Tagged near the end of an article in the Jerusalem Post detailing Saab Erekat’s insistence that the Palestinians will never recognize Israel as a Jewish state is this interesting poll data:
Also according to the poll, 52.9% believe the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will be solved if Jerusalem becomes a Muslim city while 26% believe east Jerusalem should be the capital of Palestine and west Jerusalem the capital of Israel.
Ten percent said they thought the city should be the joint capital of both nations and 7.4% said the capital should be under international control.
More than half the Palestinians are in effect insisting that if Israel surrenders utterly to the Palestinians, there will be peace. Otherwise, expect eternal war.
It’s interesting how there was no need for a Palestinian state, or a capital of such state in Jerusalem, for the entire time the Palestinians lived under a British mandate. There was no need for it when Jordan controlled the eastern half—with most of the religious shrines, from which they forbade Jews—from 1948 to 1967. And of course, Jerusalem is not mentioned at all in the koran, but it has been the capital of world Jewry for over three millennia, whether Jews were in Israel, or in exile.
But all we have to do is make it a Muslim city, and there will be peace, you see. Submit to the will of Allah, I suppose they’d say.
Shyeah.
Never. Gonna. Happen.
Whether or not the Palestinians officially recognize Israel as the Jewish state that it is doesn’t matter. Olmert doesn’t have the political capital to give up Jerusalem.
I think the only good thing about the Annapolis conferences is that ultimately, it’s going to fail. I’m not worried that Jerusalem will be split. I’m not worried that the Palestinians will have the control over the West Bank they’re asking for. And I’m not worried about a third intifada. Ehud Barak is preparing to take back the Philadelphi corridor and rid Gaza of much of its weaponry, explosives, and terrorists.
Whether Saab Erekat and his buddies admit it or not, Israel is the Jewish State. And Jerusalem is the capital of the Jewish State, now and forever. The Palestinians don’t get to determine that fact. It’s been determined by history, by archeology, by facts on the ground, and most especially, by Someone whose name is most emphatically not Allah.
Get over it, Erekat. The Jews are never leaving Israel, or Jerusalem, ever again.
Odd, isn’t it? For nearly two decades there was no Palestinian state, no movement towards a Palestinian state, Jews were barred from their holy sites, no Palestinian control over anything…and no one lost any sleep over any of this.
Once the Jews controlled Jersualem suddenly this all–except for that little problem about Jewish access to holy places–became prime world issues. If I were a cynic I’d offer a theory as to why that happened.
(Of course the city is actually called “Jerusalem.”)