Ashton apparently never looked at the map of Jerusalem or read about past negotiations between Israel and the PA.
Ramat Shlomo is a Jerusalem neighborhood just over the so called ’green line’, the 1947 armistic line (see photo below and in attachment. The ‘green line’ is a red one here).
The current plan to built 1600 new units in Ramat Shlomo is in fact a continuation of the procedure that made the headlines during the visit of US vice-president Joe Biden in 2010.
It remains unclear why the international community reacted like it did last week, when Israel announced the next stage in the building plan.
Some facts about Ramat Shlomo
- Israeli building in Ramat Shlomo is not violating any international law. There will be no displacement of any Arab population in the city because of the new building in Ramat Shlomo.
- The status of Jerusalem was never part of the Oslo accords nor the Road Map, and had to be discussed in negotiations about a final status accord between Israel and the Palestinian National Authority.
- The 1947 UN partition plan (GA resolution 181) gave Jerusalem the status of ‘corpus separatum’. The final status of the city was to be determined in a referendum ten years after implementation of resolution 181 and would have meant that the city became under Israeli rule as a result of the overwelming and historical Jewish majority in the city
- The neighborhood is located in a part of Jerusalem where Jews are the overwhelming majority and connects the Jewish neighborhood Ramat Eshkol with another Jewish neighborhood: Ramot.
- The neighborhood has been labeled a settlement. This is incorrect (see NY Times article). It is a Jerusalem neighborhood, not in East Jerusalem but in Jerusalem North.
Furthermore, in the 2000 and 2008/9 negotiations between Israel and the PA, Ramat Shlomo was assigned to Israel in the event of a final status acoord on the two state solution. See the so called Olmert map (below) with the discussed proposal on the division of Jerusalem.
Ramat Shlomo is next to Ramot.
So where is the threat to the two state solution??
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Such a division is never going to happen.
ReplyDeleteThe city's voters would have to be allowed a say in it. And there is no guarantee the Arabs would reject Israeli rule.
They may resent it but they are treated far better by Israel than they would under any Arab regime.
That fact alone has bedeviled all proposed efforts to redivide the city and will continue to do so in the foreseeable future.