Does Israel illegally occupy its own historical capital, the Old City of Jerusalem? Much of the world thinks so, and so let us correct the record. This won’t solve the problem, for the world will continue to believe what it wishes to believe. But let us at least put the information out there for those who wish to learn.
Starting with the very beginning, the Bible itself stipulates the site of the Holy Temple. It was not named, however, until after Israel’s royal line had been established, when King David purchased the site of what would later be named the Temple Mount.
From then on, for nearly a millennium – except for a break for the 70-year Babylonian exile – Jerusalem was the undisputed capital of the Jewish people. Such a deep and long connection is not easily broken, and even after the Jews were exiled in the year 70 CE, they never relinquished their bonds with the Holy City and Land. Our prayers, holy occasions, and national/religious lives in general are permeated with mentions and remembrances of Yerushalayim.
Over the centuries, while there was always a Jewish presence in the Land, its many foreign occupiers never succeeded in receiving the warm embrace the Jews had enjoyed. Desolation reigned throughout the country for centuries. Finally, in 1853, came a turning point: the increasingly ingathering Jews were “officially” back home, comprising the majority of the 15,500 people then living in Jerusalem (by the testimony of French diplomat Cesar Famin).
Years passed, and the Zionist movement continued to gain strength. The Jews began to “make the desert bloom,” causing many Arabs from neighboring countries to follow in their wake – and in 1922, the British census in Jerusalem showed 34,000 Jews, as opposed to 28,000 Christians and Arabs.
By 1948, the year of Israel’s independence, the number of Jews had grown to 100,000 – over 60 percent of the total population. After the war, a new term began to be used: “Eastern Jerusalem” –concocted only after Jordan captured parts of the Holy City in 1948 and “annexed” them. Keeping in mind that the world did not recognize this “annexation,” the areas not under Israeli control were simply rendered ownerless for the ensuing 19 years.
When Israel then liberated the rest of Yerushalayim from Jordanian control in the 1967 Six-Day War, it simply righted a historic wrong: The 1,900 year-wait of the Jewish capital for its natural populace to return was ended.
Thus, “foreign occupation” is the last term that can be used to describe the current situation, in which the Jewish people are again in full control of the entire expanse of their holy capital.
This brings us to the “legalese” of the situation. The late Professor Julius Stone, a leading authority on the Law of Nations at the Universities of California and Sydney, explained that Jerusalem (and all of Judea and Samaria, in fact) cannot be regarded as “occupied” for several reasons – including the fact that these areas never belonged to any other sovereign state. One cannot “conquer” a territory from someone to whom it does not belong.
As Professor Stephen Schwebel, former judge on The Hague’s International Court of Justice, has written, “Jordan’s seizure and subsequent annexation of the West Bank and the old city of Jerusalem were unlawful.”
On the other hand, Israel’s liberation of Jerusalem was quite acceptable, for “a state acting in lawful exercise of its right of self-defense may seize and occupy foreign territory as long as such seizure and occupation are necessary to its self-defense.”
Similarly, Dr. Jacques Gauthier, a non-Jewish Canadian lawyer who spent 20 years researching the issue, concludes that Jerusalem belongs to the Jews according to international law. His 1,300-page doctoral dissertation on Jerusalem and its legal history determines that the League of Nations and the United Nations themselves gave the Jewish people title to the city of Jerusalem.
Jerusalem expert Eli E. Hertz notes that the famous UN Resolution 242, which speaks of “occupied territories” under Israeli control following the Six-Day War, does not mention Jerusalem at all. This omission was quite purposeful, as Arthur Goldberg, the U.S. ambassador to the UN in 1967 who helped draft the resolution, later testified: “I never described Jerusalem as occupied territory. Resolution 242 in no way refers to Jerusalem and this omission was deliberate.”
Finally, Judge E. Lauterpacht, judge ad hoc of the International Court of Justice, wrote that “Israel’s governmental measures in relation to Jerusalem – both New and Old – are lawful and valid.”
Will the above review change the minds of those who hear only the drumbeat of Arab spokesmen who want nothing more than the expulsion of the Jews from the Holy Land? Not likely. In fact, they have fabricated their own “narrative,” modeled after our own. Convicted inciter Raed Salah of Israel’s Islamic Movement (Northern Branch) stated in a recent sermon:
This land… is a land of Jihad, hence, it is a land of struggle between its people and any invaders coveting it. We are the land’s people, and others who covet it are invaders.… Note how many [peoples] coveted this land, and Allah be praised, they have vanished. The Roman empire flexed its muscles here at one point, but it has vanished. Then the Persian empire flexed its muscles, and it has vanished as well. Then along came the Crusaders, but they have vanished too. The Tatars came and vanished. British colonialism came and vanished. French colonialism came and vanished. The Israeli occupation will also vanish. There is no doubt about it…. Our land is blessed, and therefore, it does not tolerate impure filth…. Just like the sea vomits its garbage, our land rejects all its garbage, and ultimately, vomits it.
Salah’s logic, of course, leads to the inadvertent conclusion that the next people to be vomited out are those known today as the Palestinians – the most recently-arrived newcomers, and the ones with possibly the smallest claim to this land of any of their predecessors.
To find out how you can help in the campaign to keep Jerusalem Jewish and Israel safe and sovereign, visit the Keep Jerusalem-Im Eshkachech website at www.keepjerusalem.org or send e-mail to [email protected].