Kadima members disagree over how J'lem should be divided

Haaretz Last update - 07:32 21/09/2007
By Nadav Shragai, Haaretz Correspondent

Serious differences of opinion have erupted in Kadima over the possibility that the agreement of principles Israel is now negotiating with the Palestinians will determine the final-status deal on Jerusalem. Seven years after the Camp David summit in 2000 and the cabinet's subsequent decision to adopt, with reservations, then U.S. president Bill Clinton's plan to divide the capital, no one in Kadima is asking whether Jerusalem will be re-divided. The only question is how it will be re-divided.

Vice Premier Haim Ramon is promoting a plan to Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayad in which almost all Palestinian neighborhoods of East Jerusalem would be subtracted from the Israeli city and become part of a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem. The areas inhabited by Jews, including the new neighborhoods south, north and east of the Green Line that divided the city until 1967, will remain under Israel's jurisdiction. The plan would also divide the Old City between Israeli and Palestinian sovereignty, with the Muslim and Christian Quarters under Palestinian rule, and the Armenian and Jewish Quarters under Israeli rule. Sovereignty over the Temple Mount would be divided between Palestinians and Jews as well.

Ramon proposes handing over three neighborhoods soon after the agreement of principles is signed, if Israel is convinced that the Palestinian Authority can control them: Shuafat, in northern Jerusalem, near Pisgat Ze'ev and Atarot; Suahra, on the edge of the Judean desert; and Wallijeh, a village near the Massuah neighborhood overlooking the railway to Tel Aviv.

In recent weeks, however, a counter-coalition inside Kadima has sprung up, headed by MK Otniel Schneller. Schneller is unwilling to give up Israeli sovereignty over the Old City and the Temple Mount, but will accept religious management of the holy sites. He is also willing to give up neighborhoods on the outskirts of the city - mostly to the north, such as Al-Ram, Qalandiyah and Kafr Akeb (most of which are already outside the separation fence) - as well as parts of a few other neighborhoods. However, Schneller stays away from calling his plan "division." He will not accept any substantial concession on the Temple Mount and demands that in the final Jerusalem arrangement, space be allocated on the Temple Mount for Jewish prayer - a demand former prime minister Ehud Barak raised at Camp David in 2000.

Schneller believes that decisions about the future of Jerusalem should be made by representatives of the entire Jewish people, not just the Israeli public. He also believes that if the Ramon plan is adopted, Kadima will disintegrate, as many parliamentarians will be unable to support it. Kadima's mayoral candidate in the capital, businessman Nir Barkat, has already said that he is considering leaving the party due to the Ramon plan. Barkat wrote to Ramon this week saying that he had not been authorized by either the government or the party to propose plans on Jerusalem, and that Jerusalem and the rest of the country are entitled to know if this is the new Kadima position, and whether Ramon is acting on Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's authority.

That, in a nutshell, is the key question: What does Olmert think? Back when he was mayor of Jerusalem, Olmert rejected any proposal for division - of the Temple Mount, the Old City or East Jerusalem as a whole. But Olmert is remaining mum, and his associates say that Ramon has permission but not authority. Many politicians believe this obscurantist formula means that Olmert is using Ramon's plan as a trial balloon. If it does not explode, Olmert is likely to adopt large sections of the plan. The battle inside Kadima over whether Jerusalem will be divided has already been decided. The question now is how - and also whether the party, as Ramon has, will call the spade a spade: division.