ISSUES IN PEACE PROCESS

November 27, 2007
Annapolis and its Aftermath: Background Information on Key Issues

As Arab and Israeli representatives gather in Annapolis at the behest of the American Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, to hammer out a joint Israeli-Palestinian statement on the shape of future peace talks, it is useful to look at the core issues of permanent status negotiations. While the media tends to focus on Palestinian views and demands, citing settlements, borders, Jerusalem and refugees, ignored are the core Israeli concerns, namely Arab rejection of a Jewish state and the dismantlement of the terrorist infrastructure, as stipulated in past agreements. (For example, see AP's "Most Contentious Issues Between Israelis and Palestinians") Similarly, the media often forgets or ignores the background and history of final status negotiations and key issues involved.

Below are links to informative articles and CAMERA backgrounders that provide basic context frequently ignored regarding major issues to be discussed:

Arab Rejectionism

Although acceptance of Judaism's religious and historical ties to Jerusalem and the Temple Mount has always been key to any peace negotiations, scant coverage has been given to Arab rejection of both.

According to the Jerusalem Post, Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat bluntly stated:

Israel can define itself however it sees fit; and if it wishes to call itself a Jewish state, so be it ... But the Palestinians will never acknowledge Israel's Jewish identity.

And according to Haaretz, the Arab League insists its decision to attend the conference does not indicate it is willing to normalize relations with Israel.

Bernard Lewis explains how negotiations are "foredoomed" without Arab acceptance of Israel as a legitimate state. And CAMERA's backgrounder indicates how negotiations can be stymied by Palestinian and Muslim rejection of Israel's historic and religious connection to Jerusalem and the Temple Mount.

November 27, 2007 by Ricki Hollander
Jerusalem: Arab Denial of Jewish Ties

One of the main obstacles in previous peace-making efforts has been the issue of dividing Jerusalem and control over the Temple Mount. In the aftermath of Annapolis, any negotiations on the issue are likely to encounter familiar pitfalls—most importantly, Muslim refusal to acknowledge Judaism's historical and religious ties to Jerusalem and the Temple Mount.

Both Israel and the Palestinians lay claim to Jerusalem and its holy sites. Israel maintains security and legal control over the Temple Mount while the Muslim Waqf has religious, economic, administrative, and some security control there. Past negotiations have faltered on Palestinian denial of any Jewish religious or historical connection and rights to the Temple Mount. During the July 2000 negotiations at Camp David, Yasir Arafat refused to acknowledge Jewish ties to the Temple Mount, claiming the Jewish Temple never existed there. When talks resumed in Taba later that year, the Israelis agreed to full Palestinian sovereignty on the Temple Mount, but requested Palestinians acknowledge the sacredness of the Temple Mount to Judaism. They refused. According to then-foreign minister Shlomo Ben-Ami:

What particularly outraged me on that occasion wasn't only the fact that they refused, but the way in which they refused: out of a kind of total contempt, an attitude of dismissiveness and arrogance. At that moment I grasped they are really not Sadat. That they were not willing to move toward our position even at the emotional and symbolic level. At the deepest level, they are not ready to recognize that we have any kind of title here. [Interview with Ari Shavit, Haaretz, Nov. 25, 2001]

It is therefore useful to look back at the history of the conflict. Throughout history, Jerusalem’s stature as a Muslim holy city typically diminished during periods when it was securely under Muslim control. As Dr. Daniel Pipes has chronicled in an overview of the topic, "the stature of the city, and the emotions surrounding it, inevitably rise for Muslims when Jerusalem has political significance. Conversely, when the utility of Jerusalem expires, so does its status and the passions about it." (See "The Muslim Claim to Jerusalem," Middle East Quarterly, September 2001)

Since 1967, there has been a growing attempt by Palestinians to marshal the religious fervor of the Arab and Muslim world in order to wrest Jerusalem from Israeli control. As historian Dr. Yitzhak Reiter documented in a 2005 study entitled "From Jerusalem to Mecca and Back: The Islamic Consolidation of Jerusalem," their campaign involves denying the Jewish connection to Jerusalem and the Temple Mount while advancing Jerusalem and particularly the al-Aqsa compound’s sacredness in contemporary Islam. It also involves reinventing history to create an Arab connection to Jerusalem predating the Jewish one.

Even now, there are mounting accusations that the Muslim Waqf is deliberately destroying ancient Jewish artifacts and structures from the First Temple period under the guise of renovations on the Temple Mount in order to erase any archeological evidence of Jewish existence there.

BACKGROUND

1) The Centrality of the Temple Mount to Judaism

Jewish reverence for the Temple Mount (Har HaBayit) long predates the building of the Dome of the Rock and Al Aqsa Mosque in the 7th century CE, and even predates the construction of the first Jewish Temple (Beit HaMikdash) by King Solomon almost 2000 years earlier in 954 BCE. (This Temple was destroyed in 587 BCE.)

The Beit HaMikdash was built, according to Jewish tradition, on the Even Hashtiya, the foundation stone upon which the world was created. This is considered the epicenter of Judaism, where the Divine Presence (Shechina) rests, where the biblical Isaac was brought for sacrifice, where the Holy of Holies and Ark of the Covenant housing the Ten Commandments once stood, and where the Temple was again rebuilt in 515 BCE before being destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE. The Temple Mount is also known as Mount Moriah (Har HaMoriah), mentioned frequently in the Torah.

Jerusalem, Judaism’s holiest city, is mentioned 656 times in the Torah (Bible). It was the capital city of ancient Israeli kingdoms and home to Judaism’s holiest Temple. Jews from all over would made their pilgrimages to the Beit HaMikdash three times a year to participate in worship and festivities, as commanded in the Torah. Jerusalem and the Beit HaMikdash have remained the focus of Jewish longing, aspiration, and prayers. Daily prayers and grace after meals include multiple supplications for the restoration of Jerusalem and the Beit HaMikdash, and the Passover Seder concludes each year with the phrase "Next Year in Jerusalem."

The Western Wall (Kotel Hama’aravi, known simply as the Wall or Kotel) is the remnant of the outer retaining wall built by Herod to level the ground and expand the area housing the Second Jewish Temple. Its holiness derives from its proximity to the Temple site and specifically its proximity to the Western Wall of the Temple’s Holy of Holies (Kodesh Hakodashim---the inner sanctuary that housed the Ark of the Covenant–Aron HaBrit–and where the High Priest–Kohen Gadol-- alone was permitted to enter on Yom Kippur). According to Midrashic sources, the Divine Presence never departed from the Western wall of the Temple’s Holy of Holies.

For the last several hundred years, Jews have prayed at Herod’s Western Wall because it was the closest accessible place to Judaism’s holiest site. According to Jewish tradition, the third and final Temple will be rebuilt with the coming of the Messiah.

There is a controversy among Orthodox rabbis regarding the permissibility of entering the Temple Mount compound. Many prohibit entering the compound because of the risk that someone ritually unpure might tread on the site of the Holy of Holies whose precise location is not known. Others permit entering the Temple Mount, saying they have determined where one can stand without touching holy soil. This area includes Herod’s expansion of the Temple, such as Solomon's Stables, and the strip behind the Western Wall.

2) The Temple Mount as an Islamic Holy Site

Jerusalem assumed significance as an Islamic holy site during the rule of the Umayyads (661-750 CE). Facing challenge to his power from Ibn al-Zubayr, a rebel who controlled Mecca, the Syrian-based Caliph Abd al-Malik sought to consolidate his leadership by establishing a place of worship for his followers in Jerusalem in place of Mecca. He built the Dome of the Rock (Masjid Qubbat As-Sakhrah) in 688-91 CE on the spot where the Jewish Temples had stood.

Two decades later, in 715 CE, the Umayyads built another mosque on the Temple Mount which they named the Masjid al Aqsa (The Furthest Mosque) to connote the "furthest mosque" alluded to in the Quran (17:1). This was the metaphorical spot from which Mohammed was said to have ascended to heaven in a vision (referred to in Arabic as the Mi’raj) after a night journey from Mecca (the Isra) on a winged steed named Al Buraq.

Although the Quran never mentions Jerusalem or the Temple Mount, the designation of a concrete site to what had been until then just a figurative name provided Muslims with a new religious focus. Several Qur'anic verses were subsequently construed to be obliquely referring to Jerusalem. The Temple Mount was renamed by Muslims al Haram al Sharif, the Noble Sanctuary.

Following the end of Umayyad rule in 750 CE, Muslim interest in Jerusalem faded until the Crusaders took over in the 12th century CE. Kurdish leader Saladin (Salah-al-Din ibn Ayyub) reconquered Jerusalem in 1187, re-establishing Muslim rule there and embarking on a building campaign, which continued under his descendents, the Ayyubids. During Ayyubid rule, there were periods when Jerusalem and its holy sites were ceded to the Christian Crusaders, who built churches on the Temple Mount. Perhaps in reaction to Crusader conquests, Jerusalem became established in Muslim consciousness as the third most holy city in Islam, after Mecca and Medina. Even so, worship at this holy site was followed by long periods of Muslim neglect and disinterest.

