Jerusalem

INDEPENDENT STATUS FOR "THE OLD CITY OF JERUSALEM"

                    WHICH IS ONLY ONE SQUARE KILOMETRE IN SURFACE.

 

The roots of the Jewish faith go 4.000 years back.

 

In those days, like many other Semites, the patriarch Abraham left the town of Ur in Mesopotamia – present day Iraq –

to migrate to the fertile Arab land of Canaan, bordering the Mediterranean Sea.

Originally Canaan was inhabited by Canaanites, Philistines, Phoenicians and Bedouins.

Many of them lived in towns such as Sidon, Hazor, Meggido, Shechem, Jericho, Salem, Hebron, Gerar, Beersheba, etc.

Melchizedek was then Priest-King of Salem, the future Jerusalem.

 

As opposed to others who worshipped several gods, Abrahamn only worshipped ONE single God, who had created "heaven and earth".

For this God, he built (sacrificial) altars in different places, including the ones near Shechem (Nablus) and Hebron.

He also built one on the mountains in the land of Moria- at three days travel from Beersheba, where he had pitched camp at the time- to sacrifice his son Isaac to God. That would have been the Temple Mountain in Jerusalem.

That is when God promised Abraham, to give him and his descendants, the whole land of Canaan IN ETERNAL

POSSESSION!

 

The name of his grandson Jacob, son of Isaac, was changed by God into Israel.

Israel begot twelve sons, who became the founding fathers of twelve tribes, which spread out across the whole of

Canaan. One of them was Juda, from which the term Judaïsm has been derived.

Juda gave his name also to the territory in which he settled, Judea, of which Jerusalem was the centre.

 

Around 1800 BC. the Middle-East was subject to Egyptian rule.

Because of overpopulation and lengthy periods of famine, many Israelites migrated to Egypt, where they lived in slavery.

Four centuries later, Moses was born in Egypt, from Israelite parents. Moses was chosen by God to free his people from

Egyptian slavery and take them back to ‘’the promised land’’ of  Canaan.

 

Around 1400 BC, the people of Israel -after their flight from Egypt they wandered 40 years through the Sinaï desert-

returned to Canaan and systematically conquered the land from the Arab peoples.

David, from the genealogical lineage of Juda, became King of the Jews, as the Israelites were called from those days

onward. He conquered Jerusalem from the Philistines and combined the land parts of Israel (Samaria) and Judea,

to form the first “United Jewish Kingdom".

 

He bought on the Temple Mountain "the threshing floor" from Arauna the Jebusite and established a new altar for God.

Under his reign, Jerusalem became a centre of secular and religious power.

In 1000 BC, his son Solomon built on the Temple Mountain in Jerusalem the first Jewish temple.

God’s commandments, as they were passed on by Moses to the Israelite people on the mountain of Sinai, and which

were incorporated together with the ’Five Books of Moses’, also called the Torah, formed the fundamentals for it.

 

Less than 70 years later in 930 B.C., by disagreement,  the Jewish Kingdom fell apart again in the ’house’ (tribe) of Juda

and David, in Jerusalem, and the tribe of Israel, in Sichem.

 

In 600 BC. – after several foreign invasions – the Jewish temple in Jerusalem was destroyed for the first time by the 

Babylonians.  Almost all Jews were taken away in captivity to Babylon.

 

One century later Jerusalem became subject to Persian rule.

 

In 300 BC. the Middle-East was conquered by the Greek and two centuries later by the Romans.

 

Around the year 0, from Jewish parents and from the geneological line of David, Jesus of Nazareth was born in Betlehem.

33 Years later Jesus of Nazareth was crucified in Jerusalem by the Romans AND the Jews, because he had become a

danger to the established order of the Romans AS WELL AS to the Jewish religion!

 

Christianity was born! Because of the original nonviolence, charity and forgiveness, Christianity spread quickly across

the Middle-East and Europe.

 

In the year 70 AD, after yet another Jewish uprising against the Roman rule, the (rebuilt) Jewish temple in Jerusalem

was destroyed by the Romans for a seconde time.  All Jews were expelled from the country. The Diaspora.

 

From that date on, the Romans called the land that they had occupied Palestine, after the original inhabitants the

Philistines. In those days Palestine stretched from Syria in the north to the Red Sea in the south, and from the

Mediterrenean Sea in the west, to deep into the lands of Jordan in the east. 

 

Having no land of their own, most Jews dispersed (Diaspora=dispersion) across the entire Roman Empire.

 

In 634 AD. Syria, Jordan and Palestine were reconquered by the Arabs. Their new religion, the Islam: full submission and

dedication to ONE SINGLE God, Allah, displaced the Jewish and Christian religions in the Middle-East. According to the

Qoran, Abraham was the first Muslim. That means, that the God of Abraham is also the God of Jews and Christians.

Gradually the Islam supplanted Judaism and Christianity as the main religion in the Middle East.

