizens is obvious.

In Tel Aviv a mob of 500 Jews attacked three Arab buildings and set fire to shops. In Nazareth several hundred Jews rampaged on October 8, attacking Arab homes and shouting "Death to Arabs." When the Israeli police arrived, Arabs at the scene said the policed turned on the Arabs and killed two youths.

A Dubious Honest Broker

The close relationship between the United States and Israel has been no secret. The widely accepted view has been: Only the U.S. could give Israel sufficient confidence in the negotiating process to make the compromises necessary to reach an agreement.

The Oslo process, conceived in direct negotiations between Israeli and Palestinian leaders in Norway, and initially kept secret from the United States, quickly came under the wing of the Clinton Administration. Although great hope was given to this plan of interim agreements leading up to a delayed negotiation of final status issues, the shortcomings of the Oslo process were clear. Among them was the fact that the issues of Jerusalem, and the refugees, are very important to other Arab states and to the international community. Also problematic was the now-weakened applicability of international law, as well as the exclusion of broader international engagement in the U.S.-led negotiations between Israel and the PLO.

It seems now that the Oslo process has gone as far as it can. While the achievements have been significant, confidence in the leadership role of the United States has deteriorated to the point where U.S. interests in the Persian Gulf and elsewhere are now threatened by the widely held perception of its bias toward Israel.

A new formula for comprehensive negotiations is sorely needed. As a new Administration shapes its foreign policy, U.S. leadership should be directed toward enlarging the negotiating table to include others-the United Nations, the European Union, and key states such as Egypt, Jordan and Russia. It was the United Nations that founded Israel, through the partition plan of 1947, and it's through the United Nations that real international legitimacy can be given to an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement.

Written by Corrine R. Whitlatch of the Churches for Middle East Peace.

Suggested Action

Presbyterian Church members can directly quote from the letter that Clifton Kirkpatrick, the Stated Clerk of the General Assembly, sent to President Clinton on October 14.

Please send letters to the President, the Secretary of State, and your elected representative and Senators. These points-al from the Rev. Kirkpatrick's letter-need to be made.

1. Note that, "Numerous General Assemblies of the Presbyterian Church (USA) have expressed concern for the recurring conflict in the Middle East and have repeatedly supported, prayed for and affirmed every effort directed toward the establishment of a just and enduring peace."
   
2. Note that, "We have consistently called for the self-determination of Palestinians, security for Israel and a Jerusalem shared by both Israelis and Palestinians and freely open to their three religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam."
   
3. Express special concern that the U.S. position as "an honest broker" has faded in the face of what "many around the world see as bias toward Israel."
   
4. Urge U.S. leaders to "use whatever influence is left to you in this situation, working with the United Nations and the whole international community, to find a resolution to this conflict that is marked by justice for the Palestinian people, without which there will never be peace in the region."

Write to:

The Honorable_____________
The White House
Washington, D.C. 20500

Secretary of State___________
U.S. Department of State
Washington, D.C. 20520

The Honorable_____________
U.S. Senate
Washington, D.C. 20510

The Honorable_____________
U.S. House of Representatives
Washington, D.C. 20515

Presbyterian Policy

The General Assembly, during the Oslo peace process 1993-2000, called upon the United States to exercise even-handedness in its role as sponsor of the peace process while calling for U.S. adherence to UN-established mandates. However, G.A. support for the United Nations as the appropriate venue is long-standing.

In 1988, the 200th General Assembly resolution "calls upon the United States Government to give public support to the concept of an international peace conference under the auspices of the United Nations as the most appropriate arena for seeking a settlement of the claims and conflicts of Israel and the Palestinian people and to call upon Israel to take part in such a conference."

In 1984, the 196th General Assembly adopted a comprehensive resolution which, "reaffirms its support for the United Nations as the prime instrument for bringing about peace in the Middle East and urges that constructive unilateral or bilateral initiatives on the part of involved parties by undertaken in the context of United Nations responsibility."