Jerusalem:
Endorsing
The Right Of Conquest
By Stephen Zunes
11 June, 2007
Fpif.org
In
a flagrant attack on the longstanding international legal principle
that it is illegitimate for any country to expand its territory by military
means, the U.S. House of Representatives, by an overwhelming bipartisan
majority, passed
House Concurrent Resolution 152 congratulating Israel for
its forcible “reunification of Jerusalem” and its victory
in the June 1967 war.
The resolution, passed by
a voice vote on June 5 – the 40th anniversary of the Israeli conquest
of East Jerusalem and other Arab territories – states that U.S.
policy should recognize that Jerusalem is “the undivided capital
of Israel.” There is no mention that Jerusalem – which has
the largest Palestinian population of any city and which for centuries
served as the commercial, cultural, education and religious center for
Palestinian life – should also be recognized as the capital of
a future Palestinian state.
The resolution was sponsored
by House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Tom Lantos (D-CA), widely
recognized as the Democratic Party’s chief foreign policy spokesman,
and co-sponsored by such Democratic Party foreign policy leaders as
Howard Berman (D-CA), Eliot Engel (D- NY), Robert Wexler (D-FL), Joseph
Crowley (D-NY), and Middle East subcommittee chairman Gary Ackerman
(D-NY).
Israel has formally annexed
East Jerusalem and surrounding lands, unlike the rest of the West Bank,
which is either under the control of Israeli military administration
or the Palestine Authority. No government outside Israel recognizes
this illegal annexation or supports the idea of a Jerusalem united under
exclusive Israeli sovereignty. International organizations and leaders
of major religious bodies throughout the world have repeatedly stressed
the importance of not allowing Israel's unilateral takeover to remain
unchallenged. UN Security Council resolutions 252, 267, 271, 298, 476
and 478 – passed without U.S. objections during both Democratic
and Republican administrations – specifically call on Israel to
rescind its annexation and other efforts to alter the city’s legal
status. Given that Article 5 of resolution 478 specifically calls on
all UN member states not to recognize Israel’s annexation efforts,
the Democratic-controlled Congress is effectively calling on the Bush
administration to put the United States in direct violation of the UN
Security Council.
Who Controls Jerusalem?
Jerusalem has been conquered
and re-conquered more than 37 times in its 3000-year old history. Yet,
with the establishment over the past century of clear international
legal principles forbidding such military conquests and of international
organizations with enforcement mechanisms, there has been a persistent
hope that the fate of Jerusalem could – along with other territories
seized by the Israeli armed forces – be resolved peacefully and
with deference to international law. UN Security Council resolution
242, long seen as the basis for Arab-Israeli peace, emphasizes the “inadmissibility
of the acquisition of territory by war.” Congress appears to think
differently, however.
The bipartisan decision to
pass a resolution celebrating Israel’s military conquest at a
time when there is a growing consensus among Palestinians, Israelis,
and the international community that a shared Jerusalem is imperative
for a durable peace appears to have been designed to undermine the peace
process. As M.J. Rosenberg, director of the Israel Policy Forum’s
Washington Policy Center, observed, "Congress has a role to play
in the Middle East...but that leadership is not expressed by resolutions
celebrating a war but by using its authority to promote security for
Israelis and Palestinians."
Virtually no one would like
to see Jerusalem return to its 1948-67 status, when it was divided by
sentry posts, barbed wire, and snipers, with neither Israelis nor Palestinians
able to cross to the other side. However, there are a number of other
options, including making Jerusalem an international city as originally
called for by the UN in 1947, creating a joint Israeli-Palestinian administration,
or repartitioning the city but with full access by residents and visitors
to both the Israeli and Palestinian sides.
For example, the Geneva Initiative
– signed by such prominent Israeli officials as former Justice
member and Oslo Accord architect Yossi Beilin, former Labor Party Leader
Avram Mitzna and former Knesset speaker Avraham Burg (along with equally-prominent
Palestinian leaders) – call for Jerusalem’s Jewish neighborhoods
and holy sites to be under Israeli control and the Palestinian neighborhoods
and Muslim and Christian holy sites to be under Palestinian control,
a position that public opinion polls indicate a majority of both Palestinians
and Israelis supports.
An overwhelming bipartisan
majority of the U.S. House of Representatives, however, in a clear rebuke
of such initiatives, insists that the entire city be under exclusive
Israeli control.
This led to protests by more
moderate voices in the House. As Rep. David Price (D-NC) put it in the
floor debate prior to the vote, since “the idea of an undivided
Jerusalem under sole Israeli sovereignty has not been part of any serious
peace proposal . . . in the last several years,” the resolution
thereby “undermines U.S. efforts to secure the trust of all sides
in the search for peace.” Rep. Lois Capps (D-CA) observed how
“it has long been understood that a permanent agreement about
the Palestinian areas of Jerusalem will be left to final-status negotiations.
. . . I think we tread on dangerous territory when Congress adopts positions
that run counter to issues that have yet to be negotiated.” Rep.
Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) was among those noting the irony of the House
passing what many would label a pro-Israel resolution that “would
place Congress out of step with large parts of the Israeli political
spectrum.”
