Inbari writes that the issue “cannot be understood only on the Israeli-Palestinian level,” but rather is directly linked to the Muslim Brotherhood’s desire to unite all of the region’s Islamic movements around the idea of the Muslim Caliphate with the Al-Aqsa Mosque as its hub. “Muslim jihadists use the “Save Jerusalem” campaign to again bring millions of agitated Muslims into the streets of Europe.”
Hamas political leader Khaled Mashal published a call to “our people to hasten immediately to defend Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa, and [to] the Muslim nation to send a painful message of rage to the world that the Palestinian people and with them the Arab and Islamic nation will not keep quiet about Israeli crime.” Hamas thus hopes to use Jerusalem to place the Palestinians “at the forefront of the revolution unfolding in the Arab world, and of the Muslim awakening in Europe.”
The leader of the northern branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel, Sheikh Raed Salah, said, “Jerusalem is the capital of the imminently approaching Islamic Caliphate.”
During the two previous intifadas, Inbari writes, Fatah of Jerusalem took pains to exclude Jerusalem from the sphere of the conflict taking place in Gaza and Judea/Samaria. Today, the situation is the opposite: Fatah is in decline in Jerusalem, and so Islamic movements such as Hamas and the international pro-caliphate Hizb ut-Tahrir are directing the events and pulling Jerusalem into the focus.
No doubt all of the above is true. What remains for those who, based on thousands of years of Jewish history, long to see complete Jewish sovereignty over a united Jerusalem as capital of Israel?
First, we must understand that the battleground is not only in Jerusalem physically, but also on the front of public opinion and education. This means that we must study articles like this one in order to remain informed and to explain to others.
Second, we must show Israel’s leaders that we demand both short-term and long-term solutions for the declining security in the capital. More police, more arrests, longer jail sentences – together with more Jewish construction and visible commitment to an eternal Jewish Jerusalem.
And third, we must remain actively involved wherever possible in initiatives on behalf of Jerusalem: Visiting, advocating, speaking, and writing to newspapers, websites, and public representatives, and more.
For more information on how to participate in keeping Jerusalem Jewish, via e-mail updates, bus tours of critical parts of Jerusalem, and more, send an e-mail to [email protected] or visit Keep Jerusalem-Im Eshkachech’s website at www.keepjerusalem.org.