Well this should make for some interesting discussions:

An Israeli pullout from Arab neighborhoods of east Jerusalem as part of a peace accord with the Palestinians without an agreement regarding the Old City and the Temple Mount will not solve the dispute over Jerusalem, according to a draft of a working paper over a future division of Jerusalem prepared by a Jerusalem think tank. The study, released on Sunday, finds that such a withdrawal without an accord is likely to have serious security repercussions. The study... was carried out by the liberal Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies ahead of next month's planned US peace conference...

The academics and experts note that any Israeli pullout from Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem without an agreement is likely to lead to serious deterioration in the security situation in the country, both because it will be viewed by the Palestinians as an additional indication of the weakening of Israel's sovereignty over Jerusalem, and because the local Arab residents who are cut off from their jobs and the holy places in Jerusalem as a result could end up assisting or even joining Palestinian terror groups due to their increased animosity towards Israeli policies.

Conclusion: ceding Israeli authority over East J'lem while holding on to the Temple Mount is the worst of both worlds. But that may be exactly what Olmert is planning to do. Or rather, that's probably the farthest he can go. He's been doing a surprisingly consistent job putting his head down and conducting negotiations as if he wasn't at a 30% approval rating with three major investigations hanging over his head. But to cede sovereignty over the Old City isn't something you stumble into. That takes months if not years of mobilizing public will, carefully sending up trial balloons, working editorial writers, etc. It's just hard to see how Olmert has that kind of game.

Most of the talk about the Temple Mount seems to be taken out of Sharon's playbook: tell the public that you're going to make major, insane concessions and then - at the last minute - take the most sweeping ones off the table. It simultaneously burns up the right's energy by distracting them with something that Olmert never intended to give away and makes it look like the concessions are less dramatic than they really are.

Which is not to say that pro-Israel people shouldn't be worried about Annapolis. Middle East land negotiations turn particularly anti-Israel when unfavorable facts on the ground combine with what the State Department can coerce Israel into accepting as "starting positions for negotiations" (the latter in turn is often based on what Israel was asked to merely hypothetically consider in previous negotiations). This report clearly establishes that ceding East J'lem without the Temple Mount would heighten rather than alleviate Palestinian expectations and intransigence. So ceding East J'lem would certainly set the stage for the State Department - presumably under a hostile Democratic President - to come to Israel three years from now and say "the last round of concessions didn't work - let's talk about the Temple Mount".

But it is to say that focusing on keeping the Temple Mount rather than on Jerusalem as a whole is a recipe for disaster. The fight over East Jerusalem now is the fight over the Temple Mount in three years.

References:
* 'East J'lem pullout won't bring peace' [JPost]
* Politics: Toward Annapolis [JPost]
* Annapolis Summit Is Wonderful Lose-Lose For Israel [MR]

Previously:
* Oh Look - Another American Intelligence Chief Blames Arafat For the Collapse Of the Peace Process
* Tuesday Headline Link Dump - Palestinians Set Peace Process Conditions And The Israeli Right Implodes (Plus: There May Be No One We Do Not Hate)
* Israeli Security Foils 7 Suicide Bombings From Fatah-Controlled West Bank