The PLO and Islamic policy for Jerusalem.

Talhami, Ghada H.

JERUSALEM OCCUPIES A UNIQUE POSITION in the world of Islam, not only as the third holiest city after Mecca and Medina, but also as the first direction of the qiblah. The presence of the Dome of the Rock, the Aqsa Mosque, and the Buraq Wall (Wailing Wall), established Jerusalem eternally in the Muslim mind as a sacred waqf (religious trust). This status was also confirmed by its historical fame as the final repose of companions of the Prophet Muhammad, learned Sheikhs, Sufi masters and others (Talhami 2000). The memory of Jerusalem as the first direction of the qiblah, before that honor devolved on Mecca in 622 CE is still preserved in Masjid al-Qiblatayn, in the Banu Salma Quarter in Medina. There, a miharab (niche) is set to the north, pointing towards Jerusalem. The significance of Jerusalem to Muslim worship, in addition to the story of the nocturnal journey in the Quran, which took place in 619 CE, has been enshrined in a Hadith, reported by the famous Damascene jurist and scholar, Ibn Taymiyyah. According to him, the Prophet said: "Do not set out on a journey except to one of the three mosques: the Holy Mosque (in Mecca), the Aqsa Mosque (in Jerusalem), or my Mosque (in Medina)" (Raymond 2005).

RELIGIOUS HIGHLIGHTS

It is commonly acknowledged by Muslims that the religious choice of Jerusalem as the site from which Muhammad rose to heaven was not solely due to the need to establish the new faith as a full-fledged member of the monotheistic family of religions. Jerusalem was chosen in order to affirm Islam's connection to Abraham as the purest founder of the monotheistic tradition. Muhammad rose to heaven from Mount Moriah because of its association with Abraham's attempt to sacrifice his son Isaac as a burnt offering to the Lord (Genesis 22:2). The Jewish association with Mount Moriah as the site of Solomon's Temple was later recorded in 2 Chronicles 3:1 (Chapman 2004). Yet, despite all of this religious lore, the Ummayyids who ruled Jerusalem from Damascus never entertained the idea of converting it into the administrative capital of Palestine. This was due in large measure to the need to spare the holy city the role of sustainer of the troops. Jerusalem was ruled by a governor and enjoyed its own judge as recognition of its elevated spiritual status, but the administrative capital was placed in Ramleh (Duff 1990). It is interesting to note here that some Israelis view their connection to Jerusalem in more than just religious terms. Modern Israeli officials refer to the manner in which the Temple was built and its location as proof of ancient and uninterrupted physical ownership. According to the author of Kings, a prophet named Gad ordered David while in the midst of a severe plague to "build an alter to the Lord on the threshing-floor of Araunah the Jebusite". Araunah welcomed David and offered to provide the necessary wood and the sacrificial animals, but David insisted on compensating the Jebusite for the threshing-floor and everything else. After the Israeli capture of Jerusalem in June of 1967, the Israeli Minister of Religious Affairs, Zarach Warhaflig, referred to this Biblical story as proof of Israel's ancient and continuous title to what he referred to as "Temple Mount". When an interviewer asked him "Are you saying that the Temple Mount ... is Jewish property even today?" he answered "Yes, (it was) acquired in more than one sense. Generations have shed blood in order to make the Land of Israel ours; and the full price was paid (by David) in money as well" (Elon 1995).

Despite these competing claims for Jerusalem, the history of the city is living proof that the upholders of these religious ties were the faithful people of this city. For much of its history, Jerusalem was inhabited by a majority of Arabs, at least for thirteen centuries, until the arrival of European Jewish settlers during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. The Arab population of the city upheld its position as the custodian not only of the Muslim, but of all the holy sites. In his 1971 Easter message and four years after losing East Jerusalem to the Israeli state, King Hussein of Jordan gave expression to the classic Arab and Islamic position regarding Jerusalem's holy sites in more secular terms:

      At this time of the year the thoughts of all Christians
   turn to Jerusalem where nearly 2,000 years ago the central
   event of their faith took place; so it is appropriate to think
   about what is happening in Jerusalem today....

      The Arabs have for centuries been worthy custodians
   of the Holy City. It was they who built and preserved the
   monuments for which it is famous, such as the Holy Sepulchre
   and the Mosque of Omar. It was the Arab way of life and the
   Arab people, Moslems and Christians alike, who preserved the
   traditional life of the city and gave it that unique sense of
   being a living piece of the ancient world which all pilgrims to
   its walls have felt so strongly. There is a good reason for this.

   To the Moslems, the Christians and Jews are People of the
   Book.... Therefore, the Holy places of Judaism and
   Christianity are ours too. It is thanks to us, for example, that
   the Wailing Wall of the Jews was preserved throughout the
   centuries of Moslem rule.

He then explained:

For centuries our custodianship has been accepted by the Christian churches. It was to the Arab families of Jerusalem, for example, that the keys of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre were and are still entrusted (King Hussein 1971).

