JERUSALEM A TWIN CAPITAL FOR ISRAEL AND PALESTINIANS ?
BRUSSELS — European Union foreign ministers urged Israel and the Palestinians on Tuesday to make Jerusalem their shared capital, prompting a swift, angry reaction from Israel.
- For their part Tuesday, the Palestinians announced a boycott of products made in Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Palestinian Economics Minister Hassan Abu Libdeh said the government has already confiscated $1 million worth of products, including foods, cosmetics and hardware, and that he hoped to remove all such goods from Palestinian store shelves next year.
- In Brussels, EU foreign ministers reiterated that the 27-member bloc would not recognize Israel’s annexation of the eastern part of Jerusalem after it occupied it in the 1967 war. The ministers called for Israel to share Jerusalem as a capital with a future Palestinian state.
- Although the EU has long opposed the annexation of east Jerusalem, the statement angered Israel and was sure to deepen Israel’s sense that the Europeans favor Palestinian positions. President Barack Obama has been trying, so far in vain, to nudge the sides toward renewed peace talks.
- ‘The EU will not recognize any changes to the pre-1967 borders including with regard to Jerusalem, other than those agreed by the parties,’ said the ministerial statement. It was referring to the Mideast war in which Israeli forces captured east Jerusalem from the Jordanian army.
- ‘If there is to be a genuine peace, a way must be found (through negotiations) to resolve the status of Jerusalem as the future capital of two states,’ it said.
- The EU ministerial statement dropped an earlier Swedish draft resolution which explicitly stated that east Jerusalem — the disputed part of the holy city — should be the capital of a Palestinian state after Israel warned it would damage the bloc’s ability to take part in any resumed peace talks as a negotiator.
- The Israeli Foreign Ministry reacted immediately. ‘We regret that the European Union chose to adopt the text,’ Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said in a statement. He said the statement ‘does not contribute’ to promoting peace and ignores the Palestinians’ refusal to resume talks.
- Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas refuses to resume peace talks, which broke down a year ago, unless Israel halts all settlement construction.
- The Palestinian prime minister, Salam Fayyad, welcomed Tuesday’s EU statement. He said it gives Palestinians ‘a better sense of hope and possibility about tomorrow.’
- The competing claims to east Jerusalem remain perhaps the most explosive issue in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
PROTESTERS CLASH WITH ISRAELI POLICE AT HOLY SITE
JERUSALEM – Israeli police used stun grenades Sunday to disperse Palestinian rioters at a volatile Jerusalem site holy to Jews and Muslims, police said.
- The incident took place during a visit by a Jewish group to the compound in Jerusalem's Old City known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary. Deadly violence has erupted there several times in the past.
- Police spokesman Shmuel Ben-Ruby said around 150 Palestinians threw stones at the Jews visiting the site, which is open to non-Muslims at certain hours.
- Jews regularly visit the compound and it was not immediately clear what sparked the violence.
- Police dispersed the rioters using stun grenades, and two policemen were lightly injured. Two protesters were also lightly hurt before police restored order, Ben-Ruby said. Sunday's incident ended without serious injuries.
- Religious and nationalist sentiment connected with the site have made it a flashpoint for violence in the past. A visit in 2000 by Ariel Sharon, then an Israeli opposition leader, helped ignite violence that engulfed Israel and the Palestinian territories for several years.
- Jews venerate the Temple Mount as the location of two Biblical Temples, and consider it their holiest site. Jews pray at the foot of the compound at one of its supporting walls, known as the Western Wall.
- The compound is home to the gold-capped Dome of the Rock and the Al Aqsa mosque, and Muslims see it as their religion's third-holiest site after the Saudi Arabian holy cities of Mecca and Medina.
- The site has been under Israeli control since 1967, but is administered by a Muslim religious body.
CHRISTIANS WILL LOSE THE HOLY LAND
The Israelis' game is clearly to hinder and paralyse Christianity in the Holy Land. It is a process that has been going on for a very long time. When Palestine was under British mandate, Christians accounted for 20 per cent of the population.
Sixty-one years of hostilities, dispossession, interference and economic ruination have whittled their numbers down to less than 2 per cent. At this rate there will soon be no Christians left in the land where Christianity was born.
Criticise Israel in the US and you'll lose your job. Criticise Israel in the UK and the Jewish establishment and their quasi-Christian friends hurl accusations of anti-semitism. Dare to support the victims of Israeli aggression and you'll get banned by the freaky Canadian government and vilified, like British anti-war MP George Galloway.
The freedom of the Church was set out in the Fundamental Agreement between the Holy See and the State of Israel in 1993 (but never ratified by the Knesset).
Criticise Israel in the US and you'll lose your job. Criticise Israel in the UK and the Jewish establishment and their quasi-Christian friends hurl accusations of anti-semitism. Dare to support the victims of Israeli aggression and you'll get banned by the freaky Canadian government and vilified, like British anti-war MP George Galloway.The freedom of the Church was set out in the Fundamental Agreement between the Holy See and the State of Israel in 1993 (but never ratified by the Knesset).
Buried deep within this document is the clause: " The State of Israel recognizes the right of the Catholic Church to carry out its religious, moral, educational and charitable functions, and to have its own institutions, and to train, appoint and deploy its own personnel in the said institutions or for the said functions to these ends".It turns out to be another worthless promise from a regime that ignores countless UN resolutions, disregards International Court of Justice rulings, is contemptuous of human rights and Geneva Conventions, yet claims to be a western-style liberal democracy sharing our values.
Courtesy: Al Jazeera
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