Hady Amr and Joel H. Samuels claim that "Palestinian negotiators also acknowledged the corollary Israeli need for sovereignty over not only the Wailing Wall, but also the Jewish Temple Mount" ("For Jerusalem, Shared Sovereignty", July 21). But this is false. No neogtiator for the Palestinian Authority has ever offered shared sovereignty nor "recognized" it. Some have bemoaned Yassir Arafat's faux paus at the 2000 Camp David Conference, when he told President Clinton that no Temple ever existed on the Temple Mount but nothing more has been forthcoming.
There has been a suggestion of a "divine sovereignty" but no practical benchmarks for that concept exist. When the Muslim Waqf will allow a group of 10 Jews to pray in a corner of the esplanade on Mount Moriah and thus religiously share the holy site, or will allow archeological exacvations there to discover its Jewish past and halt its destruction of the same, then we will know a change has been made.
And these kooks add:-
American leadership on "shared" sovereignty in Jerusalem can help bring peace to Israelis and Palestinians. Equally important is the implicit message this will send to the Muslim world: that "shared" solutions for "shared" U.S. and Muslim world security can be found and that Americans are committed to making that happen.
Sometimes and in some places, conflict is so intractable that all but the most unlikely solutions are fated to fail. In those times and places, we need to try methods that have not been considered in the hopes that unconventional solutions will offer opportunities not available through line-drawing. This is such a time; Jerusalem is such a place; shared sovereignty is such a solution. And the benefits can be global.
Since when have the Pals. shared anything?
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