Most analysts are still saying that the chances of a peace treaty between Israel and the representatives of the Palestinian people is very small. But the negotiators have done a very good job at stopping the leaks that have become the norm in these negotiations. So there is little solid information to indicate what is going on behind the closed doors of the negotiations. Some of the comments that have been made indicate some compromises have been discussed, particularly in the discussion surrounding Jerusalem. According to the article below from Time, the compromise may be that Jerusalem will be a shared capital. It will be both the capital of Israel and of Palestine. All these things will happen within God's will and in His time. But, the leaders of Israel should remember that God is jealous toward Jerusalem and in my opinion will not care for Jerusalem being shared.
Zechariah 1:14-15
So the angel that communed with me said
unto me, Cry thou, saying, Thus saith the LORD of hosts; I am jealous
for Jerusalem and for Zion with a great jealousy. And I am very sore
displeased with the heathen that are at ease: for I was but a little
displeased, and they helped forward the affliction.
Amid Israeli-Palestinian Peace Talks, Signs of Compromise Over Jerusalem
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| Jerusalem |
A member of Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu’s coalition government created something of a stir this
week when he could not foresee any peace agreement with the
Palestinians that wouldn’t include Jerusalem as the capital of the
Palestinian state, as well as of Israel.
Ofer Shelah of the Yesh Atid (There Is
a Future) party, Netanyahu’s biggest coalition partner, made the
comments earlier this week in a Tel Aviv “pub talk” hosted by the
left-wing group Peace Now. Many in the Israeli media jumped on the
fact that Shelah — a former journalist like his friend and party
founder Yair Lapid — seemed to be endorsing a solution to the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict that contradicts the party line, as well
as that of Netanyahu’s Likud.
“Jerusalem will remain united under
Israeli sovereignty,” the Yesh Atid party wrote in its founding
declaration of principles, “because Jerusalem is not just a place
or a city, but the center of the Jewish-Israeli ethos and the holy
place for which Jews longed throughout all generations.”
In an interview with TIME, Shelah says
he was offering frank analysis more than opinion.
“A solution in Jerusalem will be a
solution of words, no less than a solution of deeds. That is, it will
be conceptual much more than physical,” says Shelah, also a
respected author who lost an eye in 1983 as an Israeli soldier in
Lebanon.
“Somewhere within the borders of
Jerusalem, we’ll have to say, this side is Israeli and this side is
for the Palestinians. I’m not saying it’s not complicated or that
I have the right formula in my pocket, just waiting to take it out.
But I don’t think the Palestinians would ever agree to a peace deal
that would not see East Jerusalem as their capital. And I’ve said,
as Yesh Atid has, that we see the need to reach an agreement with the
Palestinians and that is in our foremost interests.”
Jerusalem is considered one of the most
sensitive issues in the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, which
restarted Aug. 14 after a three-year stalemate, with envoys of the
Obama Administration acting as both cheerleader and referee. Since
the launch of the talks, the two sides have met three times, and then
had an additional, unannounced meeting on Thursday. Both sides have
kept mum on whether progress has been made, saying only that the
talks were serious and substantive. The parties will meet in the West
Bank town of Jericho next week.
The Palestinian negotiating team holds
that every part of the city that was in Jordan before the Six-Day War
of 1967 should be the capital of their future state. The Israeli
government’s position is that the unified city is its eternal,
indivisible capital, and it contests that only under Israeli
sovereignty have the Old City’s holy sites — precious to Judaism,
Christianity and Islam — been safe and open to all.
Reading between the lines, however,
many Israelis have been gradually coming around to the idea that a
peace agreement probably means a shared Jerusalem, though most don’t
want a physically divided city. In the latest monthly Peace Index
conducted by Tel Aviv University and the Israeli Democracy Institute,
pollsters found that about half of the Israeli Jewish public would be
prepared to cede Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem to the Palestinian
Authority as part of a permanent settlement to the conflict. That was
far more flexible than most Israelis were willing to be on other
contentious issues, like the Palestinian demand for the “right of
return” to land they — or their grandparents — left in 1948 in
the war over Israel’s creation.