Jerusalem is sacred space to Muslims not only because of Muhammad's ascension to heaven but because they truly regard it as the place where the Day of Judgment will take place. It is reported that after the Prophet died at Medina, his Companions argued over the best place for His final repose. Three factions emerged and debated this issue, one of which favored burial in Mecca, His birthplace and the land of His people. Another faction favored burial in Medina, the house of the Hijra and the home of His supporters. But a third faction favored transporting Him for burial to Jerusalem, the place where the Prophets were buried and from where He ascended to heaven. After much debate, it was agreed that He should be buried at Medina since He said in a Hadith "Prophets should be buried where they die" (Mahmoud 1989). According to al-Muqqadasi, a native Jerusalemite and a historian of the city, a tradition developed in later centuries claiming that the city will be the "plain of marshalling on the Day of Judgment where Muslims would gather and both Mecca and Medina will come to Jerusalem and the excellence of them all will be united there" (Peters 1985).

WHO DEFENDS JERUSALEM?

Despite Jerusalem's centrality to the Muslim faith and the history of its prophets, the city was never fully defended by its various recent overlords. Instead, the city is fast becoming a Jewish center with a dwindling Muslim and Christian population. In recent years, states, regimes and national movements have failed Arab Jerusalem. The struggle to maintain the Islamic and Christian character of the city is being increasingly borne by its own unarmed and civilian population. This trend goes back to the nineteenth century when the city's leading families acquired something of a corporate standing and began to speak with one voice. During the ten-year period of Egyptian rule, 1830-1840, Ibrahim Pasha allowed the creation of a council to advise him on the city's day-to-day affairs. The advisory nature of this body did not prevent it from opposing some policies deemed to be out of step with the city's history. Such was the case of a request by a Jewish group to purchase the Buraq Wall, which the city council quickly rejected. It also took the occasion to instruct the Egyptian ruler in the illegality of such a move since the Wall was waqf property. The council added that a waqf cannot be ceded even to a Muslim. In 1887, Muslim and Christian families resisted attempts by wealthy Jews to purchase rights to the Wall one more time. Later on, memories of these efforts led the newly appointed Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin Husseini, to affirm Islamic ownership of the Wall as soon as he assumed office in 1922 (Talhami 1988). In 1863, Jerusalem was accorded a municipal council (majlis baladi) by a special Ottoman firman, the first in the entire empire after Constantinople to enjoy such a privilege. The council consisted of ten members, six of whom were Muslims, two Christians, and two Jews. Every male citizen of twenty-five years or older and who paid fifty Turkish pounds or more in annual taxes was eligible to participate in municipal elections. A police force was created in 1886 and a municipal physician was appointed, followed by the construction of a municipal hospital in 1891. The council was entrusted with issuing municipal building permits. In addition, an administrative council was created around the same period and included beside the Governor, the Chief Judge and the Mufti of the city, representatives of the various religious communities such as the Greek Orthodox, the Latin, the Armenian and the Jewish. Benefiting from the liberalization policies known as Tanzimat, these councils began to assume a representational role vis-a-vis the Ottoman Government when their city was threatened by a rising flood of Jewish immigration and settlement. Leading members of these councils who also represented the city's oldest families sent a resolution to the Ottoman Grand Vizier in 1891, protesting the flow of East European Jewish immigration to the city and its attendant jump in land purchases. This resolution numbered 500 signatures by the city's leading citizens. Those elected from the Jerusalem sanjak (administrative division) to the Ottoman parliament which the Young Turks convened in 1911, also raised the issue of increasing Zionist threat to Palestine through increased Jewish immigration (Scholch 1990). Tax revolts by the city's native population were a frequent occurrence in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. One of these, which broke out a few years before the Egyptian occupation of Syria, resulted in the seizure of the citadel by the city's residents and barring its gates to Turkish officials. The revolt was started by the peasant population of the surrounding area but was eventually mediated by clergy from the various Christian churches (Asali 1990).

THE BEGINNINGS OF PALESTINIAN NATIONALISM

The Wailing Wall Riots of 1929, which were much better known and which heralded the Arab Revolt and Strike of 1936, were also the result of a popular protest movement. The Jerusalem Muslims who frequented al-Aqsa Mosque exploded in anger when the Jewish Revisionist Party of Vladimir Jabotinsky repeatedly attempted to enlarge its prayer area in the vicinity of the Wall. This encroachment on Muslim rights of passage enshrined in the 1856 Status Quo Regulations inflamed Muslim sentiment. It is interesting to note the plebian nature of the Muslim rioters who were in the main transplanted Hebronites encouraged to move to the Old City by the Mufti of Jerusalem. The latter believed, as he often disclosed to his listeners, that the Jews intended to repossess the Wall as a prelude to taking over the entire Noble Sanctuary area and rebuilding the ancient Jewish Temple on the ruins of the Muslim monuments. The Mufti, thus, succeeded in rallying much of the Muslim World to the Arab cause in Palestine. When tensions eased in the Old City, he convened the General Islamic Conference of Jerusalem in 1931, in order to emphasize the Jewish threat to the Islamic holy sites (Talhami 1992). The riots also resulted in victory for the Palestinians when the International Court of Justices recognized the waqf ownership of the Wall and affirmed the principle of the Status Quo Law (Dumper 1997).