The United States, like all
other nations with diplomatic representation in Israel, has its embassy
in Tel Aviv pending resolution of the status of Jerusalem. However,
the Lantos resolution calls on President Bush to unilaterally move the
U.S. embassy to Jerusalem prior to a peace settlement, despite the president’s
recognition, like that of his predecessors, that doing so would sabotage
U.S. diplomatic efforts and needlessly evoke enormous hostility throughout
the Islamic world. In the eyes of the Democratic-controlled Congress,
there is nothing to negotiate: Israel is the undivided capital of Israel
by right of conquest.
Israel’s Occupation
Whatever the position of
the U.S. Congress might be, however, the fact remains that the residents
of East Jerusalem never voluntarily ceded sovereignty to Israel through
a referendum or other methods; their part of the city was seized by
military force. By any definition, this constitutes a military occupation.
To this day, Israeli occupation
forces patrol the streets and engage in ongoing human rights abuses
against residents who oppose Israeli rule continue. The Israeli government
has confiscated or destroyed homes and other property belonging to longstanding
Muslim and Christian residents of the city. Several UN bodies, along
with Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and other reputable human
rights organizations have frequently cited Israel for its ongoing violations
of the Fourth Geneva Convention in East Jerusalem and surrounding areas.
Despite this, the House resolution commends Israel for having “respected
the rights of all religious groups” during its 40-year occupation.
Meanwhile, the Bush administration,
like the Clinton administration, has refused to raise any objections
to Israeli occupation forces banning access by most Palestinians to
the schools, hospitals, businesses, and cultural venues of Palestine’s
largest city. This ban has caused enormous suffering to the population.
And just as the Jordanians refused to allow Israeli Jews to visit their
holy sites in the Old City when the Hashemite Kingdom controlled East
Jerusalem between 1948 and 1967, Israel now severely restricts access
by Palestinian Muslims and Christians from the Gaza Strip or the rest
of the West Bank from visiting their holy sites in the Old City.
Despite the resolution’s
claims to the contrary, those of us who have actually been to Jerusalem
in recent years recognize that it is hardly a unified city. One hardly
ever sees any Israelis other than soldiers and journalists in Palestinian
residential neighborhoods or business districts. During one recent visit,
my Israeli cab driver from the airport refused to take me to my hotel
in the Palestinian half of the city, instead dropping me off at the
pre-1967 dividing line and insisting I get an Arab cab for the remaining
ten blocks of my trip.
Unlike the U.S. Congress,
the Israeli Knesset did not pass a resolution celebrating the 40th anniversary
of the conquest. Indeed, Israel’s elected institutions tend not
to commemorate their wars except to honor their dead. As with Israel’s
war on Lebanon last summer, Congress is willing to offer near-unanimous
support for policies for which the Israelis themselves are willing to
engage in serious self-criticism.
Indeed, the congressional
resolution celebrating the humiliating defeat of Arab armies will likely
only increase anti-American sentiment throughout the Arab world. That
victory brought hope to many Israelis that, with the leverage made possible
by its conquest of Arab lands, and Israeli withdrawal could be exchanged
for a permanent peace agreement with its Arab neighbors. Congress, however,
has it made clear in a bipartisan fashion that the most important part
of the occupied territories is not subject to negotiation.
Given the centrality of Jerusalem
to any comprehensive peace settlement, U.S. policy has made it extremely
difficult for a lasting peace settlement to be implemented. As Rep.
Price observed, “the only thing likely to fully guarantee Jerusalem
as the permanent capital of Israel is the official, international recognition
of Israel's neighbors and the entire international community -- and
this recognition is unlikely so long as Palestinian claims to their
own capital and sacred city are denied.”
What the U.S. Public
Thinks
Public opinion polls in the
United States show that, unlike most of their congressional representatives,
a sizable majority of Americans supports a shared Jerusalem. And fortunately,
despite the backing of both the Republican and Democratic leadership,
there have been signs that this dangerous and reactionary policy initiative
is not universally supported within Congress either. Julie Schumacher
Cohen of Churches for Middle East Peace observed that the failure of
the resolution to get more than fourteen co-sponsors and the avoidance
of a roll call vote “may reflect a lack of confidence in the outcome
of such a vote and Congressional weariness with resolutions like these
that do not help move the peace process forward and undermine U.S. diplomatic
efforts.” Similar resolutions regarding Jerusalem passed by Congress
in previous years received even greater bipartisan support.
There is more at stake here
than Israeli-Palestinian peace. It is very dangerous, in this era of
American military dominance, for such a large majority of Congress to
go on record challenging the principles enshrined in the UN Charter
that international boundaries be recognized on the basis of law, not
the force of arms.
The American public must
not allow the Democratic Party, given control of Congress by the voters
last November, to squander its mandate by supporting resolutions that
not only undermine the rights of Palestinians and the long-term security
interests of Israel and the United States, but also undermine important
and longstanding principles of international law.
Stephen Zunes is Middle East editor for Foreign Policy
in Focus. He is a professor of Politics at the University of San Francisco
and the author of Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of
Terrorism (Common Courage Press, 2003.)
Copyright © 2007, Institute for Policy Studies.
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