Common ground: diplomacy and the human givens

the city's sites and spectacular location but also create congestion and competing interests, sometimes over the same locale. Above all, the question of who controls the space remains one of the thorniest political problems on the planet. Israel occupied the Old City in 1967 and has remained in control until today with many practical and political consequences for Palestinians as well as many other groups with a stake in it.

A discussion document, The Jerusalem Old City Initiative,[2] was prepared by the Canadian team, of which I am a member, outlining everyone's needs and defining possible structures and arrangements that could lead to needs being met.[2] These include social, propertyownership, economic, political and religious, symbolic and heritage needs. Projects and research, from a comprehensive survey of housing stock and structure for the purpose of renovation and rehabilitation, to joint Palestinian Israeli planning on improving visitor services and minimising current equities in tourism, to the development of a 'common charter' that recognises respective needs are proposed in the text.

The core suggestion, a frame of governance that would involve Israelis, Palestinians and internationals in the administration of the Old City, addresses the need for control. A tripartite governing council is proposed with an appointed administrator, agreed to by all parties and the international community. We wanted to avoid the division presented in other proposals such as the Geneva Accords. Instead, the aim is to maintain the integrity of the Old City, both from a functional point of view (the space is too small and crowded to be broken up) and from the more visionary perspective of maintaining its historical nature as one walled city and a place for future understanding and pluralism.

A single Old City police force, again composed of Israelis, Palestinians and internationals, is also suggested as the most efficacious instrument of achieving security in this most sensitive of locales. Critically, there would be, through these arrangements, freedom of access for worship for all believers as well as recognition of the historical links of all interested parties to the disputed areas. Today, many Palestinian Muslims and Christians cannot access the holy sites in Jerusalem due to Israeli security measures, restrictions on movement and the construction of the barrier around Jerusalem. In contrast, Jewish historical ties to the Temple Mount and other holy sites are often denied by Palestinians and other Arabs and Muslims, creating great distrust. The Old City initiative aims to create structures that meet such needs directly, and calm sources of friction and conflict. For example, the proposed Old City police force would permit secure access to all worshippers, and the governing council would play a role in recognising the links of all communities to their holy sites and heritage.

Through this process, the needs for belonging (participation in governance), meaning (freedom of worship) and survival (security) in the Old City are defined, and addressed practically, without large sacrifices; instead, the pie is 'enlarged' by the introduction of the international dimension, while maintaining the national interests of Palestinians and Israelis. The proposed arrangements meet these needs without using old paradigms of exclusivity.

The Old City project has been proceeding at pace for two years but it still meets many hurdles. Although the project provides some degree of meeting the needs for control, the desire for exclusive control, nurtured by millennia of conflation of needs as described above, still interferes with this more sensible approach, thwarting compromise.

For instance:

• The level of distrust between Israelis and Palestinians remains very high due to half a century of conflict and this tends to cause rejection of any effort for accommodation, including creative ones;

• Old habits of diplomacy and politics die hard, even if they don't work;

• Many leaders are partaking in 'circles of attention' as opposed to 'circles of solution'. This makes them focus on existing plans and over-rides the drive for creative solutions that might require moving against the crowd: peer pressure keeps everyone dumbed down and lacking in daring;

• Above all, needs remain unidentified or insufficiently explained. The desire for many Jews to hold on to the Temple Mount and the counter Muslim claim on the same space is lived as unquestioned desire, rather than as a series of specific and achievable needs such as freedom of access, recognition of historical links, security, and shared authority over the site.

Our current goal is to continue to pursue the core needs, especially security, by further developing arrangements so that they are practical and meaningful to all concerned. The project is certainly against today's political climate; however, its strength remains that it is trying to address the core problems and needs and as such will ultimately be effective in conflict prevention, if implemented.

One possible road that has not been tried is to have the parties first come to an understanding of the basic needs of each side before starting negotiations. But, alas, the needs-based approach is almost too basic for leaders and policymakers and takes away from the much-loved complexity that drives the political world and its sister, the media.

The Old City project will proceed and, on its way, graft some new approaches on to the ongoing political dynamics but my sense is that
we have barely begun. The ability to attract new people, especially decision and opinion makers, to these approaches will require proof of effect on the ground. Furthermore, it is likely that two issues will need to be addressed more directly for the Middle East to begin to leave its quandary.

1. Liberation from restraints:

New thinking is required regarding the twin pursuits of survival and meaning. The region continues to proceed, using antiquated means
of achieving these needs, and is unwilling to consider a revamping of these processes. This 'unpacking' inevitably means some large reforms regarding religious understanding and relationships with those outside the faith. At a basic level, this means that people begin to consider that 'identities' of belonging are tools in the hands of people, to shape for themselves, and evolve as required at each time in history, and not permanent forms to be adapted to. This is a large step in a region where identities cut to the root of existence but a desirable goal may, in the end, be a more flexible understanding of identity that is more inclusive.

2. Integration a region for all:

The Old City has four distinct quarters (Muslim, Christian, Jewish, and Armenian); it has conflicting property claims over houses and shops between Jews and Arabs, disputed holy sites such as the Temple Mount and Haram Al-Sharif, and it is crowded: one square kilometre of tight alleyways, souks, Mameluke, Crusader and Ottoman buildings housing 35,000 people, and dozens of heritage sites. With such disputes, density and diversity, it is a microcosm of the region. Answers like those proposed in the Old City project are new organising principles because they are based on maintaining integrity of the space while still meeting the needs of the diversity of citizens. If implemented, these could serve as a model for the region at large.

Although it is merely a vision now, a Middle East confederation (composed, for example, of Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Palestine and Jordan) could achieve greater integrity between these small states, easing mobility and recreating natural connections destroyed by war and the nation-state and facilitating economic success. A confederation, as opposed to empire or autocracy, would be a configuration that would permit interconnection, while maintaining local decentralisation.Above all, such a concept would permit the people of the region to tackle many of their problems, from refugees to water needs, on a regional basis possibly the only way they will be resolved.

In the end, the exclusivity that Middle East identity has bred for thousands of years may simply not be as necessary as it seemed; the peoples of the region may simply be more similar to each other than their cultures would have them believe. Musk oxen gather in a circle to defend against wolves, yet, outside the circle, there may only be other oxen.

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1] Bell, M, Molloy, M, J, Bell, J and Evans, M (2005) The Jerusalem Old City Initiative - discussion document: new directions for deliberation and dialogue. University of Toronto, Munk Centre for International Studies.

2] This document also served as the basis for discussion on Jeruselum by Israeli, Palestinian and international experts at a workshop in Istanbul in December 2005.

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This article first appeared in Volume 13, No, 2 (2006) of the Human Givens journal.

JOHN BELL is the Middle East Director for Search for Common Ground, a global conflict resolution organisation. He is also a former Canadian and United Nations diplomat who has worked extensively in the Middle East in Cairo, Gaza, Beirut and Jerusalem on issues ranging from Islamic fundamentalism to the peace process. He has been a member of Canada's delegation to the Refugee Working Group in the peace process, political adviser to the personal representative of the Secretary-General of the United Nations for southern Lebanon, adviser to the Canadian Government during the Iraq crisis in 2002/3 and consultant to the International Crisis Group on recent developments in Jerusalem. He is a founding member of the Jerusalem Old City Initiative (Universities of Toronto and Windsor), an effort to find creative options for this contentious issue. John Bell has written extensively on Middle East issues in magazines and newspapers across the globe. He is originally from the region and a living example of its shared and mixed heritage.