“The upcoming [Israeli] elections will be critical for Jerusalem in particular,” says Likud MK Ze’ev Elkin. He visited one of the most contested areas in the city – the Muslim Quarter – earlier this month to make his point.
Elkin, seeking to win votes for the Likud in the March 17election, told the Jewish residents there that if “Heaven forbid, the left-wing wins the election, the Muslim Quarter will become part of a Palestinian state. That’s why these elections are critical for Israel in general, and for Jerusalem in particular.”
Unfortunately, the urgency of which Elkin speaks is not expressed in an official Likud party platform. No party, in fact, has made the integrity of a united Jerusalem under Israeli sovereignty a core principle of its campaign. “It’s so obvious that it does not need emphasizing,” might be the explanation – but past experience has not shown this to be the case. Various politicians continue to vow solidarity with the Holy City , but Jerusalem supporters cannot be blamed if they are still unable to sleep soundly.
Still and all, let’s listen to what Prime Minister Netanyahu has to say about Yerushalayim. Meeting recently with representatives of the French Jewish community in Israel, he said: “I have heard [Labor Party head and prime ministerial candidate Yitzhak Herzog] say that if he becomes prime minister, his first meeting will be with Abu Mazen [Mahmoud Abbas] in Ramallah. What do you think he will talk about there – about Ramallah? Of course not! They will talk about Jerusalem! But we will not give up on Jerusalem. We will preserve our eternal capital!”
On a different occasion just a few days earlier, Netanyahu said similar things: “Herzog has said that he sees Jerusalem as serving as two political capitals – one in eastern Jerusalem, the capital of the Palestinian state, and the western part of the city, capital of the Jewish state. And Tzipi [Livni, who is running together with Herzog], when she is asked about dividing Jerusalem, says that this is a possibility. With them [dividing Jerusalem] is not just a possibility; it’s a certainty. They will bring upon us Hamastan II in the heart of the Land of Israel.”
Interestingly, Herzog has responded to this claim, though without quite denying it: “We remember that in the elections of ’96, Netanyahu said that [his then-competitor for prime minister Shimon] Peres would divide Jerusalem,” Herzog told a radio interviewer. “It was a lie then, but I can tell you today that Netanyahu is breaking up Israel.”
If MK Elkin visited the Muslim Quarter and its 1,000 Jewish inhabitants, let us do the same, at least on paper. Despite its name, the Muslim Quarter was home to many Jews in the 19th century, chiefly in three areas, including Flowers Gate in the northern Old City. Among the prominent Jews who lived there were Hebrew University President Yehuda Leib Magnes and modern Hebrew-language pioneer Eliezer Ben-Yehuda.
In the second half of the 1800s, dozens of buildings were owned by Jews, including no fewer than 20 synagogues and six yeshivot. In 1929, following murderous Arab pogroms in various cities, the Jews left the Muslim Quarter; only ten families remained. About 150 Jewish families returned in 1931 at the behest of the National Committee, but they left just a few years later after the Great Arab Rebellion.
Under Jordanian rule, the Muslim Quarter fell into ruin, with 17,000 Arabs living there in poverty and with a substandard infrastructure. Only after Israel’s liberation of the Old City in 1967 did conditions begin to improve. In 1979, Jews gradually began to move into properties that were either previously Jewish-owned or newly purchased. Today, the 1,000 Jews who reside there, and their yeshivot,synagogues, and dynamic communal life – though not without tensions with their Arab neighbors – are a proud symbol of the contemporary return to the Jewish homeland.
Jerusalem was also in the news this week in an attention-getting election video clip produced by the Likud. The clip shows a van of Da’ash (ISIS) terrorists seeking to reach Jerusalem. They drive past an Israeli man and call out in a thick Arabic accent, “Hey, brother, how do we get to Jerusalem?” The man answers in innocence, “Just go left!” Three bullet shots are heard, and the clip ends with the message, “It’s either us [the leading nationalist party], or them [left-wing Labor and Tzipi Livni’s party].”
The Meretz party complained that the clip incites against the left wing, and former Shabak chief Yuval Diskin said, “How can the Likud accuse others of bringing Da’ash into Israel when Netanyahu released Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, enabled the rebuilding of Hamas, and freed 1,000 terrorists, some of whom have committed terrorist attacks since then?”
The Likud would not be outdone, and again found Jerusalem to be a perfect subject for its retort: “Yuval Diskin, who called for the division of Jerusalem in 2013, for the establishment of a Palestinian state according to the pre-1967 borders, and for partial Right of Return for Arab ‘refugees’ from 1948 – he’s the one who will bring about a security and political catastrophe.” Diskin is not running in the current elections.
Many are those who recognize that strengthening Yerushalayim as a united city under Israeli sovereignty has critical ramifications for the future of the entire state of Israel and even the Jewish people as a whole. They can take encouragement from the centrality of Jerusalem in the current election campaign. But the question they face is how to make sure the pre-election promises are translated into post-election actions.