The Mufti knew how to arouse the national feelings of Jerusalem's population and how to impart a nationalist coloring to a traditional Muslim festival. This was the Nabi Musa festival held around the same time as the Christian Easter and Jewish Passover celebrations. The city's residents knew the political motivation behind this festival which was said to have been instituted by Salah al-Din (Saladin) al-Ayubi in order to match the Christian popular zeal during Easter celebrations. In the twentieth century, peasant ardor for the memory of the Prophet Moses (revered by Muslims as well as Jews) as they poured into Jerusalem from surrounding towns and villages for a period of six days has taken on a strongly nationalist character. The Mufti also began the practice of leading the procession entering the city while mounted on a white horse and carrying the banner of Nabi Musa. His presence at the celebrations was a clear message to Passover celebrants that Muslims have rights in Jerusalem (Asad 2005). Prominent Christian families attested to the fact that the festival was a source of pride for both Christians and Muslims (Sakakini 2005). The Mufti, whose seat of power was the Supreme Muslim Council and later the Arab Higher Committee, had always made Jerusalem the center of his life and his political and ecclesiastical career.

ZIONIST VIEW OF JERUSALEM

By contrast, the early Zionist leaders who were mostly secular did not view Jerusalem, particularly the Old City, with favor. In 1882, for instance, Moshe Leib Lilienblum, an early quasi-Zionist, stated clearly when describing the Zionist plan that they had no need for the walls of Jerusalem, its Temple, or the city itself (Wasserstein 2002). Theodor Herzl did not refer to Jerusalem at all in his Der Judenstaat (1897). Neither did Chaim Weizmann, the British architect of the Balfour Declaration, who complained that Jerusalem carried with it the medieval ailments of "poverty, stubborn ignorance and fanaticism" (Elon 1995). After experiencing the loss and surrender of the Old City to Jordanian troops in 1948, the Israelis developed even greater disdain for the defiant little town. David Ben Gurion recommended after the 1967 War that city walls should be torn down completely in order to facilitate the unification of the two Jerusalems, the Arab and the Jewish sections. He expressed no consideration for these architectural gems built in their current form by Sinan, famed sixteenth-century Ottoman architect. In some reports, Ben Gurion and the Chief Rabbi of the Armed Services, Shlomo Goren, went as far as to suggest that the confusion resulting from Israel's victory in the Six Day War of 1967 should be viewed as an opportunity to destroy al-Aqsa Mosque and build the Jewish Temple on its ruins (Al-Hout 2005).

But once statehood became the declared objective of the Zionist movement in the early 1940s, the Jewish leadership fought hard, diplomatically and militarily, to acquire Jerusalem as its capital. This leadership also maneuvered strongly to conceal its plans for the city from 1948 until after the new state of Israel was admitted to the UN in May of 1949, so as not to confront UN proponents of the internationalization of the city or aggravate its Jordanian allies. During that period, Tel Aviv served as the unofficial capital, remaining to this day the location of the diplomatic missions of all states which recognize Israel but not Jerusalem as its capital (Wasserstein 2002).

APPROPRIATION OF PROPERTIES AND LAND

When Israel conquered Arab Jerusalem in 1967 and swiftly added it to its declared capital in what came to be known as West Jerusalem, the size and the population of the two halves contrasted sharply. West Jerusalem controlled a municipal area of 38 square kilometers and a population of 200,000, while Arab Jerusalem, hence forward called East Jerusalem, consisted of an area of 6.5 square kilometers and a population of 70,000. Israeli determination to unite the two cities soon materialized as a program of unprecedented territorial expansion which incorporated twenty-eight West Bank villages within the city's boundaries. This expansion adhered to a strict plan of Zionist settlement whereby land was acquired not by the municipality but by the Ministry of Housing and the Jewish National Fund and held in the name of the Israel Lands Authority. The latter held land as the perpetual property of a quasi-judicial body called "the Jewish people", which legally barred any non-Jews from acceding to these lands or living in the newly built settlements. The Israel Lands Authority was created as a rental agency which does not sell land but only rents it to those described as "... entitled to the status of immigrant under the Law of Return" (Coon 2005).

Other expansions within the Old City involved lands and properties which belonged to the Islamic trusts, or awqaf By April, 1968, the Israeli Finance Minister, Pinhas Sapir, has allowed the seizure of ninety-nine acres in the southern part of the Old City, using a 1943 British Ordinance which justified such action when approved for "public purposes". This turned out to be the first step in the government's plan to rebuild the Jewish Quarter and repopulate it with Jewish citizens of the state. The so-called Jewish Quarter, of which only 20% was occupied by Jews before 1948, was always very small. But under the 1968 law, 700 buildings were expropriated resulting in the expulsion of 6,000 Arabs. Thus, whereas Jews have been renters of homes and shops belonging to Jerusalem's families and its Muslim charitable awqaf, now they were considered owners with historic and established property rights (Dumper 1997). For many years, the local Arab population has considered the Jewish Quarter part of what they referred to as al-Sharaf Quarter. This portion of the Old City was owned and inhabited largely by the city's oldest Muslim families who often had family awqaf in this area. Since the liberation of Jerusalem by Salah al-Din al-Ayubi when there was no Jewish presence in the city to speak of, the same area was known as the Kurdish Quarter. In addition, Arab residents of the city insist today that even the Jewish cemetery outside of the city's walls, lying along the Jericho-Amman highway, was also waqf property rented to the Jewish community for the annual payment of one-hundred golden pounds (Maraqa 1986).

