Here I Am in Halifax

The world's city

Moshe Amirav, a paratrooper who in 1967 helped liberate Judaism's most sacred site, the Western Wall, has written a new book called the Jerusalem Syndrome: Israeli Unification Policy Delusions.

The book proposes that Israelis control traditionally Jewish areas of West Jerusalem, Palestinians control traditionally Muslim and Christian areas of East Jerusalem, and that the Old City be internationalized.

"What is Jerusalem?" asks Amirav, a professor of public policy who was former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak's adviser on Jerusalem. "In my opinion, it is only the Holy City and that one square kilometre belongs to God and all the crazy people like me who believe in Jerusalem. The place that signifies humanity should be outside politics."

About two-thirds of Jerusalem's 720,000 residents today are Jewish.

The rest are Palestinians, among them 10,000 Christians. The Jewish population declined by nearly 11,000 last year.

If this trend is not reversed, or Jerusalem's borders are not somehow redrawn, Muslims, who tend to have large families, are expected to outnumber Jews in about 25 years.

"Many Israelis are running away already," says author Amirav, citing the city's economy, pricey real estate and uncertain future.

Yisrael Medad, secretary of the El Har Hashem Association, which supports Jewish rights on the Temple Mount, is more skeptical.

"I am not saying that I am not concerned," he says, but adds that equally dark demographic predictions have been wrong before.

AbuZayyad notes that many Israelis worry that a majority of Jerusalem's population will soon be Arab but that the same statistical trends are evident elsewhere.

"What they have to worry about is a majority of Arabs - from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean."