Wednesday, March 24, 2010

The Long Battle of Jerusalem

The U.S. and Israel have agreed before that a divided city cannot stand; preventing a return to barbed wire

By SETH LIPSKY

In July of 1996, shortly after Benjamin Netanyahu had acceded for the first time as leader of the Jewish State, he gave a speech to a Joint Meeting of the U.S. Congress. The speech ran to nearly an hour. The young prime minister, a free-market reformer from a country that had long suffered from socialist economic policies, was speaking to a Congress in which another free-market reformer, Newt Gingrich, had recently acceded as speaker. So the mood was exceptionally warm, and the Israeli was interrupted by applause several times in the first 40 minutes. But the biggest applause came when Mr. Netanyahu turned to what he called "a subject that has been on your mind and ours, and that subject is the city of Jerusalem." He spoke of how, in his boyhood, he "knew that city, when it was divided into enemy camps, with coils of barbed wire stretched through its heart." Then he said:

"Since 1967, under Israeli sovereignty, united Jerusalem has, for the first time in 2,000 years, become the city of peace….For the first time, a single sovereign authority has afforded security and protection to members of every nationality who sought to come to pray there. There have been efforts to re-divide this city by those who claim that peace can come through division, that it can be secured through multiple sovereignties, multiple laws and multiple police forces. This is a groundless and dangerous assumption, which impels me to declare today: There will never be such a re-division of Jerusalem. Never. "

When he repeated the word "never," suddenly the whole chamber rose, on both sides of the aisle. The ovation lasted nearly a minute.

It would be imprudent to make too much of that applause. It was Prime Minister Menachem Begin himself who used to warn that it would be a mistake to try to settle the question of Jerusalem in the U.S. Congress. But it would also be imprudent to make too little of it, particularly as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton prepares to meet Prime Minister Netanyahu next week in Washington in an effort to patch up the extraordinary contretemps of the past week.

One of the reasons Congress leapt to its feet in that ovation for Mr. Netanyahu's declaration in 1996 is that it was by then becoming clear that the Middle East was at the start of what the Jewish Forward newspaper had already begun calling the Battle of Jerusalem.

It's been a long struggle. The phrase Battle of Jerusalem has also been used to describe General Allenby's taking of the city from the Turks in World War I. It was the first time Jerusalem came under what might be called Christian rule since the 12th century. The first time it was divided was after the partition of Palestine was voted by the United Nations in 1947 and the British mandate was brought to an end in 1948.

The U.S. at the time refused to recognize Israeli claims, even in the western party of the city, despite the fact that by the mid-19th century Jerusalem had already emerged with a Jewish majority. Instead the United Nations was advancing a scheme under which Jerusalem would become an international city, belonging to no country. The U.N.'s non-binding resolution on the matter was repudiated by Israel.

President Harry Truman waffled a bit, but eventually abandoned the internationalization idea. The division of the city lasted until 1967, when Jordan, which controlled the eastern sections and despoiled Jewish graves and other sacred sites, joined the attack against Israel, only to be driven out altogether. Israel then annexed the eastern part of the city, and the walls and wire that divided the city were removed.

In the following decades, as the Arabs pressed their long war against Israel, a remarkable transformation took place. Jerusalem's population soared, to more than 700,000 today from 263,000 in 1967 and 165,000 in 1948. Both the Arab and Jewish populations have risen sharply in the years since Israel gained control of the entire city.

In 1993, Israel, led by Yitzhak Rabin, and the Palestine Liberation Organization, led by Yasser Arafat, signed a Declaration of Principles, seeking to set the stage for peace negotiations. It deferred the question of Jerusalem to the end of the process, to what were called permanent status negotiations. Mr. Clinton would devote much of his political capital to trying to bring it all together before the end of his presidency.

Congress, however, had long since begun to grow restive for recognition of the new realities, and in 1995, it passed, by an overwhelming vote, a measure called the Jerusalem Embassy Act. It was designed to end the absurdity of America failing to move its embassy in Israel to the country's capital and to establish Israel's capital in America law. It held that "Jerusalem should remain an undivided city in which the rights of every ethnic and religious group are protected" and that "Jerusalem should be recognized as the capital of the State of Israel."