 

The crusades from Europe, between 1100 and 1300 AD, did not change this.

 

The Muslims also built their temples on the Temple Mountain in Jerusalem, then wasteland: The Rock Dome and the

Al-Aqsa Mosque, because their Prophet Mohammed was supposed to have ascended to heaven on that location.

 

Around 1500 AD. Palestine was conquered by the Turk.

 

In 1882, after fierce pogroms (persecutions of Jews) in Eastern Europe, the first Jews migrated to the basis of their

religion. They bought peaces of land from Syrian, Jordan and Egyptian landowners  and started to built settlements

there. It was the beginning of Zionism: the world wide return of Jews to the ’Holy Land’. Theodor Herzl in 1897

was the founder of that Modern Zionistic Ideology.

 

In 1917 the English occupied Jerusalem and ended 400 years of Turkish and 1300 years of Islamite rule.

All of Palestine became subject to British rule. At that time, the English already suggested,  that Palestine be SPLIT UP

in a Jewish AND an Arab/Palestinian State. The Balfour Declaration.

 

The second World War and the holocaust spurred on the massive return of Jews to Palestine in a dramatic and

overwhelming way.

 

In the partitioning plan of the United Nations of 1947, both the Israelis and the Palestinians were given the RIGHT to

their own independent state and Jerusalem was divided up, into an Israeli and an Arab/Palestinian part.

 

However the Arab countries refused to agree to that and they declared war on Israel.

Hundreds of thousands of Jews fled the Arab countries to go to Israel. 

Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled to the Arab countries and ended up in refugee camps. In Lebanon, 

Syria, Jordan and Egypt.

 

Israel won that ’war of independence’  in 1948 and proclaimed -one-sided and not approved by the United Nations-

the State of Israël.

 

Nowadays, 5,6 million Palestinians still live in refugee camps. For 74 years already! 

 

In 1967, five  Arab countries attacked Israel again, and again Israel won that war, which only lasted six days.

Israel occupied then a great number of territories, including the West Bank of the Jordan River and the Eastern part

of Jerusalem. They also isolated the Gaza strip completely. 

 

In 1980 Israel proclaimed Jerusalem the "UNDIVIDED ETERNAL CAPITAL OF THE STATE OF ISRAEL" ; an action which

again was not approved by the United Nations. It was the immediate cause of the Intifada (rebellion of people), which

actually  started in 1987.

 

5,6 Million of Palestinians have been living now for 74 years as outcasts, in the most wretched conditions, in dozens 

of refugee camps! Their desire to found their own independent state, is blocked by fundamentalists on both sides. 

As a result, the Palestinian resistance against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, East-Jerusalem and the Gaza strip

became more violently. The first Intifada (shake off) lasted until 1993, and when, after the Oslo accords of 1993, 

in 1999, still  none of its promises were fulfilled, the second Intifada broke out. (2000-2005).   

It has become the struggle of the desperate, without any outlook.............

 

With the Palestinians, ALL Muslims in the Middle- East AND abroad, feel opressed and humiliated, because two of their

most important sanctuaries – the Rock Dome and the Al-Aqsa Mosque – are in Israeli hands.

 

The frustrations and anti-western sentiments that have been building up over the years, among the Palestinians AND

the 1,8 billion Muslims abroad, have taken on dangerous forms for the whole world, culminating in the dramatic attacks

in New York, Bali, London, Madrid, etc.

 

THAT IS WHY THE STATUS OF JERUSALEM IS NOT ONLY AN INTERNAL ISRAELI AFFAIR !

 

For a peaceful coexistence in the Middle-East it is of vital importance for the United Nations, the United States of

America ànd Israel, immediately dedicate all efforts towards:

 

1. The proclamation of INDEPENDENCY of "The Old City of Jerusalem", which is only ONE square kilometre in surface.  Without  any political interference from anyone, such as the Vatican in Rome, Italy.
2. West Jerusalem then, becomes the "administrative" Capital of the State of Israël.
3. East Jerusalem then, becomes the "administrative" capital of the State of Palestine.
4. Recognition of the State of Palestine within the borders of 1948/1967.
5. Complete separation of Church and State in the State of Israël, as well as in the new State of Palestine.
6. Large aid programs for all 13 million Palestinians.
7. Negotiations about the Jewish settlements on the West Bank on basis of exchange of territory and/or financial compensation for the Palestinians.

 

Perhaps then the sting will be out of the conflict in the Middle East and the "Road to Peace"" can finally be started,

or, as Menachem Begin said in 1978, "NO MORE WAR" and/or as was stated at the Unesco symposium in Paris in 1989,

in the presence of all religions: "THERE IS NO WORLDPEACE, WITHOUT RELIGIOUS PEACE".

                                                          EVERYONE IS ENTITLED TO ITS OWN RELIGION

                                                BUT ALL TOGETHER WE SHARE ONLY ONE SINGLE WORLD!