Taba mythchief

National Interest, The, Spring, 2003 by David Makovsky

DISAGREEMENTS over land were joined by disagreements over Jerusalem. Arafat had rejected the idea at Camp David that Israel and the Palestinians would share the Temple Mount--known as Haram al-Sharif ("The Noble Sanctuary") to Muslims--and insisted on full Palestinian sovereignty. Despite this, everyone knew that dealing with the question of holy sites in Jerusalem required a creative formula. Ideas abounded during and after Camp David, including reserving sovereignty only for God. Finally, in contravention of the policy of every Israeli government since 1967 and, at the time, even in contravention of Barak, Foreign Minister Ben-Ami said he would be content if the Palestinians would merely acknowledge the Temple Mount as a site holy to Jews. He even asked Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat during talks at Bolling Air Force Base in December 2000 if he would agree to language that there would be no unilateral Palestinian archeological excavations since this place is holy to Jews. Erekat refused. Ben-Ami recalle d, "Erekat said we won't excavate, but we won't write anything about the area being holy to the Jews." (7)

Taba did not produce any documents, so exactly what happened there regarding Jerusalem is not entirely clear. The transcript drawn up by Europe's Middle East peace envoy, Miguel Moratinos, is based on subsequent talks with a few Israeli and Palestinian participants. The best Moratinos could get was that "the Israeli side understood" they had a Palestinian concession, such as sovereignty over the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem. It is not stated by the Palestinian side, however. Even with the widest stretch of the Moratinos document, key explosive issues like Palestinian sovereignty in Jerusalem holy sites remained unresolved. As noted above, even the optimist Moratinos wrote that, overall, "serious gaps remain." (8)

The Palestinians also rejected the idea that Israel would have sovereignty over the 480-meter Western Wall, but hinted that Israel could have sovereignty over the exposed part--about a sixth of it--which is the smaller area that the Palestinians have misdefined as the Wailing Wall. Yet this figure never made it into Moratinos' summary of the talks: "The Palestinian side acknowledged that Israel has requested to establish an affiliation to the holy parts of the Western Wall." It continues to distinguish between this and the Wailing Wall.

Finally, on the issue of Jerusalem, the basis at Camp David for negotiations regarding the Old City and the surrounding areas such as the Mount of Olives was that all this area would be a "Holy Basin" where a special regime would be enforced, and where no side would have full sovereignty. The Palestinians rejected this idea outright at Taba. Emboldened by earlier Israeli concessions, they now insisted that the entire area be under exclusive Palestinian sovereignty except for the Jewish Quarter and parts of the Wall. In a speech in Gaza three months later, Arafat declared that the Palestinians were justified in not accepting Taba since, among other factors, the Palestinians would not hold a "century of struggle" and still not obtain exclusive sovereignty over the Temple Mount area. (9)