Bibi Netanyahu's Jerusalem, By Jamil Shawwa

Bibi Netanyahu-the prime minister of the State of Israel- stated that Jerusalem will forever be united and will forever be the capital of the State of Israel. The Arabs and the Palestinians reacted-no surprise- with the usual condemnation and protests that they have mastered over 60 years of the Arab Israeli conflict. A Palestinian Authority official said that this statement of Bibi Netanyahu put an end to any peace prospects; other condemnations followed, maybe different but the message is the same. I choose to differ,I do not agree that Bibi Netanyahu's statement was new or it would have any impact on the peace process in the Middle East; on the contrary, Bibi Netanyahu is brining up a very important and sensitive subject to everyone in the Middle east, and that is the future of Jerusalem, the capital of the three main and great religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. There is an informal agreement in the Middle East that Jerusalem should be united and that the city should preserve it's spiritual status and that it should be an open city with no fences or barriers as the situation was before 1967 and before Israel won that war and captured the Arab , old, section of Jerusalem. The disagreement is whether the Palestinians can have any control over the Arabic part, section and streets of the city and whether the Palestinians can declare that part as their capital and establish a municipality that can run the city, grant housing licenses and such. Bibi Netanyahu statement did not exclude the Palestinians from running the Palestinian part of the city and did not say that the Palestinian state cannot have the city-the Arab or eastern section- as its capital. The Palestinians must use new techniques in the negotiations with Israel, a technique that would look at Israel as a regular state with borders despute and not as an enemy or as a strange body in the Middle East; Israel is not. The negotiations with Israel should cover everything from borders to the idea of the right of return to those who originally left the historic Palestine during the war of 1948 following the declaration of independence of the State of Israel. The solution in my opinion to the right of return will be resolved when the settlements in the West Bank is resolved, in other words it will be this for that, no return in exchange of moving the settlers to lands inside the state of Israel. The time is now for a historic and final Conciliation between the Arabs and Muslims and the Jews in the Middle East and the world.