I don't know after reading this whether to laugh or cry......laugh at the MJ's unbelievable ability to ignore reality and/or delude himself, or cry that any thinking person could believe the city could be "shared". "Shared" means "DIVIDED" and "DIVIDED" means "DESTROYED". Look at the Palestinian towns under Palestinian rule, look at Gaza, look at the destruction, corruption, lawlessnes. Why do you think the Arabs of Jerusalem OPPOSE being under Palestinian rule, as Meron Ben-veniste pointed out last week in Ha'aretz?

Regarding "shared" sovereignity (particularly meaning "shared" between basically hostile groups):
Berlin had "shared" sovereignity from 1945-1990. Did that work? Nicosia had "shared sovereignity" under the power sharing plan the gave Cyprus independence.
Baghdad is a "shared" city between Shi'ites and Sunnis, Beirut is "shared" between Shi'ites, Sunnis and Christians. And these are all Arabs who "love one another". MJ believes that the Arabs would "share" Jerusalem with the Jews whom they DON'T like?

This should prove to one and all that Bush is no "friend" to Israel and, for that matter, not one particularly concerned about the interests and rights of his own Christian "brothers" in Eretz Israel, because if this plan, G-d forbid, were every carried out, the Christians in Jerusalem would be the FIRST to suffer. Islamic radicalism would snowball, seeing as how they succeeded in driving the Jews out of the Jewish holy city, and they would turn on the Christians in Jerusalem, just as happened in Gaza recently with the murder of a Protestant activist and desecration of churches, and is ongoing in Iraq where the Christians and Yazidis (another minority group) are being murdered daily and driven out of the country.

There is only one possibility for peace and prosperity for ALL groups, Jews, Muslims and Christians...i.e. for the city to remain UNITED under exclusive Israeli rule and Israeli security control.
Olmert babbles about giving up "outlying" neighborhoods and even that political demagogue Avigdor Lieberman is mouthing this. This is nonsense.....when the boundaries of united Jerusalem after 1967 were drawn, it was in order to secure the entire city. The fear was the if Arab terrorists got control of these outlying areas, they could shoot into the Jewish areas. This is exactly what happened in Beit Lehem when gunmen took over and fired at the Jerusalem suburb of Gilo.
Carrying out the "Clinton paramters" (i.e. what is "Jewish will be Israeli and what is Arab will go to the Palestinians") would mean barbed wire dividing isolated enclaves from each other and the need to travel in armed convoys between different parts of the city, whereas today everything is open .

It is true that Israel made mistakes in the Arab part of Jerusalem...not enough was invested there. But just because one mistake was made, the whole city should be destroyed?

Olmert is lying when he says this is a "new Palestinian leadership that recognizes Israel as a Jewish state". He is spewing out one untruth after another in order to save himself from the 4 (IIRC) criminal investigations he is under and so he is hoping to prove to the post-Zionist clique that in effect controls Israel that he will carry out their policies and they should "etrog" him (i.e. leave him alone).
However, people do FINALLY seem to be waking up and the Jewish people will NOT allow this to pass . If you looked at the Steinment Peace Center poll I posted in the previous thread, you will see that a large majority opposes this insane plan.

This shall not pass!

This is actually a far left site, not liberal, with a great deal of anti-Israeli bordering on anti-Semitic attitudes and statements.. M.J. represnets the dishonesty and myth makers of the far left. Bar Kochba is just his mirror image.

Daniel A. Greenbaum

Do you mind telling us where you live in Israel? Perhaps it might help us to understand your mindset.

What a great piece.
Let's hope Hillary Clinton supports her husband's proposal.

Let's speculate, shall we, on WHY the city has grown more divided. MJ places the blame on the separation barrier that, it is true, has come into the city. But the separation barrier is only a few years old. How could that have been a factor in all those years before?

The real reason why the city has grown divided is that the populations reflect the antagonism of the overall conflict. When relations between Israelis and Palestinians were good - or at least civil - then relations in the city were OK as well. The real division of the city started after the first intifada in the late 1980s. Things got worse as Palestinians in Jerusalem, like their brethren elsewhere, were radicalized, both by Hamas as well as the Al-Aqsa Martyrs.

It's true that the antagonism that's a part of the conflict has fueled the divisive politics in Jerusalem, but your blame for it is misplaced. Here's what B'Tselem, the Israeli human rights group has to say:

Since East Jerusalem was annexed in 1967, the government of Israel’s primary goal in Jerusalem has been to create a demographic and geographic situation that will thwart any future attempt to challenge Israeli sovereignty over the city. To achieve this goal, the government has been taking actions to increase the number of Jews, and reduce the number of Palestinians, living in the city.
At the end of 2005, the population of Jerusalem stood at 723,700: 482,500 Jews (67 percent) and 241,200 Palestinians (33 percent). About 58 percent of the residents live on land that was annexed in 1967 (45 percent of whom are Jews, and 55 percent Palestinians). With the Palestinians having a higher growth rate than the Jews, Israel has used various methods to achieve its goal:

• Physically isolating East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank, in part by building the separation barrier;
• Discriminating in land expropriation, planning, and building, and demolition of houses;
• Revoking residency and social benefits of Palestinians who stay abroad for at least seven years, or who are unable to prove that their center of life is in Jerusalem;
• Unfairly dividing the budget between the two parts of the city, with harmful effects on infrastructure and services in East Jerusalem.

Israel’s policy gravely infringes the rights of residents of East Jerusalem and flagrantly breaches international law. East Jerusalem is occupied territory. Therefore, it is subject, as is the rest of the West Bank, to the provisions of international humanitarian law that relate to occupied territory. The annexation of East Jerusalem breaches international law, which prohibits unilateral annexation. For this reason, the international community, including the United States, does not recognize the annexation of East Jerusalem.

It's the Israeli tactics used to seize Jerusalem for themselves, and in an attempt to restrict and reduce the Palestinian presence in the city that have led to much of the animosity. And, for that matter, one can't separate the Israeli efforts to drive Palestinians off the land in other areas of the OT, efforts which escalated in the 80s and 90s, as a cause for increased animosity. Stop the settlements, return the seized land to the Palestinians, stop opposing the formation of a viable Palestinian state, and most of the reasons for the radicalization that you refer to would be greatly reduced. But in the far-right Israeli world view, the Palestinians have no justifiable complaints, and have become increasingly radicalized just for the hell of it.

To insist, as so many far-right Israel supporters do, that peace has to happen before a successful settlement to the conflict, is patently absurd, and again demonstrates the obscurantist anti-peace spin that so often takes place in these discussions. Peace is a result of negotiations. To try to make it a precondition is nothing more than an obstructionist tactic.

"If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail." ~~ Abraham Maslow

Here's the deal, Bar Kochba. Nobody here much cares what you think except that you illustrate MJ's points about extremists.
This is a liberal American site and MJ is talking to Americans.
Other than the trolls here, your Russian settler point of view is not very interesting to anybody.
By the way, do you think Russians like yourself have more right to live in Palestinian territory (i.e. the West Bank) than Palestinians do.
I know your answer. I took a course a few years ago on the Boers of South Africa.

"THIS SHALL NOT PASS"

Brave words, big guy!

Bar K is from California. Sweet. He did learn to write English poorly though.

Do you regard PACBI as an "unbiased source"?

Why are settlers banned? Are Russians okay?
What about Sefardim? What about Leftists?
Could you provide us with a politicall-correct checklist of approved people?

Yes, but...

Hamas doesn't want peace, either...but victory over Israel...not just in "the territories" but over all of the land.

The same goes for Hezbollah.

These points are written into their charters and voiced by their leaders.

The asymetry in military power obscures these points.

As to the ad hominens, isn't there enough blame on this point to go around? Do you complain when folks beat up on BK?

Do you criticize Abdul Hass, who's said the most outrageous things?

To be honest, I've been on a LOT of sites, and this one is by far the most balanced I've seen.

Hi back, MJ,

The Israeli (and American Jewish) fanatics have their counterparts among the Palestinians....

And I would add, keeping within the style of parenthetical amendments, "(and American and European)," since much of the self-styled progressive fanaticism of the PACBI and International Solidarity flavor seems to be coming from the UK and USA.  All too often, as we see right here in TPMCafe fora, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict gives way to a mindless and soulless proxy war between self-styled progressives and cynical wingnuts.

[Update] MJ, please tell us you are not proud of the way this discussion is rapidly descending into an excuse to pile on bar_kochba132.  "BK" and others (as well as myself) have often enough been able to argue coherently within your discussions without this sandbox bullshit.

I may have to kick myself, but this time, and this time only, I totally agree with you. I still think, that countries rarely share sovereignty and it will be difficult the convince the Olmerts and the Abbasses to do it. I still agree though.