One example of Israel's legal strategy in encroaching on these Arab properties was the Israeli High Court's decision in 1975, allowing the expulsion of the Burqan family from their house. The decision was taken despite the Court's acceptance of irrefutable proof of the Arab family's ownership, by resorting to the principle of "public utility" since this would lead, in this view, to the reconstitution of the "natural ethnic" characteristic of the Jewish Quarter (Coon 2005). Expropriating other areas of the Old City has often involved properties known to belong to the Islamic waqf The most famous of this type of land and property confiscation involved the demolition of the waqf properties facing the Wailing Wall (the so-called Moghrabi Quarter) immediately following the cessation of hostilities after the 1967 June War. This was done in order to widen the plaza facing the Wall for the use of Jewish worshipers. These particular demolitions amounted to a rejection of Article 56 of the 1899 and 1907 Hague Conventions, which called for the "Protection of Cultural Property in Time of War or Military Occupation". Israel, as well as Jordan, have previously signed the 1977 Geneva Protocol I and Protocol II (Articles 53 and 16), which prohibit military demolition of cultural properties. The old Awqaf Administration dating back to the Jordanian period was extremely weakened by that time due to years of Jordanian manipulation and control. This same administration, as well as the Higher Islamic Committee which supervised these Islamic trusts did not press the issue before the Israeli military or civil courts. Some felt that this would have produced no results, but most likely neglect was due to legal considerations. As a Jordanian body, the Awqaf Administration found it unacceptable to appear as the plaintiff before the Israeli legal system, which would have entailed recognizing such Israeli laws as the Absentee Property Law, the basis of much of these land and property expropriations. Neither did this last of the surviving Arab institutions within the city assume complete responsibility for the Arab residents' civil and educational needs when the Israeli authorities attempted the usurpation of many of the city's Arab institutions (Dumper 1997). Efforts of these Islamic bodies remained largely focused on the Islamic holy sites.

The passive and limited action taken by the Jordanian authorities and the Arab municipal council immediately following the War of 1967 was similarly based on a strategy of avoiding any public dealings with the Israeli authorities. Response to Israeli activity in the newly-conquered city took the form of protest activities targeting international groups and appeals to Muslim sources of funding, rather than meaningful support for local acts of active resistance. For instance, after undertaking the task of collecting the appropriate documentation of Israeli infractions on international law and directing them to the appropriate UN agencies such as UNESCO, the last Arab Mayor of East Jerusalem, Rouhi al-Khatib, turned increasingly to Arab and Islamic states for financial support and external funding. He pleaded fervently for the activation of resolutions adopted by the 1986 Baghdad meeting of Foreign Ministers of Islamic States, calling for gestures of support for Arab Jerusalem. He wrote that it was time for Arab and Islamic states to replicate the pattern of building Christian educational and health institutions in the city, such as Freres School by France, St. George's School by Britain, Schmidt Girls' School by Germany, various international schools of archeology, as well as French, Italian, and English hospitals. He also pointed to Hebrew University and Hadassah Hospital and their combined impact on the life of the city. He complained of the lack of funding available to the Joint Jordanian-Palestinian Committee on Jerusalem. He specifically mentioned the new Islamic Industrial School for Orphans, begun in 1967 which was still unable to open its doors. Little effort was made to finance the restoration of ailing Islamic monuments, he complained, despite successful efforts to forge brotherly ties between Jerusalem and cities such as Fez, Islamabad, and Ankara. "Sumud" (perseverance), he pleaded, must by adopted all Islamic and Arab states (Al-Khatib 1986).

RESPONSE TO THE EXCESSES OF THE OCCUPATION

Documenting Israeli settler violence against the civilian Arab population of Jerusalem and its surrounding area was often undertaken by civic groups such as the Arab Graduates' Club of Jerusalem. Focusing on events in the early 1980s, these reports which culled news from various newspapers going back to 1975, were attempting to achieve what no government has achieved. Incidents such as organized acts of arson against Arab-owned businesses such as bus-companies by groups calling themselves "Terrorism against Terrorism" received wide coverage. This same group carried out brazen attacks on vehicles of Arab journalists and other prominent citizens in broad daylight. There were also documented attacks on social service offices at Bethlehem's Dheisheh refugee camp, and more violent and destructive onslaughts by the Gush Emunim, the powerful Jewish settler organization, which resulted in the disruption of electrical power supplies to some villages. Complaints to the responsible Israeli authorities went unheeded even when incidents in nearby villages such as Sur Baher were traced to the Jewish settlers of Talpiot who closed water supplies to the village. Another favorite method of attack by settler groups was to throw heaps of refuse over fruit orchards belonging to Arab farmers. In addition, individual Palestinians would always find themselves objects of random attacks by settler groups. The worst of these attacks targeted the Arab residents of the Old City in an effort to force them to evacuate their properties. One such notorious incident involved a woman by the name of Fatimah Abu-Mayyaleh, who was killed by Yeshiva students. Families in the Bab al-Silsilah and Aqabat al-Khalidiyyah neighborhoods were forced out of their homes by similar Israeli religious settler groups (Arab Graduates Club Reports 1986). Most of these activities by vigilante groups formed the run-up to the outbreak of the first intifada which began in December of 1987. The latter 1980s were particularly dangerous years since responsibility for the West Bank and for Jerusalem was lost between the Jordanian regime and the PLO, which by 1969 was reconstituted under Yasser Arafat's leadership. Even though the Arab League's Rabat Resolution of 1974 had already recognized the PLO as the "legitimate representative of the Palestinian people", responsibility for the Occupied Territories remained diffuse, with the Jordanian regime gradually losing control to the PLO. The latter's acts of military resistance were not centered on Jerusalem per se however, and one can even argue that the outbreak of the first intifada was a spontaneous act which took the PLO by surprise. It came at a moment of crisis in the organization's history when it lost control of its bases in Lebanon and was forced to relocate its headquarters to Tunis. Indeed, the intifada permitted the PLO to shift its focus from the losing Lebanese theater to the Occupied Territories where a new front was opening up. At the same time, the Palestinian grassroots resistance groups in the West Bank and Gaza were in urgent need of the PLO's military and financial support after years of neglect in favor of the Lebanese theater (Talhami 2001).