The Western Wall, where Jews gathered to pray since the Ottoman conquest at the beginning of the 16th century, held little interest or significance for Muslims until the period of the British Mandate. Following the British government’s Balfour Declaration in 1917 which supported the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine, the Western Wall began to assume national as well as religious significance for Zionists and Jews began gathering there in larger numbers. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al Husseini, used the Wall as a focal point for his anti-Zionist campaigns. He incited Muslims by proclaiming the Western Wall a holy Muslim site which Jews were trying to seize. The Western Wall, after having been ignored for centuries, was suddenly declared the spot to which Mohammed had tied his winged steed during his Night Journey. The Wall was renamed Al Buraq after the beast. (Before this point, there had been several sites mentioned as the place where Muhammed had tethered his steed, including the eastern wall and the southern wall, but never the western wall.) Muslim riots in 1929 against Jewish worshipers at the Wall were instigated by the claim that Jewish prayer endangered the mosques holy to Islam.

While Jews were barred from entering and praying at their holy sites during Jordanian rule (1948-67), Jerusalem and the Temple Mount were largely ignored as important Muslim holy sites. But when Israel gained control of eastern Jerusalem and the Temple Mount in 1967, the area once again became a focal point for Muslim religious fervor and incitement. Despite the fact that Israeli authorities turned control of the Temple Mount over to the Jordanian Islamic Waqf as a gesture of peace, Muslims have followed the example set by Haj Amin al Husseini and have attempted to use the Temple Mount as a pretext to gain world support against Jewish authority over Jerusalem.

CONTROL OF THE TEMPLE MOUNT

During the 19 years of Jordanian occupation of East Jerusalem (1948- 1967), Jewish holy places were desecrated, vandalized or destroyed. Jews were denied access to their holy sites (including the Western Wall and Temple Mount area) in violation of Article 8 of the 1949 Israeli-Jordanian Armistice Agreement.

Upon Israel’s capture of eastern Jerusalem in June 1967, Israeli Minister of Defense Moshe Dayan declared:

"To our Arab neighbors we extend the hand of peace. To members of the other religions, Christians and Muslims, I hereby promise faithfully that their full freedom and all their religious rights will be preserved. We did not come to Jerusalem to conquer the Holy Places of others." (Meron Benvenisti, Jerusalem: The Torn City, Isratypeset, Jerusalem, 1976)

He immediately handed administrative control over the Temple Mount to Jordan’s Islamic Waqf and banned Jews from holding prayer services there. Israel, however, retained sovereignty and ultimate security control of the area.

The Israeli Knesset passed the Protection of Holy Places Law granting special legal status to the Holy Sites and making it a criminal offence to desecrate or violate them, or to impede freedom of access to them. Other laws require prior agreement from the Ministry of Religious Affairs or Ministry of Education and Culture in order to carry out excavations in or near a holy site and a 1978 Antiquities Law stipulates that where such a site is used for religious reasons, paving, quarrying, and interment and other actions can only be carried out with the written agreement of the Director of the Department of Antiquities.

Israel promised to continue the Hashemite Kingdom's special status administering Islamic holy sites in Jerusalem. But following the Oslo II Agreements in 1994, Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat attempted to replace the Jordanian Waqf’s authority over the Temple Mount. By 1996, he had appointed Sheikh Ikrima Sabri as Mufti of Jerusalem and Hassan Tahboub as Minister of the Waqf and Religious Affairs, overshadowing the Jordanian-appointed head of the Islamic Waqf, Adnan Husseini. Although Husseini was not dismissed from his post, his position became less relevant, and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan thus effectively lost administrative and religious control of the Waqf to the Arafat’s Palestinian Authority.

Under the PA-controlled Waqf, the status quo of the Temple Mount was changed, with illegal digging and construction of new mosques.

But in 2004, the Jordanians reasserted their control over the Jerusalem Waqf. In March 2007, Sheikh Azzam Khatib became head of the Jerusalem Islamic Waqf, and Sheikh Ikrima Sabri who was aligning himself more and more with the radical Israeli-Arab was replaced by Sheikh Mohammad Hussein as mufti of Jerusalem. Sabri instead took on the position of "guardian of the Al Aqsa Mosque." Illegal digging and destruction of Temple artifacts, nevertheless continue. Over the years, the Islamic Waqf has bulldozed, dug up, paved and dumped ancient artifacts. Even now, Israeli archeologists are concerned that the Muslim Waqf is destroying ancient Jewish artifacts and structures from the First Temple period under the guise of renovations on the Temple Mount. Many believe the Waqf is deliberately attempting to destroy archeological evidence proving the Jewish history of the site.

REWRITING HISTORY: ERASING THE JEWISH CONNECTION TO HOLY SITES AND CREATING A FICTITIOUS ARAB HISTORY

In 1930, the Supreme Moslem Council published an English-language tourist guide to the Temple Mount entitled "A Brief Guide to al-Haram al-Sharif," stated:

The site is one of the oldest in the world. Its sanctity dates from the earliest times. Its identity with the site of Solomonìs Temple is beyond dispute. This, too, is the spot, according to universal belief, on which David built there an altar unto the Lord, and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings.

But Muslim acknowledgement of a Jewish historic bond to this holy site changed following Israel’s victory in the 1967 war, when Jerusalem came under Israel’s control. Palestinian and Muslim leaders began to alter their line. While the stories they recount differ from one to another, they are consistent in their attempt to erase the Jewish connection to the Temple Mount, Jerusalem, and indeed all of Israel.

Below are examples of statements by Palestinian political and religious leaders and academics as well as other Arab and Muslim leaders denying the Jewish connection to Jerusalem and the Temple Mount, especially during negotiations over Jerusalem and its holy sites.

1) Palestinian Political Leaders

Yasir Arafat

Ambassador Dennis Ross, who shaped U.S. involvement in the Middle East peace process as Special Middle East Coordinator and who presided over President Clinton's failed Israeli-Palestinian peace summit at Camp David in 2000, reported that Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat raised only one idea at the Camp David talks – namely, to deny the core of the Jewish faith by claiming that the Temple had never existed in Jerusalem, but in Nablus.

Arafat feared acknowledging the existence of a Jewish connection. He told Clinton "I am a religious man, and I will not allow it to be written of me [in history] that I have… confirmed the existence of the so-called temple underneath the mountain." {Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, August 12, 2000, Translation: MEMRI )

Later, in an Oct. 5, 2002 interview with London’s Al Hayat, he went even further in his denial of Jewish history, changing the story once more. He alleged not only that the Jewish Temple never existed in Jerusalem, but that it had never existed in any of Palestine:

For 34 years they [Jews] have dug tunnels, the most dangerous of which is the great tunnel. They found not a single stone proving that the Temple of Solomon was there, because historically the Temple was not in Palestine [at all]. They found only remnants of a shrine of the Roman Herod. (Translation: MEMRI)

Nabil Sha’ath

Other Palestinian political leaders have followed suit. For example, Nabil Sha’ath of the Palestinian Legislative Council and senior advisor to President Mahmoud Abbas who previously was chief negotiator in Israeli-Palestinian talks labels the Jewish temple as "fictitious." He said:

[The Israelis] are insisting on sovereignty over the Al-Aqsa mosque on the pretext that an Israeli Temple is buried beneath it and that, through their continued sovereignty, they can one day unearth it…Their claim was not substantiated by the excavations they carried out around and under the mosque. [Voice of Palestine Radio Station, July 26, 2000]

Israel demands control of the Temple Mount based on its claim that its fictitious temple stood there. (Al-Ayyam, July 27, 2000).

Walid Awad

Walid Awad, foreign press spokesman for the Fatah Central Media Commission and formerly director of foreign publications for the PLO's Ministry of Information, stated an interview with IMRA on Dec. 25, 1996:

There is no tangible evidence of Jewish existence from the so-called 'Temple Mount Era'. . . . The location of the Temple Mount is in question. . . . It might be in Jericho or somewhere else.

In an online article "Jerusalem, A City Crying Out For Justice" put out by Awad as the director of foreign publications for the PA Ministry of Information (the PA Web site is no longer available), Awad accuses Israel of falsifying history and archeology after 1967 in order to create a Jewish connection to Jerusalem:

Immediately after Israeli soldiers occupied Arab East Jerusalem back in 1967, the Hebrew University, the Israeli Ministry of Religious Affairs, and the Department of Antiquities collectively and individually began a massive excavation campaign in Arab East Jerusalem in a bid to find allocate traces of Jewish existence from the so called 'Temple Mount Era.'

The fact of the matter is that almost thirty years of excavations did not reveal anything Jewish, no tangible evidence of theirs was unearthed. Much to their chagrin, what surfaced from their underground excavations turned out to be more Muslim palaces, courts and mosques. Other excavations revealed archeological ruins belonging to the Romans, Greeks and Canaanites...

...To give credibility to these claims, and to translate the ingenious falsified historical accounts of the city in order for them to obtain worldwide authenticity, they[Israeli archeologists and authorities] decided to manipulate connect the history of Jerusalem as they want it to be seen by the world, and to present it in a way acceptable to contemporary thinking of everyday people...

...Jerusalem is not a Jewish city, despite the biblical myth implanted in some minds. Nothing tangible has been found to give credibility to these claims.