I fear it's the Wild West out here.

One of the real problems with the proposed boycott of Israeli academics is that they are boycotting one of the most progressive segments of Israeli society.

Quite counter-productive and ironic given how counter-productive the West's actions have been in responding to terror.

The last time Jerusalem was truly undivided was before the Jordanians took over East Jerusalem and erected a wall separating it from West Jerusalem in 1948. The Israelis took a giant step toward unifying the city when, following its Six-Day War victory in 1967, it tore down the walls and allowed Arabs and Jews to move freely in one city.

Unfortunately, every year since 1967, Jerusalem has grown more and more divided. The Israelis have even extended the security wall into Jerusalem, cutting some Jerusalem neighborhoods off from each other.

So when the Israelis tore down the walls that were put up by Arabs to prevent Jews from reaching their holy places, among other reasons, that was a step forward for unity.  But "every year since" the city has grown more divided. 

Let's speculate, shall we, on WHY the city has grown more divided.  MJ places the blame on the separation barrier that, it is true, has come into the city.  But the separation barrier is only a few years old.  How could that have been a factor in all those years before? 

The real reason why the city has grown divided is that the populations reflect the antagonism of the overall conflict.  When relations between Israelis and Palestinians were good - or at least civil - then relations in the city were OK as well.  The real division of the city started after the first intifada in the late 1980s.  Things got worse as Palestinians in Jerusalem, like their brethren elsewhere, were radicalized, both by Hamas as well as the Al-Aqsa Martyrs. 

So given the overall state of enmity between the Palestinian people and Israelis, it seems to me that the fears that "sharing" will quickly deteriorate into a de facto "division" are not misplaced.  Like everything else in this conflict, it all depends on how much good will you want to assume exists in the Palestinian people.  If the Palestinians relations with Israelis are good overall, then it can be assumed that it would be possible to "share" the city without it becoming divided again. 

It also can't be stressed enough how important and traumatic was the experience of 1948-1967, when Jerusalem was truly divided and Jews were not allowed to go to the Jewish holy sites.  Think about how despicable that is, how utterly disgusting.  Imagine if Mecca were occupied and Muslims were not allowed in.  Imagine if Catholics were not allowed to go to St. Peter's.  Then you might get some sense about why Israelis and Jews are so attached to the idea of maintaining full, undiluted, undiminished, unquestionable sovreignty over the whole city.

For a full, real, lasting peace, Israelis might reconsider.  But as always, the peaceniks like MJ are asking Israel to take it all on faith. Sorry, ain't gonna happen.  Peace and reconciliation need to happen BEFORE any changes in sovereignty, not after.   

MJ does not blame the separation barrier which he mentions only in passing and which separates Arab neighborhoods from each other. His whole piece is about the separation between Arab and Jewish neighborhoods which he blames on mutual hostility.

I find Brad's thinking very interesting. He is so locked into the Zionist mindset that he is utterly incapable of judging any issue related to Israel on the merits.

I just read this on a website called Magnes Zionist. The author writes about "liberal Zionists" like Brad. He specifically addresses Samuel Freedman who trashed the Mearsheimer book in the NY Times.

"Here you have, in a nutshell, the faith of the liberal Zionist.... the Israel-Palestinian conflict could have been solved via Oslo, were it not for the al-Aksa intifada, "that brought terrorism as deeply into sovereign, pre-1967 Israel as the Tel Aviv beachfront."

"As I have written before, this is pure balderdash.

"Nobody in Israel, except those on the extreme left, have ever supported the establishment of a Palestinian state -- rather, they support an emasculated demilitarized "state" that could survive only because of its neocolonial relation to Israel, and that would never pose a threat to the security of the Jewish state.

"That the state of Israel would pose a threat to the security of the Palestinian state is dismissed -- after all we are Jews, and we honor agreements.

"Freedman, qua liberal Zionist, seems to believe that Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005. That is also balderdash, as many people have written many times. Israel never "withdrew" from Gaza; it redeployed its troops for the most part on the other side of the "Green Line" and later imposed a crippling siege against Gaza, when the Palestinians elected Hamas.

"So what really happened was that the Israelis who felt that Gaza could be most effectively controlled by the presence of settlers and IDF troops lost out to the Israelis who felt that Gaza could be most effectively controlled by withdrawing the settlers and the IDF. But the control of Gaza "for the security of Israel" was never once in doubt. This is the classic Zionist debate – the sort of "Jew vs. Jew" that Freedman should have written about: How does one control the maximum amount of territory with the minimum responsibility for the native Arabs?

"Had Ariel Sharon been interested in giving peace a chance – and, to his credit, he never once even hinted in that direction – he would have negotiated a withdrawal with the PA, and, more importantly, he would have negotiated a final settlement. But the Gaza withdrawal was never about paving the way to peace – and Sharon had the guts to say that. In fact, the unilateral Gaza withdrawal was intended to humiliate the Palestinians by implying that negotiating with them made as much sense as negotiating with wild animals.

"(Remember the liberal Zionist Benny Morris's solution for the Palestinians in his interview with Ari Shavit – put them in cages.) Only a liberal Zionist, who identifies troop-redeployments with peace overtures, can spin the Gaza withdrawal as an opportunity for peace.

"Because Freedman is a liberal Zionist – and I criticize not him for that, only the editors who asked him to review the books without demanding him make full disclosure -- he is shocked that Walt and Mearsheimer lump Martin Indyk and Dennis Ross in the Israeli lobby. How dare they throw these two liberal peacemakers into the same camp as Abe Foxman, AIPAC, Daniel Pipes, and Norman Podhoretz? I mean, how many times were Indyk and Ross called self-hating Jews by the rightwing? And how hard did they labor for peace? But the truth is that virtually all Jews in the US, from the far right to the Peace-Now-Meretz-Tikkun left, are a part of the Israel Lobby, or if you don't like that term (I don't), they are strong supporters of Israel, each in their own way.

"Again, this is not a criticism – believe me, some of my best friends are liberal Zionists (full-disclosure: I am a card-carrying member of Meretz, although, in my defence, I joined the party just to vote for Yossi Beilin in the primaries) . To see how deeply Zionist a Dennis Ross is, one needs only read a few pages of The Missing Peace. The fact that he doesn't share the "Islamofascist" neuroses of Podhoretz and Pipes doesn't make him into a centrist on Israel-Palestine. So, who is on really in the middle and not just in the "middle"?

"Well, Walt and Mearsheimer, Carter, Chomsky, Khalidi, for a start. They are all willing to allow a strong Zionist state in Palestine -- more than I can say for most Israelis with respect to Palestine. In fact, most of the one-statists I know of are in the center -- they do not call for a transfer of populations against their will. If you are for transfer -- either Palestinian or Israeli Jewish -- then you are most definitely not in the middle. If your willing for you national self-expression to come at the expense of the other group's national self-expression -- then you are definitely not in the middle.

"Because the Zionist narrative has been accepted by the mainstream liberal press in the US, (but not by Middle East experts), one doesn't need an AIPAC or a Foxman or a Dershowitz to make the case for Israel. The latter will always serve as the "bad cops" to "good cops" like Tom Friedman, Richard Cohen, Dennis Ross, etc.

"The real question is – and Walt and Mearsheimer don't raise it – why has Israel been so successful in getting the Zionist narrative accepted? It is not just the alleged political clout or money of an Israel Lobby. There may be many factors -- liberal Christian guilt for Christian antisemitism, sympathy for the Jews after the Holocaust, the shared Judaeo-Christian heritage on the Bible (the secret weapon of the Zionist), the success story of Jews in the US, including the high intermarriage rates, which makes it more difficult for Christians to act against members of their family. The Palestinians have failed to make the same impact on the consciousness of American non-Jews as have the Jews. They haven't been around as much. And they are "oriental" in the a way that ashkenazi Israelis are not. And they are Arab, and, mostly, Muslim."

I agree that extremists cause problems, but in this case, it's not so clear what's really going on. Here is a PACBI statement on the issue:

Celebrating Peace or Camouflaging Apartheid? Boycott the Jericho-Tel Aviv Public Event on October 18th!

On October 18th, One Million Voices, an organization led by Israelis and international figures with the support of some Palestinians, is organizing a public event in Jericho and Tel Aviv, simultaneously. The event will include performances by renowned artists Brian Adams and Ilham Madfa'i. As stated on the organization's English webpage, the objective of the event is to “mark the first time that massive numbers of Israelis and Palestinians gather simultaneously to unite against violent extremism.”

According to the widely accepted boycott criteria advocated by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), the event falls under the category of normalization projects and violates the call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS), endorsed by over 170 Palestinian civil society organizations, trade uni