Jerusalem: A Battle President Obama Will Not Win.

Obama Picks a New Fight Over Jerusalem

In connection with President Obama’s latest attempt to pick a fight with Israel (over the conversion of a hotel to 20 housing units in East Jerusalem), it is worth re-reading the portion of Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to a joint session of Congress on July 10, 1996 that dealt with Jerusalem, particularly the last sentence:

Countless words have been written about that city on the hill, which represents the universal hope for justice and peace. I live in that city on the hill. And in my boyhood, I knew that city, when it was divided into enemy camps, with coils of barbed wire stretched through its heart.

Since 1967, under Israeli sovereignty, united Jerusalem has, for the first time in two thousand years, become the city of peace. For the first time, the holy places have been open to worshippers from all three great faiths. For the first time, no group in the city or among its pilgrims has been persecuted or denied free expression. For the first time, a single sovereign authority has afforded security and protection to members of every nationality who sought to come to pray there.

There have been efforts to redivide this city by those who claim that peace can come through division – that it can be secured through multiple sovereignties, multiple laws and multiple police forces.

This is a groundless and dangerous assumption, which impels me to declare today: There will never be such a re-division of Jerusalem. Never.

We shall not allow a Berlin Wall to be erected inside Jerusalem. We will not drive out anyone, but neither shall we be driven out of any quarter, any neighborhood, any street of our eternal capital.

It is also worth recalling that it is the official policy of the United States (pursuant to the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995) that "Jerusalem should remain an undivided city in which the rights of every ethnic and religious group are protected."

UPDATE: I have some further thoughts on this over at contentions. There are also excellent posts on the topic by Jonathan Tobin and David Hazony. Jennifer Rubin also adds some typically incisive remarks. All four of these posts are worth reading together.

Posted by Rick Richman | Permalink

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