2) Palestinian Religious Leaders

Sheikh Ikrima Sabri, previous Mufti of Jerusalem

Ikrima Sabri, until recently the Palestinian Authority-appointed mufti of Jerusalem and the highest ranking Islamic clerical authority in the PA, insists Jews have no connection to any part of the Temple Mount, including the Western Wall. In 1997, he proclaimed:

The Al-Buraq Wall [Western Wall] and its plaza are a Muslim religious property, and the Israeli government’s decisions do not affect it…The Al-Buraq Wall is part of the Al Aqsa Mosque. The Jews have no relation to it. (Al Ayam, Nov. 22, 1997)

In 2000, he reiterated this in an Israeli-Arab weekly::

No stone of the Al-Buraq [the Western] Wall has any relation to Judaism. [Kul Al-Arab, August 18, 2000]

And a few months later, he gave an interview to a German daily in which he again asserted:

There is not [even] the smallest indication of the existence of a Jewish Temple on this place in the past. In the whole city, there is not even a single stone indicating Jewish history... The Jews cannot legitimately claim [the Western] wall, neither religiously nor historically. The Committee of the League of Nations recommended in 1930, to allow the Jews to pray there, in order to keep them quiet. But by no means did it acknowledge that the wall belongs to them. [Die Welt, January 17, 2001]

In 2002, Sabri wrote a booklet, entitled Palestine – the Human Factor and the Land which was published in Egypt in August 2002. In it, he used as evidence the anti-Semitic forgery "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion"to support his allegation that the Jews have for centuries been secretly plotting to take over Palestine. He denied any Jewish historic connection and right to the land, labelling the Jewish Temple built by Solomon as "imaginary."

3) Palestinian Academics

Palestinian academics, using their credentials to lend weight to their claims–often on Palestinian educational TV– have frequently denied the Jewish historical connection to the land, replacing it with a fictitious Arab connection. According to them, the Bible has no historical veracity. Palestinians, they claim, are the direct descendents of Canaanites, while Jews, they say, are descendents of Khazars who have no claim to the land.

Dr. Issam Sissalem, Professor of Middle Eastern History at the Islamic University of Gaza, frequently appears on PA television, denying any Jewish connection to the Temple Mount, Jerusalem and the Land of Israel.

About Solomon’s Temple, he asserts:

This is the biggest lie in history by those liars. (PA TV, Oct. 8, 2001)

There is no historical text that proves the existence [of Solomon’s Temple] or that it has a real history other than the Bible, and the Bible as we have previously mentioned… was written based on ancient legends. (PA TV, Aug. 2, 2004)

And about the Western Wall, he claims:

That's the place where Muhammad went to Heaven and is part of Al-Aqsa Mosque. The Zionist enemy falsely claims that this wall is part of the so-called temple. This is a deceitful lie. {PA TV, Oct. 8, 2001)

In fact, Sissalem attempts to erase all Jewish connection to the Land of Israel:

As I've already said, the ancient Hebrews were destroyed. Utterly decimated. Actually, they were foreigners in this land. They were primitive Bedouin from the Arabian Desert. This land is ours. Jerusalem, and every one of her stones, are ours. {PA TV, Oct. 8, 2001)

I want to point out that we should not focus much on what is called the [Biblical] Hebrew tribes, who are in fact Bedouin – Arab tribes. There is no connection between them and these Khazar Jews [of Israel today]. (Aug. 2, 2004)

The Jews lived in isolated areas, in ghettos in Poland and in Russia. They were the remains of the Khazars with no connection to our land or its history ... (PA TV, Nov. 21, 2004)

Historian and former Arafat advisor Jarar al Qidwa makes similar assertions:

Solomon’s Temple, I believe, was built by the Canaanites who were the neighbors of the Israelis, the Israelites... I want to state several words clearly: the Bible became an archival document, not representing what the Israelis and the first Jews were, but what they thought they were, what they imagined. The Temple is the fruit of their imagination. In any case, when our nation or our Canaanite forefathers came to Palestine, they built the Temple… a temple in Jerusalem...

...The issue of the temple is a Zionist innovation. No one said that the temple that was built in Jerusalem, neither the Canaanite nor Roman, no one said that it was in the place of the [Islamic] Al Haram." (PA TV, Aug. 2, 1004)

4) Other Arab and Muslim Claims

The attempt to erase the Jewish connection to Israel is not limited to the Palestinians. The extent to which this denial has caught on in the Arab and Muslim world was revealed in Yitzhak Reiter’s study (in Hebrew) which was based on thousands of Islamic legal rulings, proclamations and writings that he found at the Cairo book fair, Arabic websites and Islamic bookshops. (Ha’aretz columnist Nadav Shragai summarized some of Reiter’s findings in a November 27, 2005 column entitled "In the beginning was Al-Aqsa.")

Below are just a few of many examples since 1967:

On December 30, 1973, King Feisal of Saudi Arabia proclaimed on Radio Riyadh

The Jews have no connection whatsoever with Jerusalem and have no sacraments there. They cliam that the Temple of Solomon is there...The Temple of Solomon does not exist in Jerusalem...Therefore the Jews have no connection or right to have any presence in Jerusalem, or any authority there.

Saudi historian Muhammed Hassan Sharab declares that the Quranic Al Aqsa mosque encompasses the entire Temple Mount compound including the Western Wall and that the Temple of Solomon was never located there.

Egyptian archaeologist Abed al-Rahim Rihan Barakat, Director of Antiquities in the Dahab area of Sinai. Barakat asserts:

The legend about the Jewish temple is the greatest historic crime of forgery.

University of Cairo lecturer and one-time TV host Abed al-Tuwab Mustafa claims that there is no basis for the Jewish claim of a holy Temple on Mount Moriah.

Lebanese historian Kamal Salibi, Professor Emeritus at the American University of Beirut theorizes that ancient Israelites never inhabited Palestine and that biblical events occurred, not in Palestine but in southwestern Arabia, between Mecca and Yemen. He expounds upon this theory in a1985 book, The Bible Came from Arabia, basing his claims on the fact that many places in Arabia bear biblical names.

In the U.S., Nadia Abu El Haj, an assistant professor of Anthropology at Barnard College who is currently up for tenure, wrote a book alleging that Israeli archeology is compromised by nationalist political motives to substantiate the nation’s "origin myth." Although she has no archeological expertise herself, she dismisses the vast archeological evidence supporting historical and biblical accounts of the long Jewish presence in Israel as having been manipulated in order to produce evidence for an Israelite connection to the land.

5) Claims that Al Aqsa Mosque was built by Adam

In recent years, differing new claims have arisen as to who built the Al Aqsa mosque. Almost all these claims predate Solomon’s construction of the First Jewish Temple in 954 BCE. But the allegation gaining the most currency among Muslims is that this mosque was built by Adam. Abdullah Marouf, a former Media and Public Relations Officer of the al-Aqsa mosque now runs a Web site (http://www.ouraqsa.com/english/) devoted to the Al Aqsa mosque providing English readers with the rewritten "history" of the structure:

The first building of al-Aqsa mosque was done by Prophet Adam (PBUH), then it has been renovated and rebuilt many times, one of them was by Prophet Sulayman (Solomon) (PBUH), but his building of al-Aqsa was only a renovation of the mosque, not a first-time building. Therefore, we cannot say that Prophet Sulayman was the one who BUILT al-Aqsa mosque, but we can say that he (PBUH) RENOVATED or REBUILT the mosque.

Western journalists must find it difficult to understand an Arab revisionist history that rejects and denies basic truths accepted in the Judeo-Christian tradition. And so they tend to dismiss or ignore it. But understanding Arab denial of Judaism's foundation and therefore Israel's right to exist is essential to understanding the entire Arab-Israeli peace process.

Palestinian Terrorism and Incitement

All peace negotiations are predicated upon the Road Map which stipulates "visible" Palestinian "efforts on the ground to arrest, disrupt, and restrain individuals and groups conducting and planning violent attacks on Israelis anywhere" and an end by "all official Palestinian institutions" of "incitement against Israelis." The Palestinians have yet to comply, but little is seen or heard in the media about this failure.

The Israel Security Agency’s 2006 report asserts that Hamas has taken over the Gaza Strip with the support of Hezbollah and Iran

Missile fire from Gaza on Israeli civilian targets

A Look Back: Is Fatah Really Moderate?

New York Times Denying Palestinian Hate Indoctrination

Fatah Follows "Moderate" Abbas' Instructions

Ignoring Hamas Hate-Indoctrination

Final Borders

Negotiations on final borders were always to be predicated on U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, which stipulates that borders be "secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force."

What often seems to be missing from coverage of the issue is the intent of Resolution 242's own drafters who did not envision Israel withdrawing to the 1967 boundaries and carefully worded the resolution to ensure that Israel withdraw to new defensible borders rather than the previous insecure 1949 armistice lines.

President George W. Bush in an April 14, 2004 letter to then-Prime Minister of Israel Ariel Sharon similarly declared his vision of the outcome of final status negotiations, stating that it was "unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949."

January 15, 2007
Security Council Resolution 242 According to its Drafters

After the 1967 Six Day War, when Israel prevented an attempt by surrounding Arab nations to destroy it militarily, the United Nations Security Council prepared a carefully-worded resolution to guide the parties. Since then, U.N. Resolution 242 has been invoked as the centerpiece for negotiation efforts, including the Israeli-Egyptian Camp David Accords, the Oslo Accords and the Road Map peace plan.

But while many sources correctly describe the wording and intent of Resolution 242, others have misrepresented it as requiring Israel to return to the pre-1967 lines – the armistice lines established after Israel’s War of Independence.

Such an interpretation was explicitly not the intention of the framers of 242, nor does the language of the resolution include any such requirement.

Sometimes, the misrepresentations are redressed, as was the case when the New York Times and others corrected errors about the resolution. In other cases, inaccurate characterizations still await formal correction, as is the case with Jimmy Carter’s repeated distortion of the resolution in his book, Palestine: Peace not Apartheid.

Below are statements by the main drafters of Resolution 242 – Lord Caradon, Eugene Rostow, Arthur Goldberg and Baron George-Brown – as well as others, in which the meaning and history of Resolution 242 are explained.
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Lord Caradon (Hugh M. Foot) was the permanent representative of the United Kingdom to the United Nations, 1964-1970, and chief drafter of Resolution 242.

• Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, pg. 13, qtd. in Egypt’s Struggle for Peace: Continuity and Change, 1967-1977, Yoram Meital, pg. 49:

Much play has been made of the fact that we didn’t say “the” territories or “all the” territories. But that was deliberate. I myself knew very well the 1967 boundaries and if we had put in the “the” or “all the” that could only have meant that we wished to see the 1967 boundaries perpetuated in the form of a permanent frontier. This I was certainly not prepared to recommend.

• Journal of Palestine Studies, “An Interview with Lord Caradon,” Spring - Summer 1976, pgs 144-45:

Q. The basis for any settlement will be United Nations Security Council Resolution 242, of which you were the architect. Would you say there is a contradiction between the part of the resolution that stresses the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war and that which calls for Israeli withdrawal from “occupied territories,” but not from “the occupied territories”?

A. I defend the resolution as it stands. What it states, as you know, is first the general principle of inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war. That means that you can’t justify holding onto territory merely because you conquered it. We could have said: well, you go back to the 1967 line. But I know the 1967 line, and it’s a rotten line. You couldn’t have a worse line for a permanent international boundary. It’s where the troops happened to be on a certain night in 1948. It’s got no relation to the needs of the situation.

Had we said that you must go back to the 1967 line, which would have resulted if we had specified a retreat from all the occupied territories, we would have been wrong. In New York, what did we know about Tayyibe and Qalqilya? If we had attempted in New York to draw a new line, we would have been rather vague. So what we stated was the principle that you couldn’t hold territory because you conquered it, therefore there must be a withdrawal to – let’s read the words carefully – “secure and recognized boundaries.” The can only be secure if they are recognized. The boundaries have to be agreed; it’s only when you get agreement that you get security. I think that now people begin to realize what we had in mind – that security doesn’t come from arms, it doesn’t come from territory, it doesn’t come from geography, it doesn’t come from one side domination the other, it can only come from agreement and mutual respect and understanding.

Therefore, what we did, I think, was right; what the resolution said was right and I would stand by it. It needs to be added to now, of course. ... We didn’t attempt to deal with [the questions of the Palestinians and of Jerusalem] then, but merely to state the general principles of the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war. We meant that the occupied territories could not be held merely because they were occupied, but we deliberately did not say that the old line, where the troops happened to be on that particular night many years ago, was an ideal demarcation line.

• MacNeil/Lehrer Report, March 30, 1978:

We didn't say there should be a withdrawal to the '67 line; we did not put the “the” in, we did not say “all the territories” deliberately. We all knew that the boundaries of '67 were not drawn as permanent frontiers, they were a cease-fire line of a couple of decades earlier... . We did not say that the '67 boundaries must be forever.

• Daily Star (Beirut), June 12, 1974. Qtd. in Myths and Facts, Leonard J. Davis, pg. 48:

It would have been wrong to demand that Israel return to its positions of 4 June 1967 because those positions were undesirable and artificial. After all, they were just the places the soldiers of each side happened to be the day the fighting stopped in 1948. They were just armistice lines. That's why we didn't demand that the Israelis return to them and I think we were right not to ...

• Interview on Kol Israel radio, February 1973, qtd. on Web site of Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs:

Q. This matter of the (definite) article which is there in French and is missing in English, is that really significant?

A. The purposes are perfectly clear, the principle is stated in the preamble, the necessity for withdrawal is stated in the operative section. And then the essential phrase which is not sufficiently recognized is that withdrawal should take place to secure and recognized boundaries, and these words were very carefully chosen: they have to be secure and they have to be recognized. They will not be secure unless they are recognized. And that is why one has to work for agreement. This is essential. I would defend absolutely what we did. It was not for us to lay down exactly where the border should be. I know the 1967 border very well. It is not a satisfactory border, it is where troops had to stop in 1947, just where they happened to be that night, that is not a permanent boundary...
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Eugene Rostow, a legal scholar and former dean of Yale Law School, was US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, 1966-1969. He helped draft Resolution 242.

• Telegram from the Department of State to the U.S. Interests Section of the Spanish Embassy in the United Arab Republic summarizing Rostow’s conversation with Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin:

Rostow said ... resolution required agreement on "secure and recognized" boundaries, which, as practical matter, and as matter of interpreting resolution, had to precede withdrawals. Two principles were basic to Article I of resolution. Paragraph from which Dobrynin quoted was linked to others, and he did not see how anyone could seriously argue, in light of history of resolution in Security Council, withdrawal to borders of June 4th was contemplated. These words had been pressed on Council by Indians and others, and had not been accepted.

• Proceedings of the 64th annual meeting of the American Society of International Law, 1970, pgs 894-96:

... the question remained, “To what boundaries should Israel withdraw?” On this issue, the American position was sharply drawn, and rested on a critical provision of the Armistice Agreements of 1949. Those agreements provided in each case that the Armistice Demarcation Line “is not to be construed in any sense as a political or territorial boundary, and is delineated without prejudice to rights, claims or positions of either party to the Armistice as regards ultimate settlement of the Palestine question.” ... These paragraphs, which were put into the agreements at Arab insistence, were the legal foundation for the controversies over the wording of paragraphs 1 and 3 of Security Council Resolution 242, of November 22, 1967. ...

The agreement required by paragraph 3 of the resolution, the Security Council said, should establish “secure and recognized boundaries” between Israel and its neighbors “free from threats or acts of force,” to replace the Armistice Demarcation Lines established in 1949, and the cease-fire lines of June, 1967. The Israeli armed forces should withdraw to such lines, as part of a comprehensive agreement, settling all the issues mentioned in the resolution, and in a condition of peace.

On this point, the American position has been the same under both the Johnson and the Nixon Administrations. The new and definitive political boundaries should not represent “the weight of conquest,” both Administrations have said; on the other hand, under the policy and language of the Armistice Agreements of 1949, and of the Security Council Resolution of November 22, 1967, they need not be the same as the Armistice Demarcation Lines. ...

This is the legal significance of the omission of the word “the” from paragraph 1 (I) of the resolution, which calls for the withdrawal of Israeli armed forces “from territories occupied in the recent conflict,” and not “from the territories occupied in the recent conflict.” Repeated attempts to amend this sentence by inserting the word “the” failed in the Security Council. It is therefore not legally possible to assert that the provision requires Israeli withdrawal from all the territories now occupied under the Cease-Fire Resolutions to the Armistice Demarcation Lines.

• Jerusalem Post, “The truth about 242,” Nov. 5, 1990:

Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338 ... rest on two principles, Israel may administer the territory until its Arab neighbors make peace; and when peace is made, Israel should withdraw to “secure and recognized borders,” which need not be the same as the Armistice Demarcation Lines of 1949. ...

The omission of the word “the” from the territorial clause of the Resolution was one of its most hotly-debated and fundamental features. The U.S., Great Britain, the Netherlands, and many other countries worked hard for five and a half months in 1967 to keep the word “the” and the idea it represents out of the resolution. Motions to require the withdrawal of Israel from “the” territories or “all the territories” occupied in the course of the Six Day War were put forward many times with great linguistic ingenuity. They were all defeated both in the General Assembly and in the Security Council. ...

Those who claim that Resolution 242 is ambiguous on the point are either ignorant of the history of its negotiation or simply taking a convenient tactical position.

• The New Republic, “Resolved: are the settlements legal? Israeli West Bank policies,” Oct. 21, 1991:

Five-and-a-half months of vehement public diplomacy in 1967 made it perfectly clear what the missing definite article in Resolution 242 means. Ingeniously drafted resolutions calling for withdrawals from “all” the territories were defeated in the Security Council and the General Assembly. Speaker after speaker made it explicit that Israel was not to be forced back to the “fragile” and “vulnerable” Armistice Demarcation Lines, but should retire once peace was made to what Resolution 242 called “secure and recognized” boundaries, agreed to by the parties. In negotiating such agreements, the parties should take into account, among other factors, security considerations, access to the international waterways of the region, and, of course, their respective legal claims.

• The New York Times, “Don’t strong-arm Israel,” Feb. 19, 1991:

Security Council Resolution 242, approved after the 1967 war, stipulates not only that Israel and its neighboring states should make peace with each other but should establish “a just and lasting peace in the Middle East.” Until that condition is met, Israel is entitled to administer the territories it captured – the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza Strip – and then withdraw from some but not necessarily all of the land to “secure and recognized boundaries free of threats or acts of force.”

• The Wall Street Journal, “Peace still depends on the two Palestines,” April 27, 1988:

... Resolution 242 establishes three principles about the territorial aspect of the peace-making process:

1) Israel can occupy and administer the territories it occupied during the Six-Day War until the Arabs make peace.
2) When peace agreements are reached, they should delineate “secure and recognized” boundaries to which Israel would withdraw.
3) Those boundaries could differ from the Armistice Demarcation Lines of 1949.

• Institute for National Strategic Studies, “The Future of Palestine,” November 1993:

The second territorial provision of Resolution 242 is that while Israel should agree to withdraw from some of theterritories it occupied in 1967, it need not withdraw from all those territories. The Resolution states that there should be "withdrawal of Israeli's armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict." Five and a half months of vigorous diplomacy, public and private, make it very clear why the wording of the sentence took the form it did. Motion after motion proposed to insert the words "the" or "all the" before the word "territories." They were all defeated, until finally the Soviet Union and the Arab states accepted the language as the best they could get.
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Arthur J. Goldberg was the United States representative to the United Nations, 1965-1968, and before that a U.S. Supreme Court justice. He helped draft Resolution 242.

• American Foreign Policy Interests, 1988:

The resolution does not explicitly require that Israel withdraw to the lines that it occupied on June 5, 1967, before the outbreak of the war. The Arab states urged such language; the Soviet Union proposed such a resolution to the Security Council in June 1967, and Yugoslavia and other nations made a similar proposal to the special session of the General Assembly that followed the adjournment of the Security Council. But those views were rejected. Instead, Resolution 242 endorses the principle of the “withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict” and juxtaposes the principle that every state in the area is entitled to live in peace within “secure and recognized boundaries.” ...

The notable omissions in language used to refer to withdrawal are the words the, all, and the June 5, 1967, lines. I refer to the English text of the resolution. The French and Soviet texts differ from the English in this respect, but the English text was voted on by the Security Council, and thus it is determinative. In other words, there is lacking a declaration requiring Israel to withdraw from the (or all the) territories occupied by it on and after June 5, 1967. Instead, the resolution stipulates withdrawal from occupied territories without defining the extent of withdrawal. And it can be inferred from the incorporation of the words secure and recognized boundaries that the territorial adjustments to be made by the parties in their peace settlements could encompass less than a complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from occupied territories.

• Christian Science Monitor, “Middle East peace prospects,” July 9, 1985:

... all parties are apparently in agreement that the basis for negotiations would be Resolutions 242 and 338 adopted by the UN Security Council. These resolutions, although often referred to in the news media, are inadequately analyzed or explained. I shall attempt to provide a measure of enlightenment.

* Does Resolution 242 as unanimously adopted by the UN Security Council require the withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from all of the territories occupied by Israel during the 1967 war? The answer is no. In the resolution, the words the and all are omitted. Resolution 242 calls for the withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the 1967 conflict, without specifying the extent of the withdrawal. The resolution, therefore, neither commands nor prohibits total withdrawal.

* If the resolution is ambiguous, and purposely so, on this crucial issue, how is the withdrawal issue to be settled? By direct negotiations between the concerned parties. Resolution 242 calls for agreement between them to achieve a peaceful and accepted settlement. Agreement and acceptance necessarily require negotiations.

* Any ambiguity in this regard has been resolved by Resolution 338, unanimously adopted by the Security Council on Oct. 22, 1973. Resolution 338 reaffirms Resolution 242 in all its parts and requires negotiations between the parties concerned aimed at establishing a just and durable peace in the Middle East.

* Is Resolution 242 self-executing? The answer is no. Negotiations are necessary to put flesh on the bones of the resolution, as Resolution 338 acknowledges.

* Is Israel's withdrawal confined to “minor” border rectifications? No. Resolution 242 reaffirms the right of every area state ‘to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force.’

* How are secure and recognized boundaries to be achieved to enable every state to live in peace free from threats or acts of force? By negotiation, agreement, and accepted settlement.

• U.S. Senate, The Arab-Israeli Dispute, 6, pgs 14-16, qtd. in Egypt’s Struggle for Peace: Continuity and Change, 1967-1977, Yoram Meital, pg. 50:

At no time in my meetings with Foreign Minister Riad did I give him such an assurance [of a complete Israeli withdrawal]. It would have been foolish to make such an assurance, when the whole object of Resolution 242 was to allow flexibility in negotiations of territorial boundaries.

• New York Times, "What Goldberg didn't say," letters, March 12, 1980:

Resolution 242 in no way refers to Jerusalem, and this omission was deliberate. I wanted to make clear that Jerusalem was a discrete matter, not linked to the West Bank.

In a number of speeches at the U.N. in 1967, I repeatedly stated that the armistice lines fixed after 1948 were intended to be temporary. This, of course, was particularly true of Jerusalem. At no time in these many speeches did I refer to East Jerusalem as occupied territory.
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Baron George-Brown (George A. Brown) was the British Foreign Secretary from 1966 to 1968. He helped draft Resolution 242.

• In My Way, pgs 226-27, qtd. in the American Journal of International Law, “The illegality of the Arab attack on Israel of October 6, 1973,” Eugene Rostow:

[Resolution 242] does not call for Israeli withdrawal from “the” territories recently occupied, nor does it use the word “all”. It would have been impossible to get the resolution through if either of these words had been included, but it does set out the lines on which negotiations for a settlement must take place. Each side must be prepared to give up something: the resolution doesn’t attempt to say precisely what, because that is what negotiations for a peace-treaty must be about.

• Jerusalem Post, Jan. 23, 1970, qtd. on Web site of Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs:

I have been asked over and over again to clarify, modify or improve the wording, but I do not intend to do that. The phrasing of the Resolution was very carefully worked out, and it was a difficult and complicated exercise to get it accepted by the UN Security Council.

I formulated the Security Council Resolution. Before we submitted it to the Council, we showed it to Arab leaders. The proposal said “Israel will withdraw from territories that were occupied,” and not from “the” territories, which means that Israel will not withdraw from all the territories.
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J. L. Hargrove was Senior Adviser on International Law to the United States Mission to the United Nations, 1967-1970:

• Hearings on the Middle East before the Subcommittee of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, 92nd Congress, 1st Session 187 (1971), qtd. in the American Journal of International Law, “The illegality of the Arab attack on Israel of October 6, 1973,” Eugene Rostow:

The provision of Resolution 242 which bears most directly on the question which you raised, Congressman, is subparagraph (1) of paragraph 1 of the resolution, which envisages “withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict.”

The language “from territories” was regarded at the time of the adoption of the resolution as of high consequence because the proposal put forward by those espousing the Egyptian case was withdrawal from “the territories.” In the somewhat minute debate which frequently characterizes the period before the adoption of a United Nations resolution, the article “the” was regarded of considerable significance because its inclusion would seem to imply withdrawal from all territories which Israel had not occupied prior to the June war, but was at the present time occupying.

Consequently, the omission of “the” was intended on our part, as I understood it at the time and was understood on all sides, to leave open the possibility of modifications in the lines which were occupied as of June 4, 1967, in the final settlement.

July 1, 2000 by Alex Safian, PhD
BACKGROUNDER: Camp David 2000
Facts and Final Status Issues

Many media accounts have misrepresented the "final status" issues that are now the subject of intensive negotiations at Camp David, often distorting Oslo, UN resolutions, the demographics and history of Jerusalem, and Middle East history in general.

Thus on July 6th Reuters ran a "fact box" which grossly misstated the terms of UN Resolution 242 (passed in the wake of the June 1967 Arab war against Israel), grossly misstated the terms of UN Resolution 194 (passed in the wake of the 1948 Arab war against Israel), and greatly exaggerated the Palestinian population of the city of Jerusalem by confusing the city itself with the Palestinian Authority-designated Jerusalem Governorate, a far wider area encompassing numerous surrounding towns and villages.

In a story on July 11th the New York Times made similar errors concerning Resolution 242, informing readers that "The Palestinians want a settlement based on United Nations Resolution 242, which calls for an end to Israeli occupation of the entire West Bank and Gaza, seized in the 1967 war." That is not what the resolution says.

• UN Security Council Resolution 242

Context for the resolution: On May 15 of 1967 Egypt's President Nasser sent columns of tanks and troops - eventually numbering 1000 top line Soviet-built tanks and 100,000 troops - across the Suez Canal and into Sinai where they continued until they reached the Israeli border. The following day Nasser ordered UN peacekeeping troops to leave the border region, where they had been stationed since 1956. The UN peacekeepers complied immediately, whereupon official Egyptian radio announced:

As of today there no longer exists an international emergency force to protect Israel. We shall exercise patience no more. We shall not complain anymore to the UN about Israel. The sole method we shall apply against Israel is total war, which shall result in the termination of Zionist existence.

On May 22 Egypt blockaded Israel's southern port of Eilat, under international law a casus belli, or act of war. On May 27 Nasser stated "Our basic objective will be the destruction of Israel," and the following day he stated "We will not accept any ... coexistence with Israel."

After the war, which the Israelis won decisively, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 242, which, after difficult negotiations, was carefully worded to require that Israel withdraw from "territories" rather than "the territories." This construction, leaving out "the," was intentional, because it was not envisioned that Israel would withdraw from all the territories, thereby returning to the vulnerable pre-war borders. And any withdrawal would be such as to create "secure and recognized boundaries."

The British UN Ambassador at the time, Lord Caradon, who introduced the resolution to the Council, has stated that, "It would have been wrong to demand that Israel return to its positions of June 4, 1967, because those positions were undesirable and artificial."

Our UN Ambassador at the time, former Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg, has stated that, "The notable omissions - which were not accidental - in regard to withdrawal are the words 'the' or 'all' and the 'June 5, 1967 lines' ... the resolution speaks of withdrawal from occupied territories without defining the extent of withdrawal." This would encompass "less than a complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from occupied territory, inasmuch as Israel's prior frontiers had proved to be notably insecure."

The reasoning of the United States and its allies at the time was clear: Any resolution which, in the face of the aggressive war launched in 1967 against Israel, required complete Israeli withdrawal, would have been seen as a reward for aggression and an invitation to future aggression. This is assuredly not what the UN voted for, or had in mind, when it passed Resolution 242.

There is one final thing to be said concerning the missing "the." Some commentators have argued that since the French "version" of 242 does contain the phrase "the territories," the resolution does in fact require total Israeli withdrawal. This is incorrect — the practice in the UN is that the binding version of any resolution is the one voted upon, which is always in the language of the introducing party. In the case of 242 that party was Great Britain, thus the binding version of 242 is in English. The French translation is irrelevant

Finally, it should also be noted that by withdrawing from Sinai after the peace treaty with Egypt, Israel has already vacated 91 percent of the territories it gained in 1967.

• UN General Assembly Resolution 194

Reuters and other media outlets have uncritically accepted Palestinian claims that Resolution 194 established a Palestinian "right to return to their homes in villages and towns now part of Israel." No such right was established; instead, in its relevant paragraph, the resolution suggested (not required, since it was passed by the General Assembly rather than the Security Council) that:

refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date ... [R]epatriation, resettlement and economic and social rehabilitation of refugees and payment of compensation [should be facilitated].

Thus the resolution required any returning Palestinian refugees to first accept living at peace with their neighbors in Israel, therefore accepting Israel's right to exist. Very few of those refugees, even today, seem truly willing to accept this. It should also be noted that (1) the resolution applies equally to Palestinian refugees from Israel, and to the similar number of Jewish refugees from Arab countries who came to Israel after 1948, and (2) that it placed repatriation, resettlement, and payment of compensation on an equal footing.

Finally it should be noted that all the Arab states voted against Resolution 194, precisely because it did not establish a "right of return," and because it implicitly recognized Israel.

• How many Palestinian refugees?

Many reporters have uncritically accepted Palestinian claims that there are today roughly 4 million Palestinian refugees, and that these people were somehow expelled from Israel. Thus, the usually reliable John McWethy on ABC's World News Tonight reported that "3.7 million refugees ... were forced out of Israel and are demanding the right to return and be compensated." Recent research by Israeli scholars such as Efraim Karsh (Fabricating Israeli History: The New Historians) have thoroughly discredited authors such as Benny Morris and Ilan Pappe who had charged Israel with mass expulsion of Palestinians during the 1948-49 Arab-Israeli war. Of course, it should be remembered that the Palestinian refugee problem was caused by this war, and that the war was initiated by the Palestinians themselves and by the five Arab states whose armies invaded Israel the day it declared independence. It should also be remembered that the roughly 550,000 Palestinian refugees were not alone — there were a similar number of Jewish refugees from Arab countries. At great expense and effort the newly born state of Israel settled these Jewish refugees. Unfortunately, the Arab states, many of them flush with oil wealth, made no such effort, often acting to keep the Palestinian refugees in continuing, festering poverty, all the better to use them as a weapon against Israel.

With regard to the Palestinian refugees today, according to the "Report of the Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East - 1 July 1997 - 30 June 1998" there were 3,521,130 refugees as of June 30, 1998 (Table 1). However, the report (available at www.unrwa.org) also states that:

UNRWA registration figures are based on information voluntarily supplied by refugees primarily for the purpose of obtaining access to Agency services, and hence cannot be considered statistically valid demographic data; the number of registered refugees present in the Agency's area of operations is almost certainly less that the population recorded.

Moreover, not only does the UN admit the figures are of doubtful accuracy, there being obvious reason for families to claim more members and thereby receive more aid, the UN also admits that the total includes 1,463,064 Jordanian citizens, who cannot by any stretch be considered refugees. Indeed, if they are refugees, then the more than 500,000 Jewish refugees from Arab countries who came to Israel after 1948 were nonetheless still refugees even after receiving Israeli citizenship, as are their descendants (since, in these claims, descendants of Palestinian refugees are themselves considered refugees). That is, there would be in Israel today at least 2 million Jewish refugees from Arab countries. Whether or not one accepts that the descendants of refugees are themselves refugees, if the claims of the Palestinian refugees are now being discussed, so should the claims of these Jewish refugees.

• Arabs refused Israel's 1949 offer to unconditionally admit 100,000 Palestinians

As a goodwill gesture during the Lausanne negotiations in 1949, Israel offered to take back 100,000 Palestinian refugees prior to any discussion of the refugee question. The Arab states, who had refused even to negotiate face-to-face with the Israelis, turned down the offer because it implicitly recognized Israel's existence.

Despite this, on humanitarian grounds Israel has since the 1950's allowed more than 50,000 refugees to return to Israel under a family reunification program, and between 1967 and 1993 allowed a further 75,000 to return to the West Bank or Gaza. Since the beginning of the Oslo process Israel has allowed another 90,000 Palestinians to gain residence in PA-controlled territory.

• Israeli compensation to Arabs who lost property; no Arab compensation to Jews

Arabs who lost property in Israel are eligible to file for compensation from Israel's Custodian of Absentee Property. As of the end of 1993, a total of 14,692 claims had been filed, claims were settled with respect to more than 200,000 dunums of land, more than 10,000,000 NIS (New Israeli Sheckels) had been paid in compensation, and more than 54,000 dunums of replacement land had been given in compensation. Israel has followed this generous policy despite the fact that not a single penny of compensation has ever been paid to any of the more than 500,000 Jewish refugees from Arab countries, who were forced by the Arab governments to abandon their homes, businesses and savings.

• Jerusalem

Many press reports have repeated Palestinian claims that Israel is "ethnically cleansing" Jerusalem of its Arab residents. Some, like Agence France-Presse (AFP), have even used the offensive term "judaisation" (July 5, 2000). Once again the facts are otherwise — since 1967 Jerusalem's Arab population has grown faster than its Jewish population. For example in the period 1967 - 1996 the city's Jewish population grew by 113.1 percent, while its Arab population grew by 163.7 percent. Similarly, home construction in the Arab sector also outpaced home construction in the Jewish sector.rev 11/03/2000
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UN Security Council Resolution 242
The Security Council,

Expressing its continuing concern with the grave situation in the Middle East,

Emphasizing the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war and the need to work for a just and lasting peace in which every State in the area can live in security,

Emphasizing further that all Member States in their acceptance of the Charter of the United Nations have undertaken a commitment to act in accordance with Article 2 of the Charter.

1. Affirms that the fulfillment of Charter principles requires the establishment of a just and lasting peace in the Middle East which should include the application of both the following principles:

(i) Withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict;

(ii) Termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgement of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force;

2. Affirms further the necessity:

(a) For guaranteeing freedom of navigation through international waterways in the area;

(b) For achieving a just settlement of the refugee problem;

(c) For guaranteeing the territorial inviolability and political independence of every State in the area, through measures including the establishment of demilitarized zones;

3. Requests the Secretary General to designate a Special Representative to proceed to the Middle East to establish and maintain contacts with the States concerned in order to promote agreement and assist efforts to achieve a peaceful and accepted settlement in accordance with the provisions and principles in this resolution;

4. Requests the Secretary General to report to the Security Council on the progress of the efforts of the Special Representative as soon as possible.

Jerusalem

One of the most difficult issues on the agenda is the status of Jerusalem Below is a backgrounder on the conflict over Jerusalem.

August 28, 2007 by Ricki Hollander
BACKGROUNDER: Jerusalem

Jerusalem is considered a holy city by three major faiths—Judaism, Christianity and Islam—and figures prominently in the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Since 1004 BCE, when King David established Jerusalem as the capital of his kingdom, there has been a continuous Jewish presence in Jerusalem, the holiest city in Judaism. Following the building of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the designation of other holy sites by Constantine the Great in 333 CE, Jerusalem became a destination of Christian pilgrimages. During Umayyad rule from 661 to 750 CE, the Dome of the Rock and the Al Aqsa Mosque were built on the site where the Jewish Temples had once stood, and Jerusalem became the third holiest city in Islam.

Jews have constituted the largest ethnic group in Jerusalem since 1820. According to Yehoshua Ben-Arieh, "In the second half of the nineteenth century and at the end of that century, Jews comprised the majority of the population of the Old City ..." (Jerusalem in the Nineteenth Century). Martin Gilbert reports that 6,000 Jews resided in Jerusalem in 1838, compared to 5,000 Muslims and 3,000 Christians (Jerusalem: Rebirth of a City). Encyclopaedia Britannica of 1853 "assessed the Jewish population of Jerusalem in 1844 at 7,120, making them the biggest single religious group in the city." (Terence Prittie, Whose Jerusalem?). And others estimated the number of Jewish residents of Jerusalem at the time as even higher. Until about 1860, Jerusalem residents lived almost exclusively within the walls of the Old City, in east Jerusalem. Between 1860 and 1948, Jews lived in both eastern and western Jerusalem.

