Jerusalem and Obama's "knowledge."

Palestinian Fatah demands control of 'all of Jerusalem' before peace talks can be conducted with IsraelAugust 11, 2009
As if President Obama's attempt to hold Israel completely responsible for moving Middle East peace talks ahead wasn't unrealistic enough, the West Bank Palestinian party has now demanded complete sovereignty over Jerusalem as a precondition for any negotiations. The announcement came at last week's Fatah conference in Bethlehem, which also re-elected Mahmoud Abbas as its leader.
This bizarre demand reminded me of a BBC report I heard on NPR early last week about nine Palestinian families being evicted by Israel from their East Jerusalem homes. The report, in typical BBC style, focused on the eviction of some 50 people whose families had lived in the houses for 50 years, and one of the angry Palestinian evictees was interviewed. Sad story. The U.S. State Department has since protested the evictions.
But wait. One thing was missing from the story---the obvious question for any reporter (except those of the BBC?): Why were the Palestinians being evicted? The answer, which I discovered after 30 seconds of research: Following decades of litigation, the Israeli supreme court (and many courts before it) had ruled that the houses belong to Jews, who owned them before the Jordanians seized them in Israel's 1948 War of Independence. Indeed, the neighborhood had been Jewish for many decades before it became a spoil of war and a home to Arabs. The Arab paperwork alleging ownership of the property, the courts found, was forged. Hmmmm. That changes the story.
As you may know, Jerusalem is not mentioned in the Koran, and between 1948-1967, when Jordan controlled the city, no Arab leaders ever visited it. Yet Fatah in its recent statement claims Jerusalem is the "eternal capital of Palestine, the Arab world and the Islamic and Christian worlds." (Notice anyone missing from this list?)
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu clarified the Israeli position on Jerusalem and where people can live in it: "[U]nited Jerusalem is the capital of the Jewish people and of the State of Israel. Our sovereignty over it cannot be challenged . . . This has been the policy of all Israeli governments . . . This says that there is no ban on Arabs buying apartments in the western part of the city and there is no ban on Jews buying or building apartments in the eastern part of the city."
Wow, what a radical position. If you rent or own the property, you can live or build there. No racial or ethnic housing discrimination allowed. Why does the U.S. government oppose this?
This week's article, by...Jeff Jacoby, gives you the perfect quick briefing on who owns Jerusalem and why we should oppose U.S. pressure on Israel to stop populating the Jewish state's capital with Jews.Sincerely,Jim Sinkinson,Director, FLAME///
Who Owns Jerusalem—Can It Really Be One City, Undivided? by Jeff Jacoby, The Boston Globe, July 22, 2009
Late last week, the Obama administration demanded that the Israeli government pull the plug on a planned housing development near the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Jerusalem. The project, a 20-unit apartment complex, is indisputably legal. The property to be developed—a defunct hotel—was purchased in 1985, and the developer has obtained all the necessary municipal permits.
Why, then, does the administration want the development killed? Because Sheikh Jarrah is in a largely Arab section of Jerusalem, and the developers of the planned apartments are Jews. Think about that for a moment. Six months after Barack Obama became the first black man to move into the previously all-white residential facility at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, he is fighting to prevent integration in Jerusalem.
It is impossible to imagine the opposite scenario: The administration would never demand that Israel prevent Arabs from moving into a Jewish neighborhood. And the Obama Justice Department would unleash seven kinds of hell on anyone who tried to impose racial, ethnic, or religious redlining in an American city. In the 21st century, segregation is unthinkable — except, it seems, when it comes to housing Jews in Jerusalem.
It is not easy for Israel's government to refuse any demand from the United States, which is the Jewish state's foremost ally.****Used to be, B.O.**** To their credit, Israeli leaders spoke truth to power, and said no. "Jerusalem residents can purchase apartments anywhere in the city," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday. "There is no ban on Arabs buying apartments in the west of the city, and there is no ban on Jews building or buying in the city's east. This is the policy of an open city."
