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We have been told again and again that if we just get the Jews and the Palestinians to negotiate, all will be fine. We can negotiate the West Bank situation and we can negotiate the fate of Jerusalem. Or can we? Incredibly, Palestinian Arabs have consistently promoted the teaching that Jerusalem is not and has never been a Jewish city. Jews have no history in the city of Jerusalem; they never lived there; the Temple was never there; and they have no claim to it. Indeed, Sheik Tayseer Rajab Tamimi, chief Islamic Judge of the Palestinian Authority, has argued that Jerusalem is solely “an Arab and Islamic city and it has always been so.” Further, Shamekh Alawneh, lecturer in modern history as Al Quds University, has argued that the Jews invented their connection to Jerusalem. “It has no historical roots” and currently Jews are engaging “in an attack on history, theft of culture, falsification of facts, erasure of truth, and Judaization of the place.”
What are the facts? As Bari Weiss of the Wall Street Journal has shown, “Jerusalem is the holiest city of Judaism, mentioned more than 600 times in the Hebrew Bible. Three times a day, religious Jews face eastward toward the city when they pray. At Jewish weddings, the couple’s joy is diminished as they shatter a glass to acknowledge Jerusalem’s still unfulfilled redemption. It is a widespread custom then to recite the 137th Psalm: “If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither, let my tongue cleave to my palate. . .” Jerusalem was the capital of David’s empire and his son Solomon built the magnificent Temple, north of the City of David. From the time of Herod’s Temple on Temple Mount, dozens of Jewish ritual baths have been found around Temple Mount and the retaining wall of the Temple, the Western Wall, still stands. Indeed, as Weiss demonstrates, both the Qur’an and early Islamic writings detail Temple Mount as the site of Solomon’s grand Temple. But current Palestinian Arab leaders seek to destroy all legitimacy of Israel’s claim to Jerusalem. They will not accept Jewish claims to Jerusalem and they seek to undo all that has occurred since 1948. However, since the 1967 war when Israel captured Jerusalem, the Jewish leadership in Israel has granted access and rights of Muslims to the Al Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock on Temple Mount. But Muslim and Palestinian Arab leaders refuse the same right to Jews. Jews, they say, are transplants to the region and have no legitimacy in Jerusalem. All of these sentiments and teachings summarized above are taught in Palestinian schools, can be read in Palestinian textbooks, are preached in mosques and printed continually in Arab newspapers.
So, given this horrific state of affairs, how can Israel ever hope to have meaningful negotiations with a people who deny their very right to the land? How can there be “peace talks?”
See Weiss’s helpful essay in the Wall Street Journal (25 September 2009). |
