When determining a solution for Municipal Jerusalem, Israelis and Palestinians are only negotiating over East Jerusalem. One factor that makes drawing a border possible is that the vast majority of the city’s Jews live in largely Jewish neighborhoods in West Jerusalem, and the vast majority of the city’s Palestinians live in largely Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem.

 

The Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem are also largely contiguous with West Jerusalem — allowing for the creation of two separate and internally contiguous capitals for each country.

 

And although Jerusalem has technically been unified since 1967, there is still little interaction and few shared public institutions between the two communities. Splitting the neighborhoods along Israeli and Palestinian lines would not dramatically alter the daily routine of residents — Jerusalem is effectively a divided city already.