18 October 1998 – “If It’s God’s Land, Let There Be Compromise” – Washington Post
Israeli and Palestinian negotiators, now conferring at the Wye Plantation in Maryland, may not, in the next few days, engage the central issues of the conflict–Palestinian statehood, borders, settlements, limitations on Palestinian sovereignty, refugees and, of course, Jerusalem. But sometime very soon they must and will address these questions. …
January-February 1999 – “Al-Quds and Yerushalayim: Two Names for Two Cities” – Middle East Insight
It was only in the middle of the 19th century that the residents of Jerusalem began to live outside the historic walled city. For Jews that walled city was Yerushalayim, for Arabs it was Al-Quds – one city, with two different names. The Old City constitutes less than one percent of present-day Jerusalem, yet for both Israelis and Palestinians it remains the very heart of Jerusalem. …
January 2000 – “Local Rabbis Join Call for Shared Jerusalem” – Washington Jewish Week
A half dozen local rabbis are among 300 American rabbis who have signed a statement calling for Jerusalem to be shared by the Palestinian and Israeli people. Jerome Segal, the president of the Jewish Peace Lobby and a research scholar at the University of Maryland’s Center for International and Security Studies, spearheaded the effort. …
20 January 2000 – “300 Rabbis in U.S. Group Say Jerusalem Is Shareable” – New York Times
A group of American rabbis, concerned that the Israel-Palestinian peace talks might collapse over the tangled issue of Jerusalem, called yesterday for the two sides to share the city. “The question is whether Jerusalem should be under the exclusive sovereignty of one nation,” read a statement signed by more than 300 rabbis, calling itself the Jewish Peace Lobby. …
6 February 2000 – “Two Issues, One Objective, Nothing more important” – Washington Post
Despite their lack of progress last week, Israeli and Palestinian negotiators will, at some point this year, affirm Palestinian statehood. Yet this will likely occur without resolving, even in theory, the two most difficult issues they face: Jerusalem and Palestinian refugees. …
May 2000 – “Negotiating Jerusalem – Inst. of Public Policy” – University of Maryland
Of all the final-status issues to be dealt with by Israeli and Palestinian negotiators, there is none as difficult as Jerusalem. The Palestinians claim East Jerusalem as the future capital of a Palestinian state; the Israelis maintain that they alone will remain sovereign over the city. Moreover, these do not appear to be mere negotiating positions. The claims asserted by the PLO and the government of Israel are expressions of attachments that are rooted in the aspirations, identifications, and self-understandings of the two peoples. …
May 2000 – “Share Jerusalem” – Sh’ma
The core of the Jerusalem issue is the question of sovereignty over East Jerusalem’s three regions: the historic walled city; the downtown areas surrounding the Old City that constitute the remainder of what had been East Jerusalem when the city was under Jordanian control, 1948-1967; and the vast, heterogeneous area of the West Bank that Israel added to East Jerusalem after unifying the pre-existing city during the 1967 war. …
24 July 2000 – “American Rabbis Want a ‘Shared’ Jerusalem” – Ha’aretz
CAMP DAVID – As peace talks here remain deadlocked over the issue of Jerusalem, the Jewish Peace Lobby has reiterated its call for the Holy City to be shared. In January, the Jewish-American organization collected the signatures of 300 leading American rabbis from various streams of Judaism on a petition entitled “A Rabbinic Call for a Shared Jerusalem.” …
27 July 2000 – “On the Temple Mount, God is the Key.” – Ha’aretz
Israel is prepared to formalize the status quo on the Temple Mount, where day-to-day administration is in Muslim hands. The problem is that from an Israeli perspective, the status quo includes Israeli sovereignty and Palestinian administration. While Palestinians have never accepted Israel’s claim to sovereignty, this issue has remained dormant. But in the context of a Palestinian state, any international treaty covering administrative control will inevitably engage the sovereignty issue. …