If you want real peace, don't insist on a divided Jerusalem, @USAmbIsrael

The Jerusalem Post writes about a talk US Ambassador to Israel Tom Nides gave to Americans for Peace Now, where he agreed wholeheartedly with that left-wing group's agenda of being against Jews living across the Green Line.

"We can't do stupid things that impede us for a two-state solution. We can't have the Israelis doing settlement growth in east Jerusalem or the West Bank," Nides told the left-wing Americans for Peace Now during a virtual event on Tuesday.

"I'm a bit of a nag on this, including the idea of settlement growth, which infuriates me, when they do things, just infuriates the situation, both in east Jerusalem and the West Bank," he continued.

The US ambassador explained that he has to pick and choose his battles. He had however, he said, fought to prevent the advancement of a 3,500 apartment unit project in an area of the Ma'aleh Adumim settlement known as E1.

The Right has spoken of the project's importance in expanding Ma'aleh Adumim and ensuring the preservation of a Jewish corridor around Jerusalem.

The Palestinian Authority and the international community have argued that it would make a future Palestinian state unviable.

Construction of E1 would be a "disaster," Nides said. "I went full board on E1…It is a very important area which if [built] could cut off any possibility of a capital for the Palestinians," he added.

The idea that any Palestinian state must have its capital in Jerusalem is completely artificial. It is a  demand that was created for one purpose only: to deny Jews access to their holiest places.

When Arabs and Muslims controlled Jerusalem during the Ottoman era, it was not considered important to them. You would be hard pressed to find any Islamic artwork or poetry extolling the city before the 20th century. Only when Zionism made political gains did the Mufti start to create the twin myths about the centrality of Jerusalem to Muslims and how it needed to be defended against by Jewish desire to destroy Al Aqsa. 

Those two ideas are intertwined. And they remain so.

From 1948-1967, Jordan didn't attach any importance to Jerusalem. There was little growth and little investment in infrastructure on the Arab side, while the Jewish side more than doubled in population.

The 1964 PLO Charter does not mention Jerusalem once. Neither does the 1968 PLO Charter.  

As with the Mufti, Yasir Arafat only started to emphasize Jerusalem years later, during the 1970s, as a means to inflame Arab passions against Jews. It was a theme created to unify the fractured Christian and Muslim Palestinian terrorist groups by concentrating on "liberating Jerusalem" from Jewish control - a theme that both groups could get behind. 

Nowadays, every single mention of a Palestinian state by Abbas and Shtayyeh reflexively include "with Jerusalem as its capital." Yet Jerusalem was never the capital of any Muslim or Arab nation. It is an artificial demand meant to incite hate and to take away the Jewishness from the Jewish state. 

And the West has bought this lie that a Palestinian state must include Jerusalem without any skepticism.

Why, exactly, must a Palestinian state have Jerusalem as its capital? What, exactly, stops it from having its capital in Ramallah or Gaza City? After all, Ramallah and Gaza City are the current Palestinian seats of government. There is absolutely no objective reason that Jerusalem must be included in a Palestinian state, let alone that it must be its capital. Somehow, ovcr 190 other states manage to exist without Jerusalem as their capital. 

The Palestinian obsession with Jerusalem, today as well as in the 1920s, is based on taking it away from Jews and not on any historic or legal ties to the city.

Moreover, why is the West insisting that a unified Jerusalem be split up again? Who in their right mind thinks that Jerusalem would be more peaceful if Jews are again restricted from visiting their holiest spots, all of which are claimed by the Palestinians as being exclusively theirs? Jerusalem, under Jewish rule, is more diverse and tolerant of all religions than it has ever been in history. 

Insisting on giving Arabs control over the most sensitive areas, the way they had between 1949-1967, is a recipe for war, not peace. If you want real peace, take Jerusalem off the table and tell the Palestinians, frankly, that peace and splitting Jerusalem is not compatible and they can choose one or the other. 

The world has been scammed by the "Jerusalem is Palestinian" lie. Very few have the bravery to say this out loud.

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