Dividing Jerusalem
By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept when we remembered Zion.
We hung our harps upon the willows in the midst of it.
For there those who carried us away captive asked of us a song, and those plundered us requested mirth, saying, "Sing us one of the songs of Zion!"
How shall we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land?
If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its skill!
If I do not remember you, let my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth-- if I do not exalt Jerusalem above my chief joy.
Remember, O Lord, against the sons of Edom the day of Jerusalem, who said, "Raze it, raze it, to its very foundation!"
O daughter of Babylon, who are to be destroyed, happy the one who repays you as you have served us!
Happy the one who takes and dashes your little ones against the rock!
Whose sacred city is this if not that of the ancient Israelites handed down through posterity to the nation of the Jews who inherited it? Next Year In Jerusalem, that ancient yearning for return has become reality, the re-establishment of a Jewish nation in a Jewish country as a Jewish state was achieved in the dark shadow of mass Jewish annihilation. The return to Zion was accomplished.
Now Zionism is held in scorn by the international community, claimed within the United Nations to be apartheid in nature, racially discriminatory, criminally bigoted, unsupportable. Those who have newly charged that Zionism is equated with racism have found a receptive audience world wide among others who are only too engaged in general agreement fostering anti-Semitism.
The scourge that will not die. Where once it was Europeans that promoted anti-Semitism for useful deployment in blaming Jews for all the ills that afflicted Europe, now it is the Muslim/Arab community that has found great use in the hateful slander. The ancient city of the Jews now is held to be the rightful inheritance of Palestinian Arabs. Not just any part of Jerusalem but the Old City where stands the most holy relic of Judaism's past.
When Jordan took 'possession' of the Old City of Jerusalem, it was made Judenrein, no Jews were permitted to remain there or to enter its confines, or to worship at the Temple Mount; the Wailing Wall. When Jordan saw fit to attack the State of Israel yet again, and lost, Israel took re-possession of the Old City, and with it Judaism's most sacred holy place.
Three thousand years of possession retained; yet the city's international legal position remains in bitter dispute.
"Gilo is not a settlement nor an outpost. It is a neighbourhood in the very heart of Jerusalem about five minutes from the centre of town", explained Mark Regev, a spokesman for the Netanyahu government, in response to the declarations of concern by the international community in the wake of news of the planned construction of a thousand new homes on annexed land.
Claims that peace talks would be further compromised ring out.
What peace talks? Would those be the intermittent and always-failed talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority and its predecessor, both of whom always managed to find fault with any and all concessions, however painful that Israel offered? Each of those peace plans that were proffered included an intact Jerusalem, inclusive of Gilo, as Israel's prime possession.
U.S. Secretary of State Clinton insists new settlement building to be "counter-productive". The question is, counter-productive to what, exactly? First off, Gilo is not a settlement, and an extension of needed housing that is being planned for the area, irrespective of the Palestinian Authority's insistence that this area must be considered as a future capital of a Palestinian state.
The Palestinians have a capital city and it is called Ramallah. The Jews have a capital city as well and it has always been, from antiquity to the present - except for the 16 years when it was under Jordanian domination, Jerusalem. Indivisible. The pre-condition that Mahmoud Abbas has declared for resumption of peace talks is an entirely new invention, one that earlier such talks were never predicated upon.
"As the navel is set in the centre of the human body,The dire insistence on immediately halting settlements before peace talks may once again resume, assumes that those peace talks could conceivably conclude with a reasonable settlement satisfactory to each of the protagonists. In the mind of the Palestinians nothing the Jewish State could offer would be grounds for peace. In the mind of the State of Israel, past offers however conciliatory and sincere, have been futile.
so is the land of Israel the navel of the world...
situated in the centre of the world,
and Jerusalem in the centre of the land of Israel,
and the sanctuary in the centre of Jerusalem,
and the holy place in the centre of the sanctuary,
and the ark in the centre of the holy place,
and the foundation stone before the holy place,
because from it the world was founded."
A studied look at the history of the area of the past 70 years by an observant and open mind could only conclude that the differences between the two antagonist-protagonists are irreconcilable. Even when a desperate effort is put forward to conclude a peace treaty, the other side withdraws, while declaring it is that side which has invested an effort to be at fault.
A little-observed fact that Jordan was invested as a 'country' where none had been before, and in the process took up the major portion of the land dedicated to the Palestinians is simply overlooked. There, in Jordan, is Palestine.
As for Gaza, Egypt may reclaim it, and best of wishes.
Labels: Israel, Palestinian Authority, Peace, Political Realities
posted by Pieface @ Thursday, September 29, 2011
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