Saturday, November 13, 2004

Where to bury Arafat

The dispute over where Yasser Arafat should be buried and Israel's refusal to allow him to be laid to rest in Jerusalem is a classic example of the complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It would need a non-political mindset to solve the problem.
However, Israel had more of politics in mind than anything else when it rejected Palestinian appeals for Arafat to be buried in Jerusalem. Obviously, its immediate concern was that Arafat's tomb would become a rallying point for Palestinian nationalism in Jerusalem, something that the Israelis would find hard to accept, given their insistence that "united Jerusalem is the eternal and indivisible capital" of Israel.
The Palestinians have not given up their hope to bury Arafat in the Holy City. That is why they laid him to rest in a stone coffin that could be moved and reburied in Jerusalem when the time is opportune to do so.
The hard reality in the quest for a just and comprehensive peace in the Middle East is that no Palestinian or Israeli leader would be able to make a deal and sign away Jerusalem to the other. The city is holy to all three monotheist religions and it is also the most bitterly contested area in the world today.
For the Palestinian Muslims, Jerusalem houses the third holiest shrine in Islam — the Al Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock. For the Israeli Jews Jerusalem is the holiest of all shrines since it houses what they consider as the remnants of Solomon's Temple.
For the Christians, Jerusalem houses sites that are intrinsically linked to the life and death of Jesus Christ.
For the Palestinians, Jerusalem also represents their history, culture and traditions and is a symbol of their aspirations for independent statehood. There could never be a state of Palestine without Arab East Jerusalem as its capital.
When Israel and the Palestinians signed the Oslo agreements in 1993, one of the three issues that were left to final status negotiations in five years was the future of Jerusalem, and it proved to be the thorniest when it came to a make-or-break point in the negotiations.
Arafat, who passed away without realising his dream of praying at Al Aqsa as the leader of an independent Palestine, had realised the truth that he could not get Israel to hand over Arab East Jerusalem to the Palestinians as their capital. Hence he was ready for a compromise involving shared control of the Holy City. However, he declined to be specific in public on the extent of an acceptable compromise.
At the same time, any compromise of whatever nature over Jerusalem was not acceptable to Israel at all. Obviously, that position stemmed from the fact that the Holy City remained under the absolute control of Israel and the Israelis did not find any reason to make any bargain over the city, which it has tried Judaise since it occupied the eastern half in the 1967 war.
Whoever inherits Arafat's mantle as leader of the Palestinian people — as chairman of the Palestinian National Authority — faces the same questions. How far could he go in compromising the Palestinian demand for Arab East Jerusalem? Could he settle for the outskirts of Jerusalem — the Abu Dis area for example — and move to other issues? How far would his people accept it? How could he accept the Haram Al Sharif complex — which Israelis call Temple Mount — to be under Jewish sovereignty?
Any Israeli leader also faces similar questions. Why should he let part of Jerusalem be handed to Palestinians when his army has absolute physical possession of the city? How could any Jew make any compromise over the Western Wall of the ancient Solomon's Temple?
What leaders from the two sides need is a new vision, a vision of their two faiths coming together with the Christians to accept that Jerusalem could not be divided among the three religions and all of them should be have their rights protected under enforceable international guarantees. After all Jerusalem is the city of God for all three and they should not allow politics to come into it.
In order to arrive at that level of understanding, the Israelis and Palestinians need to work out a modus vivendi that essentially involves satisfactory political and territorial solutions to the other thorny issues — the fate of Palestinian refugees and Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank and the final borders of the state of Palestine.
Again, it would be a folly to debate the merits of the arguments of the positions of the two sides. Suffice it to say that Israel remains embedded in its position against allowing the "right of return" of the Palestinian refugees from 1948 and dismantling the settlements despite international conventions and UN Security Council resolutions that enshrine the rights and demand the removal of the settlements.
We know that US President George Bush has endorsed the Israeli position and this has strengthened the hand of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in his quest to impose his version of peace down the Palestinian throat.
There could indeed be compromises if there is enough good will and good faith, and both are in short supply in Palestine today.
Without working out an acceptable formula to address the rights of the refugees and the status of the settlements, the issue of Jerusalem could never even be broached by the two sides.
The death of Arafat is seen as opening a new window of opportunity to revive the Middle East peace process. The US is interested, Europe has pledged to work round the clock for peace in Palestine, the Arabs are ready to make peace with Israel on the basis of Israeli respect and recognition of the Arab and Palestinian rights, whether in Palestine, the Golan or the Sheba Farms of Lebanon, and the international community is anxious to see an end to the continuing strife in the Middle East. The components are there and the people are ready and what is missing is the mutual confidence among the parties involved.
That is where the European role is relevant. Europe could act as the guarantor of good faith on all sides. It needs to break away from the US-imposed constraints and assume a high profile political role in the peace process. It has to remain seized with every phase of the peace talks — as and when they are revived — and should interact with all parties as a neutral mediator who is not only interested to see peace prevailing in a region with which it has historical ties but also to ensure that justice is the basis for any solution to the conflict.