Perspective
Eban, Abba
perspective abraeban Out of 120 Members of the Knesset, 51 withheld their support from the recent "Jerusalem Law." We believed that the Act of Union adopted in 1967 was an adequate expression of...
...Israel has less cause for self-reproach about Jerusalem than any other element in the international community...
...None of the nations that conquered Jerusalem or any part of it by sending their armies into the city from outside唯yzantium in 335...
...Those who argue that the West Bank and Gaza should have an Arab political destiny because their population is overwhelmingly Arab are on poor ground when they forget the majority principle in Jerusalem...
...the Ottoman Turks in 1617...
...Instead of sacrifice, there is free pilgrimage to the shrines of every faith...
...The question at issue is the deeper truth about Jerusalem's place in the history and emotion of the world...
...Israel should not claim exclusive-ness of concern, but it does have an immaculate claim to priority...
...The world community should grant the unexpected idea that the imposing coalition grouped around the PLO, Khomeini, Qadaffi and others, may encounter an issue in which it will not get its way...
...All these things are in its power...
...Jordan in 1948容ver saw it as the birthplace of their nation or the central shrine of their faith...
...Throughout most of the 19th century, Jerusalem languished...
...the Crusaders in 1099...
...Here all Israelis are united in a common sense of rectitude in which we invite all enlightened men and governments to join...
...Instead of division, there is free movement...
...We believed that the Act of Union adopted in 1967 was an adequate expression of Israeli rights...
...it tells other nations what films they may not see or show...
...Under every other rule, Jerusalem has been either a province or colony...
...it shoots and flogs its way into the daily headlines...
...If the division of Jerusalem between 1948 and 1967 is Jerusalem's dark age, the 13 years since then have been its age of enlightenment...
...war divides cities, and functional association between the idea of a divided Jerusalem and the idea of war is too emphatic to be ignored...
...Those who advocate the division of Jerusalem should understand that they are proposing something more akin to war than to peace...
...This does not mean that universal or Arab interests in Jerusalem should be set aside...
...While the Al Aksa Mosque was under Moslem rule during the Jordanian occupation for 19 years, no Saudi monarch ever came to pray in it...
...But the kind of division that marked the two decades before 1967 should be dismissed from memory and consciousness, never to be renewed...
...No historic imagination should be affronted by the idea that the responsibility has come to repose upon the people that gave Jerusalem its original fame and its universal resonance...
...Jerusalem has had a Jewish majority for the best part of a century...
...it flaunts its huge moneybags in the world markets...
...There is every reason to accord them a special status and jurisdiction under those who hold them sacred...
...the Mamalukes from Egypt in 1291...
...Jerusalem is a theme of reverence in Christianity and Islam as a reflection and consequence of its Jewish sanctity...
...Britain in 1917...
...Every tide, : however irresistible it seems, has its I ultimate point of arrest...
...But it is an offense against scholarship and historic truth to speak of "equality" between the Jewish connection and anything else...
...When the Arab Legion, under British command," brought the city under terrible siege and fire...
...whose pain has turned into stone, like that of the mother whose children have been throttled by the wrath of God...
...It is a law of history that peace never divides cities...
...And when a Saudi prince threatens a "holy war," he illustrates a political antagonism, not a spiritual concern...
...This time, I that point will be reached by : rejecting the attempt to separate Israel from Jerusalem...
...The secular delights of Beirut held greater attraction...
...The modern international system is a system of states, and Jerusalem has to be governed by someone...
...Instead of gunfire, there is serenity...
...Only in terms of Jewish experience is it the city "set above the hills," symbol of man's unceasing quest for individual and social perfection...
...when Jordan subsequently razed every synagogue to the ground, forbade the access of any Jew to the Western Wall, and of Israeli Moslems to the Al Aksa Mosque, converted the Jewish tombstones on the Mount of Olives into paving stones for latrines and made the Eastern part a province of Amman, no international voice was raised...
...None of them even thought to make it their national or religious capital...
...Arabs from the peninsula in 836...
...The problem now is not the wisdom or timeliness of a parliamentary act...
...It is true that many outside Israel and the Jewish people have an interest in Jerusalem...
...There is also good cause to acknowledge the special ties of the Arab inhabitants with the Arab world by flexible arrangements about citizenship...
...It tells many nations what they will have to pay for oil...
...If Israelis and Jews across the world are unimpressed by much of the rhetoric about Jerusalem, it is because no other people in modern times has carried its concern beyond the rhetoric, into the more exacting domain of responsibility and sacrifice...
...We believed that the mere reiteration would not reinforce預nd might even weaken葉he international disposition to come to terms with the legitimate development of Jerusalem as Israel's capital...
...But in the eighth century, the advance of warrior armies from the Arabian Peninsula was halted at Poitiers by Charles Martel, and Europe was able to develop and conserve its own civilization...
...In the heart and center of the city, there is a wonderful testimony to the legacy of Islam葉he Al Aksa Mosque and the Haram el Sharif express an aesthetic perfection and spiritual grace the like of which no extant edifice in Jerusalem proclaims in such coherent form...
...When danger threatened Jerusalem through bombardment by Jordanian guns in 1948 and again in 1967容ach time, without provocation葉he United Nations and its leading members looked the other way...
...it reserves the right to disrupt the diplomatic system by attack and detention of hostages...
...A writer in 1856 compared it to "a pilgrim gray with age, who has come here and sunk down to die...
Vol. 5 • October 1980 • No. 9