Jerusalem was never designated as a special issue deserving of a separate strategy. Already burdened with the largest settlement expansion program in the Occupied Territories, the city's Palestinian workers were forced to work in the construction of the same settlements which usurped their land due to the lack of meaningful financial support by the PLO. Annual reports filed by the International Labor Organization (ILO), have made it clear beginning in 1979, that Palestinian workers were being exploited by their Israeli employers but lacked an alternative form of employment. A phenomenon dating back to the earliest years of the occupation, this kind of employment was an economic necessity for most workers following the early months of unemployment immediately after the end of the June War of 1967. Not only the Arab workers in Jerusalem but also those in the West Bank were forced to work in construction, which largely meant settlement building, while Gaza's workers were employed in the industrial and agricultural sectors within Israel proper (Bseiso 1986). Until the second intifada and the building of the Separation Wall and the network of checkpoints which impeded population movement in and out of Jerusalem, the majority of the construction workers came from the settlements' surrounding villages. These were driven to accept such employment largely due to the loss of agricultural lands to the settlements (Dumper 1997). All of the PLO's wealth never found its way to these workers whose employment in the settlement construction business remains a sour point with the majority of Palestinians today.

Israeli settlement activity continued inside the Old City and throughout the metropolitan area of Jerusalem largely due to the availability of a large pool of cheap Arab labor. It should be recalled also that the building of Jewish settlements in the Jerusalem area preceded 1967 and was always made possible due to this available manpower. Beginning with the settlement of Romina, built due to the efforts of Palestine's first High Commissioner, Sir Herbert Samuel, in 1921, there were twelve such settlements by 1948. On the eve of the 1967 June War, these Jewish settlements built on the western outskirts of the city rose to sixty-four. Former Arab villages were later incorporated within West Jerusalem, such as Deir Yassin, al-Malha, Ein Karem, and Belt Safafa. Since 1967, Palestinian lands seized by the Israeli authorities in East Jerusalem alone totaled anywhere between 85% and 90% of the Arab city's land area. This was followed in recent years by an efficient program of bureaucratic cleansing which managed to reduce the number of Palestinian holders of Jerusalem I.D. cards by about 11,000. As many as 220,000 Palestinian Jerusalemites who lost their right of residency within the city's boundaries may never recover their I.D. cards in the future (A1-Hout 2005). Much of the publicity surrounding this Israeli plan to thin out the Arab population of Jerusalem was carried out by the Middle East Committee of the American Friends Service Committee in conjunction with a number of international and other Arab NGOs.

THE HIGHER ISLAMIC COMMITTEE

No agency systematically attended to preserving Palestinian rights in Jerusalem, both Christian and Muslim, as did the Higher Islamic Committee. Born in 1967, after suffering the detachment of Jerusalem and the West Bank from Jordan, this Committee acted as the collective will of the people of Jerusalem. The Committee achieved multiple victories, despite its reticence to pursue its claims before the Israeli civil courts. Fearful of legitimizing the occupation regime, these religious Islamic scholars preferred to perform acts of collective resistance imaginatively and independently. Among their achievements was the purchase of a large number of properties in the Old City and elsewhere in order to prevent their sale to Israeli settlers. These properties would then be converted into waqf for the benefit of the entire community. Under the leadership of Sheikh Ikrimah Sabri, the Committee's jurisdiction was extended to cover the entire West Bank and Gaza and added members from outside the city, thereby restoring the city's status as the religious and cultural capital of Palestine. And when Benjamin Netanyahu's Government shuttered the remaining Palestinian institutions in the city, including the Islamic Fetwa Office, Sheikh Sabri came up with a novel solution in order to continue serving the citizens of this city. The Committee established a residence within the Old City (near al-Silsilah Gate) identifiable by a sign which read "Office of al-Aqsa Preacher". More importantly, the Committee fought a long battle against Israeli efforts to undertake repairs and archeological work beneath the structure of the Aqsa Mosque. The Committee continuously fought to expand the recognized boundaries of al-Aqsa in order to include the surrounding gates, the walls and plaza and assert its exclusive right to undertake any structural repairs in accordance with the Status Quo Law. All of this was done without any support from the Jordanian Ministry of Religious Trusts or the PNA Government in Ramallah. This was truly an instant of a people's efforts to preserve their religious institutions and autonomy by their own unassisted efforts (Abbad 2007).