There was a time not so long ago when Jerusalem was anything but an open city. During Israel's War of Independence in 1948, the Jordanian Arab Legion invaded eastern Jerusalem, occupied the Old City, and expelled all its Jews—many from families that had lived in the city for centuries. "As they left," the historian Sir Martin Gilbert later wrote, "they could see columns of smoke rising from the quarter behind them. The Hadassah welfare station had been set on fire and . . . the looting and burning of Jewish property was in full swing."
For the next 19 years, eastern Jerusalem was barred to Jews, brutally divided from the western part of the city with barbed-wire and military fortifications. Dozens of Jewish holy places, including synagogues hundreds of years old, were desecrated or destroyed. Jerusalem's most sacred Jewish shrine, the Western Wall, became a slum. It wasn't until 1967, after Jordan was routed in the Six-Day War, that Jerusalem was reunited under Israeli sovereignty and religious freedom restored to all. Israelis have vowed ever since that Jerusalem would never again be divided.
And not only Israelis. US policy, laid out in the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995, recognizes Jerusalem as "a united city administered by Israel" and formally declares that "Jerusalem must remain an undivided city."
As a presidential candidate, Obama said the same thing. To a 2008 candidate questionnaire that asked about "the likely final status of Jerusalem," Obama replied: "The United States cannot dictate the terms of a final status agreement . . . Jerusalem will remain Israel's capital, and no one should want or expect it to be re-divided." In a speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Council, he repeated the point: "Let me be clear . . . Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided."****Of course, in typical fashion, he reneged on this statement the following day (when no longer in front of AIPAC) saying it had to be negotiated.****
Palestinian (putative)irredentists claim that eastern Jerusalem is historically Arab territory and should be the capital of a future Palestinian state. In reality, Jews always lived in eastern Jerusalem—it is the location of the Old City and its famous Jewish Quarter, after all, not to mention Hebrew University, which was founded in 1918. The apartment complex that Obama opposes is going up in what was once Shimon Hatzadik, a Jewish neighborhood established in 1891. Only from 1948 to 1967—during the Jordanian occupation—was the eastern part of Israel's capital "Arab territory." Palestinians have no more claim to sovereignty there than Russia does in formerly occupied eastern Berlin.
The great obstacle to Middle East peace is not that Jews insist on living among Arabs. It is that Arabs insist that Jews not live among them. If Obama doesn't grasp that, he has a lot to learn.****Alas, he must first unlearn many things he believes that are not true e.g. that the Jewish claim to the Holy Land derives from the suffering of the Holocaust.
U.S. House Majority Leader: East Jerusalem Is Different than West Bank Settlements [Jerusalem Post] Herb Keinon - Visiting U.S. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) called on Monday for the PA to drop any preconditions to negotiations and said that Congress differentiated between building in east Jerusalem and in the West Bank. Hoyer, leading a delegation of 29 Democratic legislators, also said the rhetoric coming out of the Fatah General Assembly in Bethlehem was "unfortunate." Hoyer, an important ally of President Obama, said he felt Obama "is also very committed to Israel making its own decision regarding what actions it will take vis-a-vis a [peace] agreement." He also said it was a mistake to make settlement construction the key issue, when it was not. Hoyer said that given the changes on the ground since 1967, he believed that most people in the U.S. - including the Obama administration - understood that a return to the 1967 boundaries was not realistic. According to Hoyer, "There is a significant difference between what we are talking about in the West Bank and Jerusalem itself, which is an integrated city; which is a whole...My view is that it will remain whole, and therefore...I don't think the partitioning of Jerusalem is a reasonable outcome. I don't think it will happen." ****We await Obama's countermanding of this statement when the Congressmen return to more anti-Israeli geography (the White House.)****
Yoda had occasion to write the following to the White House ( restricted in length ):
"As a fellow Columbia Alum, I wonder if you missed the courses in Contemporary Civilization and Humanities. Your ascription to the Holocaust of a Jewish right to a homeland in (what was the Mandate of ) Palestine, betrays a lack of historical knowledge. Your position on Jerusalem seems equally incorrect albeit error of more recent vintage. Jerusalem was a Jewish city until the Jordanians evicted all Jews in the sectors they conquered in the 1948 War (and desecrated the cemeteries, holy places,etc.) Your position on building in any part of Jerusalem is based on 19 years of Jordanian acts."