(Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs) Nadav Shragai - On Jan. 14, 2018, PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas publically confirmed that the U.S. offered the Jerusalem suburb of Abu Dis to the Palestinians as a capital, which he rejected out of hand. When Mahmoud Abbas (as Arafat's deputy) and Yossi Beilin (a minister in the government of Yitzhak Rabin) drafted the "Beilin-Mahmoud Abbas Agreement" of 1995, Abu Dis was represented as an alternative capital for the Palestinians. However, after two Israeli prime ministers, Ehud Barak in 2000 and Ehud Olmert in 2008, placed on the negotiating table far-reaching proposals for the division of Jerusalem itself, Abbas today refuses to even talk about anything less than what was offered to him then. In the past, both Palestinians and Israelis accepted that Abu Dis could play a key role in resolving the conflict. It is located precisely on the route of a planned corridor to connect to the Temple Mount. Abu Dis developed in the late 1990s as a Palestinian governmental center. Dozens of PA offices were established there, including the Palestinian Local Government Office, the headquarters of the Palestinian security services, and the office of the Palestinian Governor of the Jerusalem District. Above all, rising five floors high, was the Palestinian parliament building. The writer, a senior researcher at the Jerusalem Center, is a journalist and commentator who has documented the dispute over Jerusalem for 30 years.
2018-02-16 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive