The Rubin Jerusalem Solution

As I have pointed out too often, I am surprised that so many Jews get surprised too often about American policy as regards Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.  As I have detailed here and there are books on the subject, from 1949 on the US has been angry at Israel's move.

Ben-Gurion made Israel's decision clear:

the General Assembly of the United Nations has, in the meantime, by a large majority, decided to place Jerusalem under an international regime as a separate entity. This decision is utterly incapable of implementation - if only because of the determination and unalterable opposition of the inhabitants of Jerusalem themselves...We respect and shall continue to respect the wishes of all those States which are concerned for freedom of worship and free access to the Holy Places, and which seek to safeguard existing rights in the Holy Places and religious edifices in Jerusalem...the peace, the security and the economic consolidation of Jerusalem our principal care...for the State of Israel there has always been and always will be one capital only - Jerusalem the Eternal. Thus it was 3,000 years ago - and thus it will be, we believe, until the end of time...there is nothing now to prevent the Knesset from returning to Jerusalem. We propose that you take a decision to this effect...

And as Chaim Weizmann clarified:

Jerusalem is to us the quintessence of the idea of Eretz-Yisrael. Its restoration symbolises the redemption of Israel. Rome was to the Italians the emblem of their military conquests and political organisation. Athens embodies for the Greeks the noblest their genius had wrought in art and thought. To us Jerusalem has both a spiritual and a temporal significance. It is the City of God, the seat of our ancient sanctuary. But it is also the capital of David and Solomon, the City of the Great King, the metropolis of our ancient commonwealth...It is the centre of our ancient national glory. It was our lodestar in all our wanderings. It embodies all that is noblest in our hopes for the future. Jerusalem is the eternal mother of the Jewish people, precious and beloved even in its desolation. When David made Jerusalem the capital of Judea, on that day there began the Jewish Commonwealth. When Titus destroyed it on the 9th of Ab, on that day there ended the Jewish Commonwealth. But even though our Commonwealth was destroyed, we never gave up Jerusalem.

An almost unbroken chain of Jewish settlement connects the Jerusalem of our day with the Holy City of antiquity. To countless generations of Jews in every land of their dispersion the ascent to Jerusalem was the highest that life could offer. In every generation new groups of Jews from one part or another of our far-flung Diaspora came to settle here. For over a hundred years we have formed the majority of its population. And now that, by the will of God, a Jewish Commonwealth has been re-established, is it to be conceived that Jerusalem - Jerusalem of all places - should be out of it?

I even pointed out that the Jerusalem today is smaller than the actual territory the UN allocated for the international regime that forms the basis for the US policy so the real problem is not "Jewish settlement" in the new, post-1967 neighborhoods but who administers the city as the sovereign power.

Barry Rubin, whom we all wish a full recovery, has another suggestion:

There is absolutely nothing to prevent the United States from accepting west Jerusalem, pre-1967 Jerusalem as capital of Israel while maintaining that the status of east Jerusalem is to be determined by future negotiations.  The U.S. embassy could be moved to west Jerusalem, with the existing U.S. consulate there continuing to serve east Jerusalem and the West Bank, which means also dealing with the Palestinian Authority.

Shall we try that?

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