We had a 5 day seminar a few weeks ago and we were presented with many different views of the situation at hand. It was really enlightening and even if you don't agree at times, you can see (or at least I can) where each person is coming from. Here is a run down of what happened:
Day 1: First we met with Neil Lazarus. I always love hearing from him because he is funny and straightforward. His purpose was to remind us that there are many different sides to the story and that we should as the tough questions. We should challenge everything that we hear and we should not take any of the information that we were given at face value. Believe me, we didn't.
Then we had Jared come speak to us. He spoke to us mainly about the situation within Jerusalem and how East Jerusalem is one of the few areas that was Palestinian that has officially been annexed by the state of Israel and yet is still one of the main areas of disagreement. We discussed what Jerusalem means to us and there was a lot of disagreement within our group about how we feel about it personally. How connected is Judaism to Jerusalem? In 1949 when Israel became a state, Jerusalem was slated to be an international city, but Jews were still not given access to the Kotel. After the 6 day war in 1967 the walls came down and Jerusalem was claimed by Israel. The Palestinian Authority controls the area of the Temple mount which is still under control by the state of Israel.
We also discussed the difference between having an "undivided" city and a "united" city. I think people thought that I was nitpicking when I brought it up but there is a big difference. You can take down a wall and you can give it all one name and make it a part of one state, but does that really make it united? So the wall came down but we are left with a situation in '67 where people don't live in the same places, they don't speak the same language or shop in the same places... how united can they be? This is still the status-quo today. At the same time, I think it is important to mention that even with Judaism this is still the case. The religious population and the secular population live under many of the same conditions. They don't generally live in the same neighborhoods or shop in the same stores but they do, at least, speak the same language.
The problem with Jerusalem is there are 3 things which must be considered. The biblical land versus keeping Israel a democracy versus Israel as a Jewish state. If you talk about the biblical land and want to live in a democracy, you can no longer have a Jewish state. If you want a Jewish state operated under democratic rules you can not stick to the biblical land. If you want a Jewish Israel while maintaining the biblical land, you lose your democracy. We can't have all 3. There is just no way. There have been many attempts at resolving the issue of "who does Jerusalem belong to". So far, its not going so well.
We went on a short bus tour of East Jerusalem. It was terrible (what we saw, not the tour) the "main" road is poorly paved and barely wide enough for the bus to get through. There are no building permits issued to Palestinians so many buildings sit partially done filled with trash. In many places there are not enough resources for electricity or plumbing. The Palestinians living in East Jerusalem do not have citizenship. They have a residency card. They are not allowed to vote in national elections, although they are allowed to vote in the regional election and chose not to. In the late 60's after East Jerusalem was annexed they were offered citizenship and declined and it has not been made a choice since then. Because the people of East Jerusalem don't vote, they don't have any say in the allocation of resources. East Jerusalem, although compromising a large area, only gets 7-9% of the budget because they are not represented. There are many articles on recent evictions of Palestians from areas of East Jerusalem. I dont know what the solution is, but I do not believe in the eviction of these families and doing so will only increase tensions further... which is the last thing that Israel needs right now.
To wrap up the day we had Steve something or other. He gave us a timeline (exclusively pre-1948) that gave us an idea of where all of the conflict originated from. It's pretty interesting stuff and helped to understand the bigger picture of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict but clearly doesn't help offer any kinds of solutions.
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