Jerusalem Remains the Soul of Judaism

A clear majority in today’s pragmatic Israel is prepared to partition the Holy Land between its two competing peoples. Prime Minister Ehud Barak has gone further than any previous Israeli leader in offering the Palestinians more than 90% of the West Bank and Gaza, and the Israeli public may well accept that far-reaching compromise, though it means waiving the Jewish claim to the biblical heartland and enduring security risks few countries would consider acceptable.

Yet there is one compromise that even post-ideological Israel is unable to make: repartitioning Jerusalem. Instinctively, most Israelis realize that Jewish history would never forgive the generation that reunited Jerusalem if it were to voluntarily agreed to its dismemberment. The Jews survived in exile only because they anticipated their eventual return to Zion--the interchangeable name for both the land of Israel and Jerusalem. Ceding the heart of Jerusalem to Yasser Arafat would be a spiritual blow from which the Jews might not recover, precisely because it was self-inflicted.

Without Jerusalem there is no Judaism and no Jewish people. A religious Jew invokes Jerusalem nearly two dozen times a day, in morning, afternoon and evening prayers and in blessings after meals, asking God to return us to Jerusalem and spread his protection over the city. The Jewish wedding ceremony ends with the couple repeating the words, “If I forget thee, O Jerusalem,” and the symbolic breaking of a glass to mourn the destruction of ancient Jerusalem. When Muslims pray, they face Mecca; when Jews pray, they face Jerusalem. Other faiths venerate Jerusalem, but only Judaism has turned Jerusalem into the reason for its existence.

That is not to minimize the depth of devotion of Christianity and Islam to the Holy City.

Any solution to Jerusalem must honor the Christian and Muslim presence here. For that reason, Israel has offered to recognize Palestinian control over the Temple Mount--an astonishingly generous compromise over Judaism’s holiest site.

Contrast that offer with the record of Arab rule in Jerusalem. When Jordan’s Arab Legion conquered Jerusalem’s Old City in 1948, it expelled all Jewish residents, some of whose families had lived there for centuries. Synagogues were turned into latrines; roads were paved with ancient Jewish tombstones. Worst of all, Jews were forbidden to pray at the Western Wall. Yet when Israel reunited the city in 1967, it not only allowed the Muslim Wakf--the Muslim religious trust--to maintain control over the Temple Mount but forbade Jews from praying there, to preserve the status quo.

But compromises over religious Jerusalem cannot be applied to political Jerusalem. Palestinian national consciousness as a distinct people within the Arab nation is less than a century old. The Palestinian political claim to Jerusalem is measured in mere decades; the Jewish claim, in millennia.

Ironically, the reunification of Jerusalem under Israeli rule was caused by the Arabs themselves. Had Jordan not begun shelling Israeli neighborhoods in Jerusalem during the 1967 Six-Day War, Israeli soldiers wouldn’t have entered the Old City. Israel won Jerusalem in a war of self-defense. Since then, every Israeli government, whether left or right, has been committed to ensuring a Jewish majority in the city, and no people in our place would have behaved any differently. Today, Jews form a majority not only in Jerusalem generally but even in the eastern part of the city.

In its desperation to ensure continued control over Jerusalem, Israel has made many mistakes and committed wrongs. It has failed to ensure equality for Arab and Jewish neighborhoods. The proper response is a struggle for equality of Arabs within a united Jerusalem. Like the story of Solomon and the competing mothers, the worst solution is to slice the baby in two.

Remarkably, Jerusalem has remained relatively peaceful. Yet introducing a rival authority into Jerusalem will almost certainly transform the city into another Belfast. To transfer even part of Jerusalem to Arafat’s dictatorship is an act of awesome historical irresponsibility. Perhaps in a more perfect world, a democratic Palestinian leadership could be entrusted with shared rule over Jerusalem. But the Jews didn’t wait thousands of years to come home, only to surrender Jerusalem to a dictator threatening holy war.

Since David proclaimed Jerusalem his kingdom, no nation besides the Jews has ever declared Jerusalem its capital. Jordan ruled East Jerusalem for 18 years, yet it remained a backwater. Only under Israel has the city thrived and achieved international stature and religious freedom, proof that the Jews are its legitimate custodians. Sacred Jerusalem belongs equally to all who love and pray for her; political Jerusalem belongs to Israel.