US Pressures Israel to Divide Jerusalem
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October 15, 2007
US Pressures Israel to Divide Jerusalem
By Scott Presson
Palestinian officials who met yesterday with visiting U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice say they’ve received assurances that the Bush Administration will pressure Israel to divide Jerusalem at next month's peace summit in Annapolis, Maryland.
According to Israel Today dot com, the U.S. will “bring all its weight to bear on Israel to make sure Jerusalem is divided as part of an Israeli-Palestinian final status peace agreement”.
One senior Palestinian negotiator who took part in the meeting said that “Rice promised to pressure Israel to halt all Jewish construction in the eastern half of Jerusalem and to publicly blame Israel for the lack of peace in the region if the upcoming summit breaks down as a result of Israel's failure to surrender the holy city”.
Published reports say the government of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has signaled its willingness to turn over Arab-dominated neighborhoods in East Jerusalem to the Palestinian Authority, but Palestinian leaders are also demanding that Israel uproot large Jewish-dominated neighborhoods there as well.
Meanwhile some Israeli officials told Rice that they didn’t see any chance for peace at the upcoming summit.
Reportedly, Defense Minister Ehud Barak told Rice that ”Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas remains incapable of exercising security control over large Palestinian cities”, and that “Israel could not possibly agree at this time to reduce its military presence in Judea and Samaria, let alone allow full Palestinian sovereignty there”.
Others told Rice that Abbas only controls “a portion of Palestinian society, and that making peace with him would not necessarily mean an end to the conflict”.
In what was described by The Jerusalem Post as a “… warm meeting with Olmert”, Secretary of State Rice was told that “the current Israeli government views a Palestinian state as a fait accompli, but insisted that Israel would stick to the peace steps already laid out in the U.S.-authored Road Map peace plan”.
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