NEGOTIATING THE FUTURE OF JERUSALEM

The process of turning Jerusalem into a Jewish city and demolishing or repossessing most of its Arab and Islamic cultural sites continued even after the PLO's participation in the Madrid, and later, the Oslo peace talks. Highlighting these changes and recommendations to reverse them came from non-PLO sources. Palestinian historian Walid Khalidi raised this issue in a 1999 conference of pan-Arab Town Planners held at Beirut by calling for the creation of a $5 billion fund specifically earmarked for the preservation of Arab Islamic Jerusalem (Khalidi 2000). The building of two large settlements in particular accelerated even during the Clinton Administration's second term of office and its visible involvement in bringing Palestinians and Israelis to the peace table. Following the signing of the Protocol Concerning Redeployment in Hebron in January 1997, which entailed renewing the commitment of both parties to the Oslo peace process, the Israelis announced their intention to build new housing units at Jabal Abu-Ghneim and Ras al-Amoud. This project entailed a forcible seizure of homes by militant Israeli settlers who later relinquished them to Yeshiva students (Cotran 2005).

Resistance to Israelis on the part of the local population continued with minimal support from the PLO, and later, the PNA. Nowhere was this form of peaceful resistance more visible than in the Shu'fat refugee camp north of the city. In 2004, Jerusalem's mayor, Uri Lupoliansky, along with other city officials came up with a plan to relieve overwhelming crowding within the Old City. The municipality announced that a special fund has been set up to relocate the Arab residents of the Old City to Shu'fat, which would be subjected to rehabilitation. Jerusalem's Arab NGOs, such as the Jerusalem Center for Social and Economic Rights (JCSER), accused the Israelis of harboring such intensions since 1967, which would permit municipal authorities to wrest control of more Arab lands. Shu'fat, which has been prevented from expanding "due to the growth of the adjacent Jewish settlements of Pisgat Zeev and French Hill, was originally constructed by the Jordanian authorities in order to absorb Palestinian refugees removed from the Old City in 1966. At the time, the Israeli government protested the rental of vacant Jewish homes within the Old City to Palestinians who fled their villages west of the city in 1948. With a population of 30,000 in an area of no more than 210 dunams (52.5 acres), the refugee camp was hardly capable of absorbing any new additions. The usual camp problems of poor sanitation and unsteady water and electricity supplies plagued its inhabitants, and its serious drug problem led some to refer to it as "Chicago". To this day, residents of the camp continue to complain of dismal municipal services despite the fact that they are the only refugee camp which pays a municipal tax. Being under the auspices of UNRWA (UN Relief and Works Agency), Shu'fat is prohibited from expanding beyond its original area. In the meantime, the Arab residents of the Old City have also witnessed the implantation of 3,000 Jewish religious settlers in their old buildings. Israeli officials apparently hope to unburden themselves of their excess Arab population by dumping them on Shu'fat in the interest of improving some of the Old City's neighborhoods (Baker 2004). Due to its history of resistance during the first intifada, Shu'fat was a candidate for demolition at one time when Teddy Kollek was the mayor. Since the creation of the Palestinian autonomous government structures, the PNA has taken over some programs in the camp whenever UNRWA curtailed its projects. But neither the PNA, nor UNRWA managed to establish the camp's independence from the local Israeli economy. Shu'fat's residents continue to eek employment in the Israeli labor market (Talhami 2003).

The PLO continued to claim that it had received the Israelis' commitment to withdraw from Jerusalem after the signing of the DOP agreement. Hassan Asfour, a member of the Oslo negotiating team and the most ardent supporter of the peace accords, claimed in an article in 1993, that a new precedent had been set by the PLO, namely gaining Israel's commitment to withdrawal from the entire West Bank and East Jerusalem, in accordance with Security Council Resolution 242 (Asfour 1993). The PNA, in reality, had managed to float some unusual ideas in secret talks with the Israelis which later jeopardized its credibility as an upholder of Arab rights in the eyes of the Palestinian public. In the Beilin-Abu Mazen Paper, Mahmoud Abbas (aka Abu Mazen) was later revealed to have negotiated a deal over Jerusalem's future with Yossi Beilin, Minister of Justice in Yitzhak Rabin's cabinet, apparently with Arafat's approval. Although he always denied the existence of such an agreement, Abu-Mazen's deal was later published in several Israeli and American publications. It was revealed that Beilin agreed to persuade his government to recognize a municipality for Arab Jerusalem. This would be treated as the capital of a future Palestinian state, except that it would be located in one of the neighboring villages of Abu-Dis, Azariya, or al-Ram (Usher 2000). When Abu-Dis and surroundings were later proposed as a substitute capital by Clinton and Ehud Barak at the Camp David II negotiations, Walid Khalidi, a prominent Palestinian historian, voiced what most Palestinians felt by objecting to such a deal. He wrote, addressing Arafat:

Jerusalem is not your responsibility only. It is bigger than you, Clinton and Barak put together. It transcends the bilateral framework of Palestinian-Israeli relations. It is the responsibility of billions of Christians and Muslims. If they tell you Abu Dis, tell them you can also suggest a colony from which Jerusalem can be seen. Its name is Givat Shaul Bet. Its Arabic name used to be Deir Yassin. Your duty, Chairman Arafat, is to press with all your strength and vigor for an honorable and equitable solution. Absent such a solution, you should pull out your strongest card: the two letters NO (Khalidi 2000).

Arafat, in reality, never struck out for Jerusalem, although he resisted all kinds of pressure at Camp David II to relinquish Islamic rights to the city. Once established at Gaza, his attention to the deteriorating conditions in Jerusalem waned. Eventually, Ramallah emerged as the PNA's de facto capital. It could be argued, however, that he despaired over regaining any representation in Jerusalem to such a degree that he eventually used it only as a venue for neutralizing his political rivals. One of these was Faisal Husseini, the only Jerusalemite to have been allowed by the Israelis to join the Palestinian-Jordanian negotiating team at Madrid and who later held the PLO's Jerusalem file. Eventually, his duties within the city were severely curtailed, until the Netanyahu government managed to secure the closing of the Orient House, the semi-official headquarters of the PNA. Other Palestinian institutions in the city, such as the land and water companies, were also seized (Suleiman 2003). Arafat not only entrusted the Jerusalem file later on to a much lighter political figure like Sari Nusseibeh, he also continued to maintain his silence when his deputy, Mahmoud Abbas, publicly called for a new deal on Jerusalem and the refugees (Masoud 2002). The PNA also continued to waver publicly on the issues of Jerusalem and the refugees' right of return, which made it appear as though one could be exchanged for the other. But in the end, Arafat resisted efforts by Barak and Clinton to have him relinquish control of parts of East Jerusalem and al-Haram al-Sharif area (Hussein 2005). Moreover, extracting a favorable deal on Jerusalem was never a PLO priority during the Oslo talks. As both the issues of Jerusalem and the refugees' fight of return were relegated to the final status stage of the negotiations, the Israelis speeded up their illegal settlement building efforts and the assassination of grass-roots Palestinian leaders. The expropriation of Arab lands in the Jerusalem area and accusations of Palestinian land sales to Israelis prompted the Mufti of Jerusalem, Sheikh Ikrimah Sabri, to issue a fetwa forbidding such sales. The fetwa, issued in 1996, prohibited the sale of land and property to Arabs or Jews (A1-Hout 2005).

HAMAS

Hamas, whose existence dates to the first intifada towards the end of 1987, had developed a public position on the sanctity of all of Palestine, and not only on Jerusalem as stated in its 1988 Charter. All Palestine was a waqf, it was declared, and no part of it could be ceded to the enemy in any negotiations. All Palestine was incorporated as a waqf in the name of all generations of Muslims until the Day of Judgment. Hamas made it clear that the task of liberating Palestine does not rest on a specific order of priority as was the case with the PLO. Article 14 of Hamas' Charter refers to the liberation of Palestine as a process in three stages: the Palestinian, the Arab, and the Islamic. Each one of these groups bears a special responsibility in the wider struggle against Zionism, and it would be a grave error to ignore or leave out any one of these areas. This is due to Palestine's sanctity as an Islamic land, encompassing the first qiblah, the third holiest mosque, and the land from which Muhammad ascended to heaven. Thus, the liberation of Palestine is a duty for every Muslim wherever he resided. Under Article 15, the Hamas Charter reminds Muslims that when the enemy has usurped the land of Muslims, then the jihad in the interest of liberating these lands becomes a sacred Islamic duty. This necessitates raising the banner of jihad which requires disseminating Islamic consciousness among local, Arab, and Islamic publics alike. The same Article emphasizes the need to strengthen the Palestinian question in the consciousness of all Muslim generations as a religious question, demanding a religious solution, since it has within its boundaries Islamic sites such as al-Aqsa Mosque, forever linked with Muhammad's ascension to heaven. Unlike the PLO, which moved from seeking a historic solution in Palestine to a solution of phases, Hamas distinguishes between an imminent and a deferred solution. The latter, which would be based on a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza as an interim solution may actually result in a cease-fire. Ultimately, all Palestine, "from the sea to the river" will be liberated. Not a single organization or state, not a single leader or king, has the right to dissipate this title to the Palestine waqf All of the declarations of Hamas have asserted that "Palestine was an indivisible whole, from its north and its south, to its coast or mountain, its sea and its river" (Horoub 1997).

HAMAS AND PALESTINE'S CHRISTIANS

By 1995, Hamas began to articulate the vision of a Palestinian state established on any liberated territory in Palestine, as long as the other parts of the national territory were not given up. The idea of liberating Palestine in stages, however, remained suspect, especially in the wake of the Oslo Agreement which totally ignored the question of Jerusalem. Though critical of the PLO's deferment of the Jerusalem issue until a much later time according to the Oslo timetable, in reality Hamas itself did very little towards focusing national attention on the Jerusalem issue. There was the occasional public rally held by the Palestinians in the Triangle area within Israel, which saw the leadership of Hamas decry Israeli encroachment on Arab territory in the Jerusalem area, but not much else. Hamas, however, made up for its banishment from Jerusalem and its geographic distance from the holy city by nurturing excellent relations with the Christian Palestinian population in general, many of whom claim a special attachment to the Christian holy sites in Jerusalem. Significantly, whenever the officials of Hamas extend greetings to Palestinian Christians on the occasion of their religious holidays, Omar's pact which pledged protection to Christian churches and properties in the holy city is brought up. Reference to Omar's legacy in Jerusalem becomes a convenient tool with which to illustrate Islam's historic pledges of protection to Christians and Jews living under Muslim rule. In its 1988 declaration titled: "The Movement's Policy toward Palestine's Christians", Hamas affirmed that Christians are part of the Palestinian people and the Arab nation. They were entitled to the same civil rights as the rest of the Palestinian people. Hamas calls on Palestinians to share in celebrating Christian holidays, and calls on Christians not to emigrate under the pressure of Israel's brutal treatment. In that spirit, Hamas has cancelled one of its strike days in 1990 when it realized that it coincided with the date of the birth of Jesus. It has also publicly condemned Zionist attacks on the properties of the Greek Orthodox Church in the holy city in 1990 (Horoub 1997).

