Jerusalem

In the play, Jerusalem is not a scene of action but a disputed political status whose future tests the limits of the negotiations. The talks move from an outright refusal to negotiate the city’s sovereignty to an agreement that postpones the question, making Jerusalem a central example of how the parties use unresolved language to keep a document possible without resolving their conflict.

A question inside the draft

Jerusalem enters the talks as one issue among several in the draft Declaration of Principles (DOP), alongside proposed arrangements for Gaza and Jericho and disagreement over how unresolved issues should be handled. When Uri Savir reviews the draft, he says Israel will not negotiate Jerusalem’s sovereignty, either in the room or in a document. Ahmed Qurie answers that the Palestinians will not relinquish their claim to Jerusalem, just as they will not relinquish the right to a Palestinian state. Their exchange makes clear that the city is not a minor drafting detail: each side presents its position as a boundary it cannot surrender.

Savir proposes discussing a Palestinian state without Jerusalem as its capital, while also objecting to the Palestinian demand that issues left unresolved by the DOP go to international arbitration. The exchange links Jerusalem’s status to the larger design of the agreement: not only what the parties might concede, but which questions they are willing to defer and by what process.

From fixed positions to linked concessions

The negotiations do not treat Jerusalem in isolation. When Savir says Israel is willing to relinquish control of Gaza, Qurie responds that this would be acceptable only if Israel relinquished control of Jericho at the same time. Later, the parties move toward reciprocal concessions on arbitration and the prospect of transferring Gaza and Jericho. These exchanges show the negotiators working through concrete proposals even as Jerusalem remains a more difficult question of sovereignty and national claim.

The shift is not a resolution of the city’s status. Instead, the negotiations create room for agreement on other terms while retaining the hardest dispute for later. Jerusalem thereby marks the difference between reaching a workable text and settling the underlying conflict.

Constructive ambiguity and the unresolved future

Near the close of the negotiations, Shimon Peres states that Jerusalem will remain solely Israel’s capital. Ahmed Qurie rejects that formulation. Peres then invokes constructive ambiguity and agrees that the future of Jerusalem will be addressed in the final stage of further negotiations. Qurie accepts the document. The immediate outcome is acceptance of the text, not agreement on sovereignty, the city’s future, or its place as a capital.

That ending gives Jerusalem a precise narrative function: it exposes both the limits and the practical possibility of the talks. The negotiators can proceed by leaving the question open, but the deferral preserves the opposing claims that made the issue so contentious. Jerusalem is thus one of the clearest instances in the play of an agreement advancing through a carefully bounded uncertainty rather than a settled answer.