Jerusalem- One City, Undivided

by Jeff Jacoby - The Boston Globe - July 22, 2009

LATE LAST WEEK, the Obama administration demanded that the Israeli
government pull the plug on a planned housing development near the Sheikh
Jarrah neighborhood of Jerusalem. The project, a 20-unit apartment complex,
is indisputably legal. The property to be developed -- a defunct hotel --
was purchased in 1985, and the developer has obtained all the necessary
municipal permits.

Why, then, does the administration want the development killed? Because
Sheikh Jarrah is in a largely Arab section of Jerusalem, and the developers
of the planned apartments are Jews. Think about that for a moment. Six
months after Barack Obama became the first black man to move into the
previously all-white residential facility at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in
Washington, he is fighting to prevent integration in Jerusalem.
It is impossible to imagine the opposite scenario: The administration would
never demand that Israel prevent Arabs from moving into a Jewish
neighborhood. And the Obama Justice Department would unleash seven kinds of
hell on anyone who tried to impose racial, ethnic, or religious redlining in
an American city. In the 21st century, segregation is unthinkable -- except,
it seems, when it comes to housing Jews in Jerusalem.
It is not easy for Israel's government to refuse any demand from the United
States, which is the Jewish state's foremost ally. To their credit, Israeli
leaders spoke truth to power, and said no. "Jerusalem residents can purchase
apartments anywhere in the city," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on
Sunday. "This has been the policy of all Israeli governments. There is no
ban on Arabs buying apartments in the west of the city, and there is no ban
on Jews building or buying in the city's east. This is the policy of an open
city."

Eastern Jerusalem, seen through the barbed wire that used to divide the city
There was a time not so long ago when Jerusalem was anything but an open
city. During Israel's War of Independence in 1948, the Jordanian Arab Legion
invaded eastern Jerusalem, occupied the Old City, and expelled all its Jews
-- many from families that had lived in the city for centuries. "As they
left," the acclaimed historian Sir Martin Gilbert later wrote in his 1998
book, Jerusalem in the Twentieth Century, "they could see columns of smoke
rising from the quarter behind them. The Hadassah welfare station had been
set on fire and . . . the looting and burning of Jewish property was in full
swing."
For the next 19 years, eastern Jerusalem was barred to Jews, brutally
divided from the western part of the city with barbed-wire and military
fortifications. Dozens of Jewish holy places, including synagogues hundreds
of years old, were desecrated or destroyed. Gravestones from the ancient
Mount of Olives cemetery were uprooted by the Jordanian army and used to
pave latrines. Jerusalem's most sacred Jewish shrine, the Western Wall,
became a slum. It wasn't until 1967, after Jordan was routed in the Six-Day
War, that Jerusalem was reunited under Israeli sovereignty and religious
freedom restored to all. Israelis have vowed ever since that Jerusalem would
never again be divided.
And not only Israelis. US policy, laid out in the Jerusalem Embassy Act of
1995, recognizes Jerusalem as "a united city administered by Israel" and
formally declares that "Jerusalem must remain an undivided city." US
presidents, Republican and Democratic alike, have agreed. In former
President Clinton's words, "Jerusalem should be an open and undivided city,
with assured freedom of access and worship for all."
As a presidential candidate, Barack Obama said much the same thing. To a
2008 candidate questionnaire that asked about "the likely final status
Jerusalem," Obama replied: "The United States cannot dictate the terms of a
final status agreement. . . . Jerusalem will remain Israel's capital, and no
one should want or expect it to be re-divided." In a speech to the American
Israel Public Affairs Council, he repeated the point: "Let me be clear . . .
Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided."
Palestinian irredentists claim that eastern Jerusalem is historically Arab
territory and should be the capital of a future Palestinian state. In
reality, Jews always lived in eastern Jerusalem -- it is the location of the
Old City and its famous Jewish Quarter, after all, not to mention Hebrew
University, which was founded in 1918. The apartment complex that Obama
opposes is going up in what was once Shimon Hatzadik, a Jewish neighborhood
established in 1891. Only from 1948 to 1967 -- during the Jordanian
occupation -- was the eastern part of Israel's capital "Arab territory."
Palestinians have no more claim to sovereignty there than Russia does in
formerly occupied eastern Berlin.

The great obstacle to Middle East peace is not that Jews insist on living
among Arabs. It is that Arabs insist that Jews not live among them. If Obama
doesn't yet grasp that, he has a lot to learn.