HAMAS' BASES OF SUPPORT

In terms of the reality on the ground, however, the presence of Hamas within the holy city has always been tenuous. Its support base has always been limited to the membership of the Workers' Union of the Jerusalem Electrical Company, elected student bodies at Jerusalem University, and among workers in al-Maqasid Hospital. This base of support pales in comparison with what the PLO controls in Jerusalem and what Hamas itself controls within the Gaza Strip. The position of Hamas on Jerusalem suffers additionally from its historical rhetoric in which the city's significance is reduced to its religious symbolism for the overarching religious conception of the Islamic state. The struggle to maintain the Arab and Islamic character of the city, however, requires repeated reference to international obligations and international law. In recent years, Hamas has been increasingly inclined to establish contact with foreign governments and express approval of specific UN resolutions favorable to the Palestinian position. Some specific UN resolutions, such as 242 and 338, have received much criticism from Hamas because they overlook the necessity of Palestinian statehood. Hamas' interaction with international organizations and its attendance at international forums, however, has been limited thereby weakening its ability to defend the rights of Jerusalem's population (Horoub 1997).

Since Hamas' victory at the polls and its subsequent break with the PNA and its confinement to Gaza, its ability to exercise influence over the fate of Jerusalem has been severely limited. In the meantime, the general condition of Jerusalem's Arab population continues to deteriorate, but no help is forthcoming either from the PNA or Hamas. For instance, it was reported in September of 2007 that 66% of all Palestinian families in East Jerusalem and 76% of all Arab children live below the official poverty line. The Palestinians, who now comprise 34% of Jerusalem's total population, are thus over-represented in the ranks of the city's poor, to the tune of 56% of the city's total population ("Poisoning the Souls"). The preoccupation of these two centers of power, the PNA and Hamas, with their political struggle was bound to provide the Israeli authorities with unusual opportunities for altering the status of the city's sacred space. In February of 2007, a crisis was reached when the Israelis began to dig a tunnel below al-Aqsa Mosque, which exposed a previously-dug tunnel beneath the Dome of the Rock. As Palestinian protests spread, Israeli troops were deployed throughout the Old City, particularly near the Moghrabi Quarter. Palestinian students and Muslim worshippers were prevented from entering the Old City. Major protests were issued by al-Aqsa Association for the Protection and Development of Islamic Holy Sites, which accused the Israeli Antiquities Department of protecting a private religious Jewish organization, Atarit Cohanim responsible for these projects. This was the latest infringement on the Islamic holy sites by similar groups and a blatant rejection of the Status Quo Law by the Israeli authorities (Amourah 2007). By undertaking this work, the Israelis, private citizens and the government, were also infringing on the authority of the Islamic Waqf Administration which has the sole responsibility for authorizing such digs (Morris 2007). Preoccupied with a bitter military struggle over the fate of Gaza, neither the PNA, nor Hamas, have showed any interest in the matter as of late. Demonstrations by the aggrieved Arab residents of the city and their local organizations marched against these illegal and threatening archeological digs but without any official support from either of these two Palestinian parties ("Man yadfaa' ..." 2007).

CONCLUSION

Arab Jerusalem seems to be destined to suffer victimization due to Arab, and even Palestinian neglect. One writer recently commented that "if al-Aqsa was truly to collapse over the heads of its Muslim worshippers one day, Arab states would only send a memorandum of protest to the Security Council" (A1-Jundi 2007). This passing remark, though intended to be sarcastic, should actually arouse interest in the Security Council and what it should have done to protect the rights of the Arab people of Jerusalem. The truth of the matter is that both the PNA and Hamas have long abandoned any effort to seek an international solution for Jerusalem. This may be the natural outcome of abandoning the internationalization issue, which, though conceived within the walls of the world organization, has been overtaken by the Palestinian demand for statehood and establishing Arab Jerusalem as the capital of such a state. Yet, the Palestinians in their various ideological factions remain strangely immune to an understanding of where the city ranks within the politics of the world organization. Even the struggle for statehood, which has been waged diplomatically and militarily since the first intifada seems to have relegated Jerusalem's fate to the backburner. But this incremental approach to peace making has also failed, which is a testimony to the tenacity of the Israeli state and its determination to convert Jerusalem into its own ethnically homogenous capital.

It should also be clear that responsibility for Jerusalem, or at least for the protection of its holy sites, is divided among many groups, including the PNA, the Jordanians, the Organization of the Islamic Conference, the Saudis, the Arab League of States, and the UN. The latter, with a history of involvement in the Palestine question, has never superseded General Assembly Resolution 181 and its call for the internationalization of Jerusalem. As such, it should have been held accountable for the deterioration of the status of the Arab residents of the city and the loss of protection for its holy sites.

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Ghada H. Talhami is D.K. Pearsons Professor of Politics Emerita at Lake Forest College, Illinois.