THE VIRTUAL HARD-LINE

'Hebronizing' Jerusalem (Daniel Seidemann, April 30, 2003, Jerusalem Post)

Drive north up Jerusalem's Route No. 1, the major north-south artery in the city: on your right, the Palestinian neighborhoods of east Jerusalem, and to your left, the Haredi neighborhoods of the west. For the past two and a half years, no Israeli ventures to the east of the road, and Palestinians cross the divide to the west only for compelling reasons, such as employment opportunities that don't exist in their own quarters.

And on the all-too-frequent days when the security alert is high, you will find mobile border patrol checkpoints at each east-west crossover point along the route precisely where the Clinton parameters would have established the border.

And as you drive north into the Palestinian neighborhoods of Shuafat and Beit Hanina, for every mile you proceed, the texture becomes more Palestine, less Israel well before you arrive at the municipal boundaries. Refuse collection becomes sporadic, thousands of school children are denied a public school education, and rampant illegal building discloses both the denial of the right to build legally and the lack of credible enforcement.

It's a "gangrene-like" effect: the Israeli heart cannot generate the blood pressure needed to bring the vital fluid services and rule of law to the extremities. Israel's sovereignty over east Jerusalem is virtual if not fictitious.

Jerusalem does not await the decisions of the political leaders that purport to control its future. Contrary to the mantra of the current Israeli government, the Israeli withdrawal from east Jerusalem is well underway. And the divide not only replicates the interface laid down by president Bill Clinton, but clearly anticipates the contours of future political arrangements.

The argument is over, all that remains is the long and lethal process of getting both sides to realize it. Wasn't there an original Star Trek episode to that effect? Posted by Orrin Judd at May 1, 2003 12:24 PM