Yet since then, no U.S. president, nor any state secretary, has acknowledged Congress's standing on the question of Jerusalem. Mr. Clinton refused to sign the Jerusalem Embassy Act, and it went into law without his signature. Nor have subsequent presidents abided by the spirit of the legislation. Instead they relied on a waiver in the law that gave the president discretion to delay the embassy move by six months—and to renew the delay by six months—to protect national security interests.

The waiver has since been used over and over again. When President George W. Bush used the waiver, he repeatedly stated that he intended to move the embassy at the right time. But President Barack Obama has dropped any statement of his future intentions. His administration, moreover, is now advancing so-called "proximity talks" that hold the danger the city could yet be divided in the way the Congress once cheered against dividing it.

This is the context in which Israel's religious Jewish community was so eager to have issued zoning approval for the apartments for the Haredi—or fervently religious—Jews. The timing of the action, coming as Vice President Joseph Biden was in Israel, has been widely denounced, even after Mr. Netanyahu himself apologized. It may be that, as Mr. Netanyahu suggested, the timing of the announcement was, from his point of view at least, an accident.

But it may also be that the religious Jews who control the ministry that made the announcement just looked at the political situation and decided they'd best mark their rights. And for all the hubbub the religious faction provoked, there are those of us who think they were wise to do so precisely at the moment of maximum sensitivity, when the visiting American vice president was to travel to the seat of the Palestinian authority at Ramallah.

There is a déjà vu quality to the whole thing. After Mr. Netanyahu became prime minister, President Clinton undertook a campaign to pressure Israel to give ground and keep the so-called peace process intact. Mr. Netanyahu did, in 1997, retreat from much of Israel's second holiest city, Hebron, leaving the religious Jewish families who wanted to live near the graves of the patriarchs and matriarchs in an armed camp.

The Clinton administration put great hope in the election, in 1999, of Ehud Barak, leader of the Labor Party, as premier. One of Israel's greatest military heroes, Mr. Barak had vowed in his political campaign that he would never permit a division of Jerusalem. As he got drawn into the peace process, however, he did offer, at the talks known as Camp David II, to give the Palestinians part of Jerusalem as a capital. Yasser Arafat spurned a deal and returned to instigate what became known as the Second Intifada. The voters promptly ousted Mr. Barak and brought in as premier the man the left had for so long detested, Ariel Sharon.

Mr. Sharon had the good fortune to enter office as the American leadership was being turned over to Mr. Bush, who had enormous respect for his Israeli counterpart—for his military prowess, for the long historical sweep of his world view and for his vast experience in government. They both understood that in the war that followed Sept. 11, 2001, America's enemy was also Israel's enemy.

So Messrs. Bush and Sharon decided early on to attenuate the quarrelsome issues to focus on their own strategic military issues—Mr. Sharon defeated the intifada and Mr. Bush levied the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. What a tragedy it is that Mr. Obama has not been able to reach a similar modus vivendi with Mr. Netanyahu. The latest contretemps seems to have been taken by the Palestinians as an invitation to yet more violence. Which, if past is prologue, will lead to more demands on Israel and more threats.

It is a moment for Ms. Clinton to remember one of Prime Minister Begin's visits with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. It is recounted in an often-quoted 1992 column by Moshe Zak, then of the Jerusalem Post. The conversation grew so heated over the question of settlements that one of the senators raised his voice and banged on the table with his fist, threatening to cut off aid. Mr. Begin kept his dignity, replying that the desk was "designed for writing, not for fists."
He warned that, though Israel was grateful for America's help, America was not "entitled to impose on us what we must do." The senator who had lectured him was Mr. Biden, who would go on to co-sponsor the Jerusalem Embassy Act.

—Seth Lipsky is founding editor of the New York Sun.


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http://www.mythsandfacts.org/Conflict/3/Jerusalem.pdf

Jerusalem
Islam's Tenuous Connection

Eli E. Hertz
March 19, 2010

Despite 1,300 years of Muslim Arab rule, Jerusalem was never the capital of an Arab entity, nor was it ever mentioned in the Palestine Liberation Organization's covenant until Israel regained control of East Jerusalem in the Six-Day War of 1967.

Overall, the role of Jerusalem in Islam is best understood as the outcome of political exigencies impacting on religious belief.

Mohammed, who founded Islam in 622 CE, was born and raised in present-day Saudi Arabia; he never set foot in Jerusalem. His connection to the city came years after his death when the Dome of the Rock shrine and the al-Aqsa mosque were built in 688 and 691, respectively, their construction spurred by political and religious rivalries. In 638 CE, the Caliph (or successor to Mohammed) Omar and his invading armies captured Jerusalem from the Byzantine Empire. One reason they wanted to erect a holy structure in Jerusalem was to proclaim Islam's supremacy over Christianity and its most important shrine, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.

More important was the power struggle within Islam itself. The Damascus-based Umayyad Caliphs who controlled Jerusalem wanted to establish an alternative holy site if their rivals blocked access to Mecca. That was important because the Hajj or pilgrimage to Mecca was (and remains today) one of the Five Pillars of Islam. As a result, they built what became known as the Dome of the Rock shrine and the adjacent mosque.

To enhance the prestige of the 'substitute Mecca,' the Jerusalem mosque was named al-Aqsa. It means 'the furthest mosque' in Arabic, but has far broader implications, since it is the same phrase used in a key passage of the Quran called "The Night Journey." In that passage, Mohammed arrives at 'al-Aqsa' on a winged steed accompanied by the Archangel Gabriel; from there they ascend into heaven for a divine meeting with Allah, after which Mohammed returns to Mecca. Naming the Jerusalem mosque al-Aqsa was an attempt to say the Dome of the Rock was the very spot from which Mohammed ascended to heaven, thus tying Jerusalem to divine revelation in Islamic belief. The problem however, is that Mohammed died in the year 632, nearly 50 years before the first construction of the al-Aqsa Mosque was completed.

Jerusalem never replaced the importance of Mecca in the Islamic world. When the Umayyad dynasty fell in 750, Jerusalem also fell into near obscurity for 350 years, until the Crusades. During those centuries, many Islamic sites in Jerusalem fell into disrepair and in 1016 the Dome of the Rock collapsed.

Still, for 1,300 years, various Islamic dynasties (Syrian, Egyptian, and Turkish) continued to govern Jerusalem as part of their overall control of the Land of Israel, disrupted only by the Crusaders. What is amazing is that over that period, not one Islamic dynasty ever made Jerusalem its capital. By the 19th century, Jerusalem had been so neglected by Islamic rulers that several prominent Western writers who visited Jerusalem were moved to write about it. French writer Gustav Flaubert, for example, found "ruins everywhere" during his visit in 1850 when it was part of the Turkish Empire (1516-1917). Seventeen years later Mark Twain wrote that Jerusalem had "become a pauper village."

Indeed, Jerusalem's importance in the Islamic world only appears evident when non-Muslims (including the Crusaders, the British, and the Jews) control or capture the city. Only at those points in history did Islamic leaders claim Jerusalem as their third most holy city after Mecca and Medina. That was again the case in 1967, when Israel captured Jordanian-controlled East Jerusalem (and the Old City) during the 1967 Six-Day War. Oddly, the PLO's National Covenant, written in 1964, never mentioned Jerusalem. Only after Israel regained control of the entire city did the PLO 'updated' its Covenant to include Jerusalem.

For more on this subject, including footnotes - click here. http://www.mythsandfacts.com/NOQ_OnlineEdition/Chapter3/jerusalem1.htm
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Jerusalem's Jewish Link: Historic, Religious, Political

Eli E. Hertz
March 18, 2010

Jerusalem, wrote historian Martin Gilbert, is not a 'mere' city. "It holds the central spiritual and physical place in the history of the Jews as a people."

