Jerusalem and Elie Wiesel by Daniel Seideman (The Middle East Channel)
- Before our eyes, Jerusalem is becoming the arena
where the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is morphing from a resolvable national
conflict into a religious war - a transformation that, if it continues, poses
an existential threat to Israel.
And what starts in Jerusalem does not stay in Jerusalem: conflict in Jerusalem resonates throughout the region and
beyond, wind in the sails of every jihadist.
By asserting the Jewish people's exclusive "ownership" of Jerusalem, Wiesel
embraces the policies that are accelerating this metamorphosis.
Wiesel ignores these facts. He ignores the fact that the policies he is
defending will soon turn Jerusalem into a city so balkanized, geographically
and demographically, that the two-state solution will no longer be
possible. And the demise of the two-state solution portends the end of Israel as a
Jewish, democratic state, to be replaced by either an apartheid-like reality
with a Jewish minority ruling over an Arab majority, or by a bi-national
Arab-Jewish state.
Israel is at an existential
crossroads with Jerusalem.
Current policies cannot be justified - even by Elie Wiesel, even to Israel's
staunchest allies. These policies consistently derail the resumption of
negotiations towards a conflict-ending agreement between Israel and the
Palestinians. The cumulative impact of these policies will be the
destruction of the two-state solution, the radicalization of the conflict and
the de-legitimization of Israel.
With these policies, Jerusalem is becoming the
place where Israel
slides down the slippery slope into pariah status.
Israel's Right to Exist as a Jewish Homeland (American Thinker)
- In San Remo -- and for the first time in 1,800 years, since Roman times -- the geographical region known as "Palestine" acquired a legal identity. Even though the boundaries of Palestine were not precisely defined in San Remo, the prevailing idea was to draw them as close as possible to the historical boundaries of the ancient Jewish kingdoms of Israel and Judah. In that regard, the expression "from Dan to Beersheba" was introduced by Lloyd George, the British Prime Minister at the time, and it often appeared in subsequent documents.By referring specifically to the Balfour Declaration of November 1917 -- which was essentially an expression of British foreign policy -- and by reproducing its wording literally, the San Remo Resolution entrenched the provisions of the Balfour Declaration in international law. Thus, the reconstitution of the Jewish National Home in Palestine received international recognition.The legal title to Palestine was officially transferred from the League of Nations -- when Turkey was dispossessed of its rights to the region at the Paris Peace Conference a year earlier -- to the Jewish people, who became the national beneficiary under a mandate awarded to Britain, thereby designated as the trustee.The transfer of title and the sovereignty of the Jewish people in Palestine remain binding in international law to this day. Similarly, equivalent national rights were conferred to the Arabs in both Syria/Lebanon and present-day Iraq under two other transitional mandates awarded to France and Britain, respectively. It should therefore be apparent that the legitimacy of the present Arab states of Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq derives from the same international law which reconstituted the Jewish nation in Palestine.
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