by SUSAN HATTIS ROLEF

It is clear that the construction of another Jewish neighborhood in Jerusalem has less to do with any housing shortage than with creating "facts on the ground" which will make repartition of the city impossible.

This obsessive preoccupation with repartition is curious, for two reasons. First, no one - the Palestinians included - wants to return to the pre-'67 situation in which Jerusalem was, de facto, two separate cities divided by walls and barbed wire. Second, Jerusalem is still divided.

Jews rarely venture into the Arab sections of the city any more. Secular Jews, especially those on the Left, do not go into the Jewish Quarter of the Old City. The quarter was abandoned by most of its post-'67 secular inhabitants, who found it increasingly "foreign" and oppressive.

More than ever in the past, the haredi sections of the city resemble ghettoes; and Arabs and haredim are regarded with great suspicion in secular neighborhoods - the haredim, because people fear an "invasion," the Arabs, because people fear terrorism.

The inhabitants of the city are divided into Jews who receive reasonable municipal services and can complain when they don't, and Arabs who do not receive reasonable services (even though Ehud Olmert promised to change this when he was elected mayor). The Arabs are tempted to seek relief elsewhere (e.g. from the Palestinian Authority).

The city includes inhabitants who are liable to wake up one morning and discover that they or their children are no longer registered as residents (invariably Arabs), and others who spend no more than several weeks each year in the city but enjoy full rights in it (invariably Diaspora Jews).

This "City of Gold" is the third poorest in the country because its productive Jewish population is rapidly turning into a minority, and its productive Arab residents are underpaid.

Even if they were better off, they would rather pay their taxes elsewhere, instead of to a Jewish municipality in which they are not represented, or to the Ministry of Finance in a state where they are not citizens.

It is time for all those who want Jerusalem to be one city - and that is the overwhelming majority of us - to stop figuring out ways to create more "facts on the ground" in advance of the day of reckoning, and start thinking instead about how we can turn this very heterogeneous city into a truly united one, belonging to all its inhabitants, all with equal rights and equal responsibilities.

The idea of dividing the city into boroughs is probably the best one ever suggested; but anyone who believes such an arrangement can be decided on and implemented unilaterally, without the consent of all the Jewish population or the active participation of the Palestinians, is just another designer of irrelevant utopian blueprints.

To return to Har Homa, in the final reckoning the effect of construction on whether Israel remains sole sovereign in a divided city will be negligible.

But its contribution to yet another wave of violence, and to further deterioration of Israel's international status is certain to be great.

It's time we began thinking in terms of workable, long-term solutions, rather than historical and legal rights, and showing the Arabs who's master.

It is our pigheaded attitude that is leading the PA to create its own "facts on the ground" in Jerusalem. And, despite the fact that it is clearly in breach of the Oslo agreement, the PA is gaining growing international support for its efforts.

The writer is a political scientist.