Focus on Jerusalem

By Ted Belman (originally posted June 06)

Late last year, it was reported that EU Wants Israel to Divide Jerusalem

As a result, with little or no debate in Israel, Olmert decided to abandon Israel’s long held position and to divide Jerusalem. This new position was incorporated into his “convergence plan” and a map was published showing the proposed location of the fence dividing Jerusalem.
(I am certain that the present proposal reduces what we keep even more.)

I covered this map in my article What kind of Kakamame borders are these? I entertained the notion that to lop off Arab East Jerusalem at least gets rid of about 200,000 Arabs from west of the fence. What I did not appreciate was that this wrinkle was a capitulation to the demands of the EU nor that these same Arabs could move back into what was left.

I recently wrote “If I Forget Thee O’Jerusalem…” in which I traced how the “peace process” dealt with Jerusalem. No where was it determined that Jerusalem was to be divided.

Recently Caroline Glick wrote Olmert’s Plan to divide Jerusalem. After demonstrating how bad an idea it was she argued,

“So if Olmert’s planned retreat harms Jerusalem, what purpose does it serve?

“The sole goal that Olmert’s partition plan advances is that of attempting to appease racist, anti-Jewish radical Islamic forces that claim that Jews have no rights in Jerusalem. Indeed, at its core, Olmert’s plan internalizes this jihadist view by completely ignoring the security, municipal and demographic concerns of the city’s Jews and non-jihadist Arabs.

“This Israeli internalization of the jihadist view of Jews in Jerusalem also pervades the government’s treatment of Jewish land purchases in eastern Jerusalem. Last week Ha’aretz reported that a month ago the State’s Attorney, Eran Shendar, asked Police Inspector Yohanan Danino to undertake a covert investigation of Ateret Cohanim – a non-profit organization that works to bypass the Palestinian Authority’s policy of defining land sales to Jews as a capital offense for which dozens of Arabs have been murdered since 1994.“

And then described an alternate plan put forward by the people behind the new demographic studies which undermine the fear of the demographics,

“The team checked what would happen if, rather than partitioning the city, Israel were to expand the boundaries of the city. They found that if Israel were to extend the borders of the capital to include the Adumim bloc, the Etzion bloc, the Adam bloc, the Givon bloc, Mevasseret Zion and its satellite neighborhoods, the Tekoa area, Abu Dis and Bir Naballah and incorporate all these communities’ Jewish and Arab residents into the city, Jerusalem’s demographic balance would remain the same. The enlarged city would have 704,000 or 68% Jewish residents and 335,000 or 32% Arab residents.

“The enlarged capital would have plenty of land reserves on which to build new housing for both its Jewish and Arab residents. Retaining Israeli control over the areas around Jerusalem’s current boundaries would also protect Bethlehem’s status as a Christian city while Olmert’s plan, which places these areas under terrorist control, guarantees that Jesus’s birth city will become a Muslim majority city with all the religious and political consequences that such a religious transformation would involve for the Christian world. The study shows that the number of Arabs that would be incorporated into the city if it were to expand its borders is smaller than the number of Arabs incorporated into the city with its unification in 1967. And it goes without saying that an enlarged Jerusalem would be safer than a partitioned city with its removed sections under terrorist control. “

What she is talking about looks something like this as far as I can tell.

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It is time to man the ramparts

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