By Stan Goodenough
Courtesy of The Jerusalem Post

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post on June 24, 1994.

I’m writing as a concerned Gentile observer of your Jewish nation’s currently unfolding history.

The PLO’s pledge to leave negotiations over Jerusalem out of the peace process until September 1996 has gone the way of all that organization’s written and verbal undertakings – into the trash can.

Caught between apathy and an inability to organize solid resistance to further concessions, Israel is voicing opposition while watching in disbelief as the PLO opens more government institutions in the city the Jews swore would never be divided again.

Since the peace process began in Madrid three years ago, Israeli and world Jewish opinion has remain overwhelmingly unwavering on this one issue.

For 2000 years, Jews faithfully nurtured the dream of returning to Jerusalem. They clung to this hope to the very doors of the gas chambers.

After Israel’s miraculous rebirth, after the reunification of Jerusalem in a war of self-defense, and after the Knesset passed the Jerusalem Law in 1980, Jews believe that Jerusalem will remain the eternal, indivisible capital of their state.

No matter what other concessions they make, they will never let Jerusalem fall under another sovereignty again.

PEOPLE OF ISRAEL: Do you believe that because you are more or less united on the question of Jerusalem the future of your capital is safe? Do you believe that you will never be forced to give up any part of Jerusalem, that it will never again be divided?

Don’t you realize that you have already nearly lost the battle? You may be more or less united against the idea of ever relinquishing Jerusalem, but the whole world is virtually united against you, and will soon insist that you permit the Palestinian Arabs their capital here.

Do you really believe that, after month s of arduously working to “help” you overcome every other obstacle to peace, the worlds will let your five-million-strong claim to Jerusalem derail the whole process?

Face it. The international community does not believe in your exclusive right to Jerusalem, and this does make an enormous difference. In Tunis, on June 15, Yasser Arafat won the support of the entire African continent, including its “mighty hope,” the new South Africa – for the Palestinian’s right to Jerusalem as their capital. He already has the whole of the Muslim world and the rest of the Third World behind this claim.

All that’s left is an ineffectual Europe, which in any case has virtually always supported the Palestinians’ “rights,” and the US.

And even that “”good friend of Israel” has never felt strongly enough about your claim to Jerusalem to base its embassy here. Nor was it willing or able to prevent the inclusion in a UN resolution in March this year of the designation of Jerusalem as part of the “occupied territories.”

This is the stark reality. You were prepared to weaken your position and enter the peace process because the world insisted you should. You have given away Gaza and Jericho because the world demanded it. You have already agreed to give away the rest of Judea and Samaria because – even though this is the cradle of your nationhood – you do not believe you have the right to defy global opinion, which insists you relinquish this too.

You appear to feel quite strongly about the Golan Heights, but have so far been unwilling or unable to declare publicly, as a united Jewish nation, that you have a rightful claim to that area; that you paid with the blood of your sons to throw a Jew-hating, war-mongering Syria down from it.

It seems your leaders have already decided in their hearts that, because the world insists on it, they will simply wait for Hafez Assad to make a verbal peace promise before they pull they Jewish community off the heights.

People of Israel, you know that you have not been able to withstand international pressure to relinquish your rights to all these parts of your land. What makes you think, then, that you will be able to do so when it comes to Jerusalem?

Surely the time to end the peace process in its present form has long passed? Arafat and the PLO have given you more than enough reasons to say: Thus far and no further.

Your case was powerful after Arafat’s jihad speech; no one could have blamed you for stopping right there. If you think you can continue to retreat until the question of Jerusalem sis all that remains, and then make your stand – you have already lost the battle for your capital city.

© The Jerusalem Post