The Jerusalem Challenge

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

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NY Sun
NEW YORK SUN CONTRIBUTOR

Advocates of dividing Israel’s capital city of Jerusalem are back in the news as the Bush administration starts to nurse talks between the Jewish state and the Palestinian Arabs. Israel’s deputy prime minister, Haim Ramon of Labor, is reported to be proposing that, in the context of a peace treaty, Israel agree to cede control of most of the neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, most of whose inhabitants are Palestinian Arabs. Mr. Ramon opposes transferring to Palestinian control any part of the Old City and neighboring areas with holy sites, envisioning instead a “special administration” to oversee what is known as the holy basin. His proposal falls short of Palestinian claims to all areas captured in 1967.

To give his tilt to the left on Jerusalem some political viability in Israel, Mr. Ramon is also proposing that the government and Labor Party stand firm in opposition to the Palestinian claim that refugees who fled what is now Israel during the war of independence should be allowed to return to their original homes. But it is not only Mr. Ramon, a left-of-center figure, who is toying with the idea of dividing Jerusalem. Israel’s minister for strategic threats, Avigdor Lieberman, said at a news conference that he is ready to trade Jerusalem’s Arab neighborhoods for West Bank Jewish settlement blocs, according to the Associated Press.

Others in the more conservative opposition have decried these reports, recalling the singular religious and national significance of Jerusalem to the Jews. The history is no doubt complex, in that Jerusalem was already a city when David captured it around 3,000 years ago. It has been ruled by the Jews; Babylonians (who later yielded to the Persians); Greeks; Romans; Arab Muslims; the Byzantine Empire; the Ottoman Empire; the British. The zigzag between the Muslim and Christian worlds came to the surface in the Crusades launched by the Christian world to recapture the Holy City.

Jerusalem’s 700,000 people — two thirds of whom are Jewish and one third Palestinian Arab — live in the city’s many distinct neighborhoods including the Old City, which is walled and which includes the Temple Mount, sacred to the monotheistic faiths; and a busy downtown, with retail shopping that offers eateries, jewelry, and bookstores. Other neighborhoods include Mea Shearim, where fervently orthodox Jews in traditional garb fill the streets, and Mount Scopus, where Hadassah hospital and a campus of the Hebrew University give testimony to the great success of the Zionist enterprise. There is wealthy Rehavia; Talpiyot with its old Arab houses; and Ramat Rakhel, which is a neighborhood that enveloped a kibbutz, and in the hills next to a little spring, biblical Ein Karem.

One of the principles that we have tried to follow here at the Sun is to avoid telling Israel how to run its affairs. But there is no doubt that the latest maneuvering in Israel is going to challenge the political debate here. We last wrote about it in an editorial “Jerusalem and Beyond,” issued on June 1 as Congress was preparing to issue yet another resolution in support of America’s interest. It is articulated in the policy long since declared by the Congress, that as a matter of American law, an undivided Jerusalem should be Israel’s capital and that our embassy should be there. Nothing happening in Israel or among the Palestinian Arabs has changed that logic.

NY Sun
NEW YORK SUN CONTRIBUTOR

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.


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