Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Syrian President Bashar Assad (AP)
Every Jerusalemite knows that the city is actually divided into three fairly distinct sections, in which live three very different populations. About a third of the city’s residents are Palestinians, a third are ultra-orthodox Jews, and the last third, which includes Jews who are not ultra-orthodox, may be named - for lack of a better term - "Others". It is actually this last group which is generally considered to enjoy hegemony over Jerusalem, and it holds most of the city’s key functions. … Many of Jerusalem’s internal disputes could be solved if it became a metropolis with three different cities (in the final status solution, the Palestinian city would probably be under Palestinian sovereignty, and the two others under Israeli sovereignty).
In order to balance this perspective, which separates the three populations, it is important to also emphasize the need for a complementary, unifying one. Separation diffuses tension and creates autonomy for each group - but it needs to be accompanied by the building of mutual responsibility and partnership in the metropolis’s future. Read more>>
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