For more than 3,000 years, the Jewish people have looked to Jerusalem as their spiritual, political, and historical capital, even when they did not physically rule over the city. Throughout its long history, Jerusalem has served, and still serves, as the political capital of only one nation - the one belonging to the Jews. Its prominence in Jewish history began in 1004 BCE, when King David declared the city the capital of the first Jewish kingdom. David's successor and son, King Solomon, built the First Temple there, according to the Bible, as a holy place to worship the Almighty. Unfortunately, history would not be kind to the Jewish people. Four hundred and ten years after King Solomon completed construction of Jerusalem, the Babylonians (early ancestors to today's Iraqis) seized and destroyed the city, forcing the Jews into exile.

Fifty years later, the Jews, or Israelites as they were called, were permitted to return after Persia (present-day Iran) conquered Babylon. The Jews' first order of business was to reclaim Jerusalem as their capital and rebuild the Holy Temple, recorded in history as the Second Temple.

Jerusalem was more than the Jewish kingdom's political capital - it was a spiritual beacon. During the First and Second Temple periods, Jews throughout the kingdom would travel to Jerusalem three times yearly for the pilgrimages of the Jewish holy days of Sukkot, Passover, and Shavuot, until the Roman Empire destroyed the Second Temple in 70 CE and ended Jewish sovereignty over Jerusalem for the next 2,000 years. Despite that fate, Jews never relinquished their bond to Jerusalem or, for that matter, to Eretz Yisrael, the Land of Israel.

No matter where Jews lived throughout the world for those two millennia, their thoughts and prayers were directed toward Jerusalem. Even today, whether in Israel, the United States or anywhere else, Jewish ritual practice, holiday celebration and lifecycle events include recognition of Jerusalem as a core element of the Jewish experience. Consider that:
Jews in prayer always turn toward Jerusalem.
Arks (the sacred chests) that hold Torah scrolls in synagogues throughout the world face Jerusalem.
Jews end Passover Seders each year with the words: "Next year in Jerusalem"; the same words are pronounced at the end of Yom Kippur, the most solemn day of the Jewish year.

A three-week moratorium on weddings in the summer recalls the breaching of the walls of Jerusalem by the Babylonian army in 586 BCE. That period culminates in a special day of mourning - Tisha B'Av (the 9th day of the Hebrew month Av) - commemorating the destruction of both the First and Second Temples.

Jewish wedding ceremonies - joyous occasions, are marked by sorrow over the loss of Jerusalem. The groom recites a biblical verse from the Babylonian Exile: "If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning," and breaks a glass in commemoration of the destruction of the Temples.

Even body language, often said to tell volumes about a person, reflects the importance of Jerusalem to Jews as a people and, arguably, the lower priority the city holds for Muslims:
When Jews pray they face Jerusalem; in Jerusalem Israelis pray facing the Temple Mount.
When Muslims pray, they face Mecca; in Jerusalem Muslims pray with their backs to the city.

Even at burial, a Muslim face, is turned toward Mecca. Finally, consider the number of times 'Jerusalem' is mentioned in the two religions' holy books:

The Old Testament mentions 'Jerusalem' 349 times. Zion, another name for 'Jerusalem,' is mentioned 108 times.
The Quran never mentions Jerusalem - not even once.

Even when others controlled Jerusalem, Jews maintained a physical presence in the city, despite being persecuted and impoverished. Before the advent of modern Zionism in the 1880s, Jews were moved by a form of religious Zionism to live in the Holy Land, settling particularly in four holy cities: Safed, Tiberias, Hebron, and most importantly - Jerusalem. Consequently, Jews constituted a majority of the city's population for generations. In 1898, "In this City of the Jews, where the Jewish population outnumbers all others three to one …" Jews constituted 75 percent of the Old City population in what Secretary-General Kofi Annan called 'East Jerusalem.' In 1914, when the Ottoman Turks ruled the city, 45,000 Jews made up a majority of the 65,000 residents. And at the time of Israeli statehood in 1948, 100,000 Jews lived in the city, compared to only 65,000 Arabs. Prior to unification, Jordanian-controlled 'East Jerusalem' was a mere 6 squar e kilometers, compared to 38 square kilometers on the 'Jewish side.'

For more on this subject, including footnotes - click here:
http://www.mythsandfacts.com/NOQ_OnlineEdition/Chapter3/jerusalem1.htm

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