During the 19 years when Jordan occupied eastern Jerusalem and its holy sites (1948-1967), Jerusalem was divided. Jews were expelled from eastern Jerusalem and barred from visiting their holy places.

As a result of the Six Day War, the entire city of Jerusalem and its holy sites came under Jewish control. Israel reunified the city, extending Israeli law, jurisdiction and administration to the parts previously occupied by Jordan. The Israeli Knesset passed laws to protect holy sites and ensure freedom of worship to all, and offered Israeli citizenship to Jerusalem’s Arab residents, most of whom declined.

Since 1967, Jerusalem has become a focal point of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. In 1980, Israel passed the Basic Law: Jerusalem Capital of Israel, reaffirming the unified Jerusalem as its eternal, undivided capital. Palestinians insist Jerusalem must be the capital of their intended state.

Jerusalem in Jewish Tradition

Jerusalem, Judaism’s holiest city, is mentioned hundreds of times in the Hebrew Bible. It was the capital city of ancient Jewish kingdoms and home to Judaism’s holiest Temple (Beit HaMikdash). Jews from all over the ancient world would make pilgrimages to the Beit HaMikdash three times a year to participate in worship and festivities, as commanded in the Torah. Jerusalem and the Beit HaMikdash have remained the focus of Jewish longing, aspiration, and prayers. Daily prayers (said while facing Jerusalem and the Temple Mount) and grace after meals include multiple supplications for the restoration of Jerusalem and the Beit HaMikdash. Jews still maintain the 9th day of the Hebrew month of Av, the date on which both the First and Second Temples were destroyed, as a day of mourning. The Jewish wedding ceremony concludes with the chanting of the biblical phrase, “If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its cunning,” and the breaking of a glass by the groom to commemorate the destruction of the Temples. And Yom Kippur services and the Passover Seder conclude each year with the phrase “Next Year in Jerusalem.” Model of the Second Jewish Temple

The Temple Mount is the holiest site in Judaism. The Temple was built, according to Jewish tradition, on the Even Hashtiya, the foundation stone upon which the world was created. This is considered the epicenter of Judaism, where the Divine Presence (Shechina) rests, where the biblical Isaac was brought for sacrifice, where the Holy of Holies and Ark of the Covenant housing the Ten Commandments once stood, and where the Temple was again rebuilt in 515 BCE before being destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE. The Temple Mount is also known as Mount Moriah (Har HaMoriah), mentioned frequently in the Bible.

The Western Wall (Kotel Hama’aravi, known simply as the Wall or Kotel) is the remnant of the outer retaining wall built by Herod to level the ground and expand the area housing the Second Jewish Temple. Its holiness derives from its proximity to the Temple site and specifically its proximity to the Western Wall of the Temple’s Holy of Holies (Kodesh Hakodashim---the inner sanctuary that housed the Ark of the Covenant–the Aron HaBrit–and where the High Priest–Kohen Gadol--alone was permitted to enter on Yom Kippur). According to Midrashic sources, the Divine Presence never departed from the Western wall of the Temple’s Holy of Holies. For the last several hundred years, Jews have prayed at Herod’s Western Wall because it was the closest accessible place to Judaism’s holiest site.

Jerusalem in Muslim Tradition

Jerusalem assumed significance as an Islamic holy site during the rule of the Umayyads (661-750 CE). Facing challenge to his power from Ibn al-Zubayr, a rebel who controlled Mecca, the Syrian-based Caliph Abd al Malik sought to consolidate his leadership by establishing a place of worship for his followers in Jerusalem in place of Mecca. He built the Dome of the Rock (Masjid Qubbat As Sakhrah) in 688-691 CE on the spot where the Jewish Temples had stood.

Dome of the Rock

Two decades later, in 715 CE, the Umayyads built another mosque on the Temple Mount which they named the Furthest Mosque (Masjid al Aqsa ) to connote the “furthest mosque” alluded to in the Quran (17:1). This was the metaphorical spot from which Mohammed was said to have ascended to heaven in a vision (referred to in Arabic as the Mi’raj) after a night journey from Mecca (the Isra) on a winged steed named Al Buraq.

Although the Quran does not mention Jerusalem or the Temple Mount, the designation of a concrete site to what had been until then just a figurative name provided Muslims with a new religious focus. Several Qur'anic verses were subsequently construed to be obliquely referring to Jerusalem. The Temple Mount was renamed by Muslims the Noble Sanctuary (al Haram al Sharif).

Over the years, Jerusalem’s stature as an Islamic holy city has waxed and waned. During the period between 1948 and 1967 when under Jordanian control, Jerusalem and its holy sites were largely neglected by the Muslim world. Since Israel gained control of East Jerusalem and reunified the city, however, there has been a growing attempt by Palestinians to marshal the religious fervor of the Arab and Muslim world in order to wrest Jerusalem from Israel.

Jerusalem in Christian Tradition
Church of the Holy Sepulchre

According to Christian tradition, many of the events in Jesus's life and ministry took place in the Holy City. The Last Supper, referring to the final meal shared by Jesus with his disciples before his death, is believed to have taken place in the “Upper Room”or Coenaculum, on the second floor of a building over King David’s tomb on Mount Zion. The Garden of Gethsemane — according to the New Testament, the place where Jesus suffered for the sins of the world the night before he was crucified — is located at the bottom of the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. On the Mount of Olives is the Shrine of the Ascension, where Jesus is believed to have ascended to heaven. (It is now run by Muslims and a dome covers the structure.) The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, built by Constantine the Great to mark the site of the Resurrection, stands within the walls of the Old City. The remains of Golgotha, the hill upon which Jesus was crucified, is believed to lie inside the church. The church houses priests from the Roman Catholic Church and from numerous Eastern Orthodox traditions. The Via Dolorosa, or “Way of Sorrows,” leading to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, is the traditional path taken by Christians pilgrims to symbolically relive the events of Jesus’ passion. Because of Jesus's historical connection to these and other locations, Jerusalem is venerated by Christians throughout the world.

Partition Plan: Corpus Separatum

On November 29, 1947, the United Nations General Assembly recommended Palestine be partitioned into two states–Arab and Jewish. The plan called for Jerusalem to become a corpus separatum, an international city administered by the UN, for an interval of 10 years, after which the city’s status was to be redetermined in a referendum. While Jewish leaders reluctantly accepted this, Arab leaders rejected the entire plan, including Jerusalem’s internationalization. Arab delegates to the UN declared the partition invalid. Deadly Arab attacks on Jewish residents of Palestine increased, and Arab forces blockaded the road to Jerusalem. When Israel declared Independence in May 1948, five neighboring Arab countries invaded the new state.

1948 Arab-Israeli War

During the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, Transjordan’s Arab Legion attempted to capture the entire city of Jerusalem, shelling it and cutting off its Jewish residents from the coastal plain. Western portions of Jerusalem came under Israel’s control only after Israeli forces broke the Arab siege of the city. In the first four weeks of Arab attacks, 200 Jewish civilians were killed and over 1,000 were wounded in Jerusalem. But, defending themselves, Israeli forces managed to capture some suburbs and villages from the Arabs.

The Israeli defenders were not as successful in protecting the Jewish community of eastern Jerusalem. On May 28, 1948, the Jewish Quarter of the Old City fell to the Arab Legion. After 10 months of fighting, an armistice agreement was signed on April 3, 1949, dividing Jerusalem along the November 1948 ceasefire lines of Israeli and Transjordanian forces, with several areas of no-man’s land. The armistice line served as a temporary border between what had formerly been two mixed communities. Western Jerusalem became Israel’s capital city, while eastern Jerusalem, including the holy sites, was occupied by Transjordan, which in 1949 became the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. The city was essentially divided between two armed camps separated by barbed wire, concrete walls, minefields and bunkers.

1948-1967: Jordanian Occupation of Eastern Jerusalem
Destruction and Desecration of Religious Sites
Expulsion of Jews from Old City, 1948

Upon its capture by the Arab Legion, the Jewish Quarter of the Old City was destroyed and its residents expelled. Fifty-eight synagogues—some hundreds of years old—were destroyed, their contents looted and desecrated. Some Jewish religious sites were turned into chicken coops or animal stalls. The Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives, where Jews had been burying their dead for over 2500 years, was ransacked; graves were desecrated; thousands of tombstones were smashed and used as building material, paving stones or for latrines in Arab Legion army camps. The Intercontinental Hotel was built on top of the cemetery and graves were demolished to make way for a highway to the hotel. The Western Wall became a slum area.

Hurva synagogue before and after Jordanian occupation. The Jordanians destroyed 58 synagogues—some hundreds of years old—when they illegally occupied eastern Jerusalem.

Jordan’s Illegal Annexation

In 1950, Jordan annexed the territories it had captured in the 1948war—eastern Jerusalem and the West Bank. The April 24th resolution declared “its support for complete unity between the two sides of the Jordan and their union into one State, which is the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, at whose head reigns King Abdullah Ibn al Husain...”

While Great Britain and Pakistan were the only countries that recognized Jordan’s annexation – all other nations, including the Arab states, rejected it – Great Britain recognized only the annexation of the West Bank. It never recognized either Jordan or Israel’s sovereignty over any sector of Jerusalem, viewing both Jordan’s 1950 annexation and Israel’s annexation of west Jerusalem as illegal.

Religious Restrictions and Denial of Access to Holy Sites
In direct contravention of the 1949 armistice agreements, Jordan did not permit Jews access to their holy sites or to the Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives.

Article VIII of the Israel Jordan Armistice Agreement (April 3, 1949) established a special committee which would “direct its attention to the formulation of agreed plans and arrangements” including “free access to the Holy Places and cultural institutions and use of the cemetery on the Mount of Olives.” Nevertheless, and despite numerous requests by Israeli officials and Jewish groups to the UN, the U.S., and others to attempt to enforce the armistice agreement, Jews were denied access to the Western Wall, the Jewish cemetery and all religious sites in eastern Jerusalem. The armistice lines were sealed as Jordanian snipers would perch on the walls of the Old City and shoot at Israelis across the lines.

Israeli Arabs, too, were denied access to the Al Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock, but their Muslim sites in eastern Jerusalem were respected.

While Christians, unlike Jews, were allowed access to their holy sites, they too were subject to restrictions under Jordanian law. There were limits on the numbers of Christian pilgrims permitted into the Old City and Bethlehem during Christmas and Easter. Christian charities and religious institutions were prohibited from buying real estate in Jerusalem. And Christian schools were subject to strict controls. They were required to teach in Arabic, close on Friday, the Muslim holy day, and teach all students the Koran. At the same time, they were not allowed to teach Christian religious material to non-Christians.

1967: Reunification of Jerusalem

During the 1967 war, Israel appealed to Jordan to stay out of the war, but despite this appeal, Jordanian forces fired artillery barrages from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Although Israeli forces did not respond initially, not wanting to open up a Jordanian front in the war, Jordan continued to attack and occupied UN headquarters in Jerusalem. Israeli forces fought back and within two days managed to repulse the Jordanian forces and retake eastern Jerusalem. (For more details, see Six Day War: Jordanian Front)

l-r: Generals Uzi Narkiss, Moshe Dayan, Yitzchak Rabin entering Old City - June 1967

On June 7, 1967, IDF paratroopers advanced through the Old City toward the Temple Mount and the Western Wall, bringing Jerusalem’s holiest site under Jewish control for the first time in 2000 years. There are sound recordings of the scene, as the commander of the brigade,Lt. General Mordechai (Motta) Gur, approaches the Old City and announces to his company commanders, “We’re sitting right now on the ridge and we’re seeing the Old City. Shortly we’re going to go in to the Old City of Jerusalem, that all generations have dreamed about. We will be the first to enter the Old City...” and shortly afterwards, “The Temple Mount is in our hands! I repeat, the Temple Mount is in our hands!” General Rabbi Shlomo Goren, chief chaplain of the IDF, sounded the Shofar at the Western Wall to signify its liberation. To Israelis and Jews all over the world, this was a joyous and momentous occasion. Many considered it a gift from God.

Israeli Reaction to the Recapture of the Western Wall and the Old City of Jerusalem
“For some two thousand years the Temple Mount was forbidden to the Jews. Until you came — you, the paratroopers — and returned it to the bosom of the nation. The Western Wall, for which every heart beats, is ours once again. Many Jews have taken their lives into their hands throughout our long history, in order to reach Jerusalem and live here. Endless words of longing have expressed the deep yearning for Jerusalem that beats within the Jewish heart..You have been given the great privilege of completing the circle, of returning to the nation its capital and its holy center...Jerusalem is yours forever.”
–Commander Motta Gur to his brigade upon their recapture of Jerusalem’s Old City and holy sites

“We have returned to all that is holy in our land. We have returned never to be parted from it again.”
–Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, upon reaching the Western Wall

“The Wall was before us. I trembled. There it was as I had known it—immense, mighty, in all its splendor...overcome, I bowed my head in silence.”
–General Uzi Narkiss, Head of Central Command during the Six Day War

“I felt truly shaken and stood there murmuring a prayer for peace. Motta Gur’s paratroopers were struggling to reach the Wall and touch it. We stood among a tangle of rugged, battle-weary men who were unable to believe their eyes or restrain their emotions. Their eyes were moist with tears, their speech incoherent. The overwhelming desire was to cling to the Wall, to hold on to that great moment as long as possible.”
–Chief of Staff Yitzchak Rabin

“I am speaking to you from the plaza of the Western Wall, the remnant of our Holy Temple. ‘Comfort my people, comfort them, says the Lord your God.’ This is the day we have hoped for, let us rejoice and be glad in His salvation. The vision of all generations is being realized before our eyes: The city of God, the site of the Temple, the Temple Mount and the Western Wall, the symbol of the nation’s redemption, have been redeemed today by you, heroes of the Israel Defense Forces. By doing so you have fulfilled the oath of generations, ‘If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its cunning.’ Indeed, we have not forgotten you, Jerusalem, our holy city, our glory. In the name of the entire Jewish people in Israel and the Diaspora, I hereby recite with supreme joy, Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the universe, who has kept us in life, who has preserved us, and enabled us to reach this day. This year in Jerusalem – rebuilt! “
–General Shlomo Goren, Chaplain of the Israeli Defense Forces, at the Western Wall

In a statement at the Western Wall, Minister of Defense Moshe Dayan indicated Israel’s peaceful intent and pledged to preserve religious freedom for all faiths in Jerusalem:

To our Arab neighbors we extend, especially at this hour, the hand of peace. To members of the other religions, Christians and Muslims, I hereby promise faithfully that their full freedom and all their religious rights will be preserved. We did not come to Jerusalem to conquer the Holy Places of others.

Before visiting the Western Wall, Prime Minister Levi Eshkol met with the spiritual leaders of different faiths in his office and issued a declaration of peace, assuring that all holy sites would be protected and that all faiths would be free to worship at their holy sites in Jerusalem. He declared his intention to give the spiritual leaders of the various religions internal management of their own Holy Sites. Defense Minister Dayan immediately ceded internal administrative control of the Temple Mount compound to the Jordanian Waqf (Islamic trust) while overall security control of the area was maintained by Israel. Dayan announced that Jews would be allowed to visit the Temple Mount, but not to hold religious services there.

Dayan also gave immediate orders to demolish the anti-sniping walls, clear the minefields and removed the barbed-wire barriers which marked the partition of Jerusalem. Within weeks, free movement through Jerusalem became possible and hundreds of thousands of Israeli Jews flocked to the Old City to glimpse the Western Wall and touch its stones. Israeli Muslims were permitted to pray at the Al Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock for the first time since 1948. And Israeli Christians came to visit the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

On June 27, 1967, the Israeli Knesset extended Israel’s legal and administrative jurisdiction to all of Jerusalem, and expanded the city’s municipal borders. Eshkol again assured the spiritual leaders of all faiths that Israel was determined to protect the Holy Places. The Knesset passed the Protection of Holy Places Law granting special legal status to the Holy Sites and making it a criminal offence to desecrate or violate them, or to impede freedom of access to them. Jerusalem became a reunified city that ensured freedom of religion and access to holy sites for all.

The religious freedoms enjoyed by Jews, Christians, and Muslims in the reunified Jerusalem had been unheard of during Jordanian occupation of the city, prompting even a former Jordanian ambassador to the United Nations, Adnan Abu Odeh, to acknowledge that "the situation in Jerusalem prior to 1967 [under Jordanian rule] was one of ... religious exclusion" whereas post-1967, Israel seeks "to reach a point of religious inclusion ..." (The Catholic University of America Law Review, Spring 1996).

1980: Basic Law: Jerusalem Capital of Israel

Since 1958, 14 basic laws were passed by the Israeli Knesset. These laws, pertaining to the government, president, army, economy, judiciary, land, human rights, and more are intended to form the essence of the constitution of the State of Israel. In 1980, the Israeli Knesset passed a basic law declaring reunified Jerusalem the eternal capital of Israel. The law provides for protection of and freedom of access to each religion's holy sites. Below is the text of the law, which can be accessed on the Israeli Knesset Web site.

Jerusalem, Capital of Israel 1. Jerusalem, complete and united, is the capital of Israel.

Seat of the President, the Knesset, the Government and the Supreme Court 2. Jerusalem is the seat of the President of the State, the Knesset, the Government and the Supreme Court.

Protection of Holy Places 3. The Holy Places shall be protected from desecration and any other violation and from anything likely to violate the freedom of access of the members of the different religions to the places sacred to them or their feelings towards those places.

Development of Jerusalem 4. (a) The Government shall provide for the development and prosperity of Jerusalem and the well-being of its inhabitants by allocating special funds, including a special annual grant to the Municipality of Jerusalem (Capital City Grant) with the approval of the Finance Committee of the Knesset.
(b) Jerusalem shall be given special priority in the activities of the authorities of the State so as to further its development in economic and other matters.

(c) The Government shall set up a special body or special bodies for the implementation of this section.

Settlements

The future of Israeli settlements in land acquired by Israel in the 1967 war is another contentious issue that will be discussed. Below is a backgrounder on the debate over settlements.