Privatizing Jerusalem or an Investigation into the City's Future Legal Stakes

Abstract

The purpose of this article is not to propose yet another normative vision for Jerusalem's future. Instead, I map out the major sovereignty-related issues that have traditionally preoccupied the literature on the subject, and argue that most of these issues have become moot following the latest rounds of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. In response to this recent paradigm shift, I propose that international law scholarship should turn its attention to studying the politics of Jerusalem's private sphere, a sphere so far dismissed as “merely technical,” yet also a sphere replete with such deep distributional stakes as to make it the primary arena for playing out power-relations in the city's future. I conclude with critiquing recent proposals that privatization would play a constructive role in defusing political tensions associated with the future Jerusalem.