Thursday, 4:30 PM
MIT looks to solve ancient problems
By David Abel, Globe Staff
MIT helped build nuclear weapons and land men on the moon. Now, the university hopes to help solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Officials at the university are holding a global competition to find a solution to one of the most intractable problems in the Middle East: how to make Jerusalem "just, peaceful, and sustainable" by 2050 so that Palestinians and Israelis can live side by side in a city both consider their capital.
On March 31, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology will begin accepting entries from around the world for its "Just Jerusalem" contest. Contestants have to tackle questions that have stumped would-be peacemakers and politicians for decades, such as whether the city should be a capital of both Israel and Palestine, how to accommodate Jews and Muslims, and how to govern a city that means so much to so many people around the world.
The winning entries will "reconcile longstanding and seemingly intractable conflicts," according to MIT officials.
Israel named West Jerusalem its capital in 1950. In the Six Day War in 1967, Israel captured Arab East Jerusalem from Jordan and annexed it. In 1980, Israel passed a law declaring Jerusalem to be its "eternal, undivided" capital. Palestinians view East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state.
"We think it won’t be futile, because our expectations are realistic," said Diane Davis, codirector of the project and associate dean of MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning. "We think MIT brings a veneer of neutrality. We have a reputation for using serious scholarly methods to solve problems. We’re a science and technology institution, and there’s a sense that science stands above politics."
People from around the world have already asked how to enter the competition. Inquiries have come from the Palestinian city of Ramallah and from Israel, Ecuador, Greece, and the United States, she said.
Veteran US peace negotiators and Mideast scholars said they think the contest will serve more to inspire than to solve problems.
"In the kind of discussions we’ve had before, we explored an enormous array of different possibilities about Jerusalem," said Dennis Ross, a US envoy to the peace process during the Clinton administration and now a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy in Washington. "The main value of a contest like this is to show that people care enough to try to find solutions."
In previous negotiations, he said, the two sides were not that far apart on bridging differences on Jerusalem. The chief problem, he said, has long been what to do about the complex that Muslims call al-Haram al-Sharif and Jews call the Temple Mount.
"Then you also have to deal with who governs electricity, water, power, planning, zoning, parks, and building," Ross said. "You have to deal with all the functional aspects of governing and who has sovereignty and who has jurisdiction ... These are problems that should be solved, and I believe can be solved."
Winners of four categories on the rebuilding of Jerusalem, from renovating buildings to revamping its economy, and a fifth floating category will each receive a fellowship at MIT valued at $50,000.
The nine-member jury includes a Palestinian scholar and a former deputy mayor of Jerusalem. The contest is open to anyone. Proposal must be sent by Dec. 31. MIT will announce the winners next March.
David Abel can be reached at dabel@globe.com.
