Report
[ Home ] [ Up ] [ Contents ] [ Search ] [ Prophecy ] [ The Gospel ] [ Links ]

Middle East Peace Talks

Is peace possible in the Middle East?

Will both parties be able to meet the September 13th deadline for a peace treaty?

The Camp David summit of July 2000 is the latest in a long line of attempts by Israelis and Palestinians to secure peace in the Middle East. Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak must contend not only with the political pressures of the moment but also with a lengthy history of conflict. As their leaders are talking peace, many Israelis and Palestinians are preparing for war. They include not only militant Jewish settlers and members of the fundamentalist Palestinian Hamas movement, but also the Israeli army and the troops of Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat's Fatah group. In recent weeks, Israeli intelligence officials and Palestinian activists have reached the same conclusion: if the talks fail, conflict could result.

The Issue: Jerusalem

No issue in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is more emotional than Jerusalem. A big reason: because Judaism's holiest site and Islam's third-holiest site are located within the city's boundaries. Half of the city was under Jordanian control until the 1967 war, when it was reunified after Israel drove Jordan out of the West Bank.

The Palestinian position:

The Palestinians have always regarded Jerusalem, or Al Quds, as they call it, as the capital of their future state. They want to restore a divide between Israeli and Arab sections, with the religious rights of all guaranteed.

The Israeli position:

Israel insists that Jerusalem is its "eternal" capital (although most countries maintain their embassies in Tel Aviv) and that the city will remain undivided under its control, with rights of religious access guaranteed to all.

The Outlook:

Previous talks between Israeli negotiator Yossi Beilin and Palestinian representative Abu Mazen have fashioned a potential compromise, in which the Palestinians establish their capital in Abu Dis, a neighborhood on the periphery of Jerusalem with a panoramic view of the Islamic holy sites that had been part of the city under the Ottoman Empire but is not included within the present Israeli municipal boundaries. A building that reportedly will be for the use of a Palestinian legislature is already under construction there. One problem: Arafat has since denounced the plan and dismissed Mazen.

Jerusalem's Dome of the Rock

is built over land that is sacred to both Muslims and Jews

Brief History

How Palestine became Israel

From antiquity until the 20th century the name Palestine more often described a region than a place with precise boundaries. It is derived from what the Greeks and Romans called the "Land of the Philistines," referring to an ancient people who were contemporaries of the biblical Israelites as early as the 12th century B.C. In 1920, Palestine gained political borders for the first time in nearly 2,000 years under the British Mandate that followed the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in World War I.

West Bank and Gaza

Following the 1967 Six-Day War and the 1973 Yom Kippur War, the U.N. Security Council passed Resolutions 242 and 338 calling for Israel to withdraw from all territories it had seized in the fighting, including the West Bank and Gaza. The resolutions called for the Arabs, in turn, to recognize Israel's right to exist. Israel eventually agreed to the resolutions, as did Egypt and Jordan, but the Palestinians did not acknowledge Israel's right to exist until 1988. In the years following the wars, thousands of Jewish settlers staked claims in Gaza and the West Bank. The settlers, guarded by the Israeli military, continued to establish homes in scattered areas of Gaza and the West Bank even after 1988.
Although the Palestinians are demanding that all the Jewish settlements be closed down or transferred to Palestinian control, Israel wants to absorb major settlements near its borders. Israel is also seeking to maintain a permanent security buffer in the West Bank along the Jordan River.
The most sensitive area under debate is East Jerusalem, which Israel annexed after the Six-Day War. The Palestinians want East Jerusalem, which includes the historic Old City center, to become the capital of their future state.

Lebanon Border

Israel announced the end to its 22-year military occupation of southern Lebanon on May 24, 2000. Israeli troops began to withdraw from the nine-mile security zone on May 22, after Prime Minister Ehud Barak ordered the pullout six weeks ahead of a self-imposed July 7 deadline.
The zone was carved along the border in 1985 as a buffer between Iranian-backed Hezbollah guerrillas and Israeli civilians in northern Israel. Filling the security void will be UNIFIL -- United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon -- a peacekeeping contingent of 4,500 troops from Ghana, France, Finland and Fiji, among others. The U.N. plans to eventually expand the force to more than 7,500. The United Nations had been calling for Israel's withdrawal since 1978.

Jerusalem

Western portions of Jerusalem were captured by Israel in 1948. Israel retained control over the New City following the 1949 armistice until 1967, when the country took control over the rest of the city during the Six-Day War. Israel's subsequent annexation of eastern Jerusalem was rejected by the international community. Israel considers Jerusalem its "eternal and indivisible" capital. Palestinians, who refer to it as Al Quds, say eastern Jerusalem is the capital of their future state. Eastern Jerusalem includes the walled Old City, with its Armenian, Christian, Jewish and Muslim quarters, the Dome of the Rock and Western Wall. Israel has offered municipal powers to the more than 300,000 Palestinians in eastern Jerusalem and has suggested giving Palestinians full control of certain neighborhoods around the city. Palestinians insist on control over all of eastern Jerusalem. According to Reuters, senior Palestinian officials say Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat fears he would be assassinated if he compromised on Palestinian rights in Jerusalem.