Jerusalem, Israel’s Capital. Really!?

Jerusalem has been the capital of the Jewish people for 3,000 years, and the State of Israel since it was founded. Israel’s Parliament, Supreme Court, prime minister and president reside there. Israel is the only country in the world whose capital is not recognized. Why are so many people opposed to this historical fact? Ignorance, anti-Semitism or both?

Conflicts over Jerusalem go back thousands of years – including biblical times, the Roman Empire and the Crusades – but the current one is a distinctly 20^th-century conflict, with roots in colonialism, nationalism and anti-Semitism.

Foreign leaders who have denounced Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital have to come to terms with their denial of anti-Semitism and fake history. What makes the decision controversial is that foreign leaders had agreed to pretend it wasn’t the capital to protect “the peace process.” What peace process? Who’s kidding whom? There is no peace process. Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president finishing the 12^th year of his four-year term, has refused to meet with the Israelis to discuss anything since early in the Obama administration.

Jerusalem is mentioned more than 500 times in the Torah and Old Testament – and many hundreds more in the New Testament. Jerusalem was established as the capital of ancient Israel 1,000 years before Jesus was born.

Jerusalem is never mentioned once in the Koran. Fact! Check it out.

For foreign leaders and Palestinians to claim as a matter of international law the Western Wall, and the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem itself, really belongs to Palestinians is an insane fantasy. The time to deal with facts rather than fantasy is long overdue.

“Joseph Farah, an Arab-American journalist, reminds us that East
Jerusalem was not captured from Yasser Arafat and the Palestinians
during the Six Day War. In fact Arafat was not born in Jerusalem either.
He was born in Egypt. Jerusalem was captured from Jordan’s King
Hussein. ‘The truth is that Palestine is no more real than Never-Never-
Land. The first time Palestine was used was in 70 AD when the Romans
committed genocide against the Jews, smashed the Temple and declared
the land of Israel will be no more. They promised from then on the land
of Israel will be no more. They promised from then on the land of Israel
would be known as Palestine – a name derived from the Philistines, a
Goliathian people conquered by the Jews earlier. Palestine has never
existed before or since as an autonomous entity. There is no language
known as Palestinian. There is no distinct Palestinian culture. Palestinians
are Arabs, indistinguishable from Jordanians, Syrians, Lebanese or Iraqis.
There has never been a land known as Palestine governed by Palestinians.
It was ruled alternatively by Rome, by Islamic and Christian crusaders, by
the Ottoman Turks and, briefly, by the British after World War I’,”

I wrote in my book Custom Maid Spin for New World Disorder in 2004.

“I have determined that it is time to officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel,” Trump said. “This is nothing more or less than a recognition of reality. It is also the right thing to do. It’d something that has to be done.”

The announcement is one of the most consequential foreign policy decisions of his administration so far. One I agree with wholeheartedly!

Palestinians have to abandon their all-or-nothing demands in peace talks. For President Trump to secure the “ultimate deal” of peace between the Israelis and Palestinians, the failed negotiating tactics of the last four decades have to be re-calibrated. “Old challenges require new approaches,” Trump said when he announced the move of the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

The idea of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel has long enjoyed bipartisan support in Congress. That is why it overwhelmingly passed the Jerusalem Embassy Act in 1995 requiring the move but allowed presidents to waive the measure in the interest of national security. Presidents Clinton, George W. Bush and Obama signed those waivers every six months for 22 years. So did Trump, the first time the waiver was presented to him.

The decision was “long overdue” and Trump suggested previous presidents lacked the “courage” to make the move, based on the “belief that delaying the recognition of Jerusalem would advance the cause of peace.” It didn’t and won’t.

“This step is prejudging, dictating, closing doors for negotiation, and I think President Trump disqualified America from playing any role in the peace process,” Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian peace negotiator, said in a video statement issued by his office. If that is the case, then why should the U.S. continue giving the Palestinians $280 million annually? In 2017 more than $344 million of the U.S. and other countries donations have gone for payments to Palestinian prisoners and their families, and the families of deceased terrorists.

The Taylor Force Act overwhelmingly passed by the U.S. House of Representatives recently, will reduce funding for the Palestinians unless they stop subsidizing families of killers. The European Union, Saudi Arabia and all other donor countries should be doing the same if they want to see peace between the Israelis and Palestinians. Money talks and fantasy walks.

Trump’s message to Palestinians can be summed us as the less you concede, the more you lose, said Eugene Kontorovich, head of international law at the Kohelet Policy Forum in Jerusalem.

“The Palestinians have learned that by saying no they can always get something better next time,” he said. “They have to learn that if they say no, next time they won’t get the same offer.” Basic Middle East bazaar negotiating tactics!

Let’s not forget that in 2000 Israel did offer the Palestinians a Palestinian state, with part of Jerusalem as their capital, an offer they rejected.

Let’s also not forget that Trump also said the U.S. would support establishing a separate Palestinian state “if agreed to by both sides.”

Arab and Muslim leaders denounced the Embassy move, and echoed the Hamas call for a third intifada and “Days of Rage.” Fears of widespread bloodshed didn’t come to pass. The protests were limited in size and number suggesting a degree of exhaustion and frustration at the failed Palestinian Hamas government in Gaza and overall leadership among Palestinians and the rest of the Arab and Muslim world. After all, the Sunni Arabs also confront the threats of Islamic terrorism and Iranian imperialism, which makes the Palestinian issue a third order of concern. If the movement of an American Embassy that was signaled more than 20 years ago is enough to scuttle peace talks, then maybe the basis for peace doesn’t exist. If it does, Palestinians have to accept the fate of Jerusalem as it was recognized in the Olmert-Abbas negotiations of 2008, and the “Clinton parameters” of 2000.

“Trump go to hell” and “Free Palestine, free Jerusalem” slogans, stone throwing, knifing, turning off Christmas lights in Bethlehem and threats to continue boycotting peace talks only perpetuates the self-inflicted misery and deprivation of another generation of innocent Palestinians.

It is going to take years to find a site for the new embassy, get funding, and build and secure the facility. There are about 1,000 U.S. diplomatic personnel at the current U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv. In other words, plenty of time to negotiate what Trump calls “one of the toughest deals of all” – an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement that would finally end decades of failed diplomacy.

Time for all world leaders to follow Trump’s lead. Jerusalem is Israel’s capital!