Jerusalem: Off-the-table talk
Dr. Lior Lehrs’s “No, Jerusalem is not off the table” (June 6), is a piece of sophistry to justify Jerusalem being divided between two supposedly equally deserving claimants, recognizing “the existence of both Jerusalem and al-Quds.”
By al Quds, he means the Old City containing all the Jewish holy sites becoming the Palestinian Arab capital, including the surrounding suburbs to the east, leaving only modern west Jerusalem, as the Jewish capital.
International law in the 1920 binding San Remo agreement unequivocally allotted sovereignty in the entirety of Palestine to the Jewish people for their future national home, including Jerusalem. There was never any provision for any other sovereignty, or separation of Jerusalem from the rest.
It was ratified unanimously by all 51 members of the League of Nations in its 1922 Mandate for Palestine document and remains the last legal ruling. It is the “permanent status agreement”.
Ceding parts of Jerusalem would be the first time in history that a defeated invading army (Trans-Jordan) with no claim to the land either in law or historical connection, would be rewarded with territory.
As to Sheikh Jarrah, (the Shimon Hatzadik neighborhood), it was ethnically cleansed of its Jewish inhabitants by the Trans-Jordanian Arab invaders in 1948 and in 1956 UNRWA illegally gave the Arab invading “refugees” the homes Jews were forced to abandon.
After the 1967 reunification of Jerusalem and lengthy court cases proving deeds of ownership, a deal was struck whereby the Arab squatters were allowed to remain conditional on payment of a “peppercorn” rent. No rent was paid – hence the eviction notices. To cancel the evictions would be to pour contempt on the rule of law and invite more of the same.
It is dishonest to claim that property law is discriminatory, there being no parallel “right of return” of homes in west Jerusalem to their Arab owners. Those were temporarily left upon the exhortations of the Arab invaders who promised that after the Jews would be thrown into the sea, they would return and all of Palestine would be theirs.
Regarding the “Israelization” of east Jerusalem, Lehrs need not worry! The Palestinians have been making a mockery of planning laws in every respect, building huge cities within cities in audacious land grabs to create facts on the ground to the north, east and south of Jerusalem to encircle it, aided and abetted by the malice of the EU, and ignored by the Israeli authorities, who fear the onslaught of predictable hostile world opinion.
Meanwhile, the planning laws are respected by Jerusalem’s Jewish citizens because, in their case, they are meticulously enforced.
The same scenario of Palestinian land grab exists increasingly in the Negev and the West Bank. Enforcing the rule of law equally upon all Israel’s citizens would not “severely undermine Israel’s international standing” as Lehrs claims. On the contrary, it would earn respect.
ROSLYN PINE London