Additional neighborhoods have already come under fire as well. According to Jerusalem expert (and Keep Jerusalem advisory board member) Nadav Shragai, “security dangers” are not simply a nuisance that can be brushed off with better military procedures and readiness; they are a downright national “strategic danger.”
Making characteristically sure not to overstate the case, Shragai wrote, “Internal terrorism and the Intifada brought Israel to sign the Oslo Accords; to change its traditional unambiguous positions; to lose territorial assets; to end its military presence in southern Lebanon with no arrangement; and to Disengage from Gaza. We can therefore no longer relate to terrorism as just an ‘ongoing security risk’ alone.”
“In the event of division and the transfer to the PA of Judea/Samaria all the way up to the new municipal borders of Jerusalem,” Shragai continued, “the PA would have no problem bringing [its] weapons towards Jerusalem, and from there to the villages and neighborhoods in eastern Jerusalem.”
Can we imagine what would happen if thousands of Arab snipers could position themselves in their own Hamas/Hizbullah state just yards away from major Jewish population centers?
Arab attempts to manufacture homemade mortar shells and Kassam rockets with which to target Jerusalem are ongoing; it is common knowledge that only the presence of the IDF and the Shabak (General Security Service) contains them.
In short: Dividing Jerusalem means turning many Jewish neighborhoods into vulnerable border towns, leading to what then-mayor Ehud Olmert said in 2000 would be “a daily security danger” for our capital. This would inevitably have a seismic effect on the rest of Israel and the welfare of the Jewish people as a whole.
And all this without even going into the terrific demographic blows the Jewish majority would suffer in terms of both Jewish emigration from, and Arab immigration into, Jerusalem’s Jewish neighborhoods. The weaker our bonds with Jerusalem, the weaker the bonds that keep together the entire Jewish state in the Land of Israel.
If a politician running for the highest office in the land does not get the importance of maintaining a united Jerusalem under Israeli sovereignty, one has to critically consider the wisdom of entrusting the whole of Israel into his or her hands.