Don't Be Their Fool

Arabs deny the Temple(s) even existed.

There is no archaeological proof they claim.

It is the "alleged" Temple and is fabricated.

Jewish history in the city of Jerusalem is denied.

Odd.

Is there any proof a winged horse, al-Buraq, was tethered to the Western Wall? And we'll ignore what was that wall.

Is there any proof that Abraham, sorry, Ibrahim, built the first mosque?

Any proof Muhammed was in Jerusalem, in reality or in a vision?

Who are they trying to fool?

Don't be their fool.

^

And Now, It's 'Relocation'

In a section of the Washington Post entitled "Global Opinions", there's an op-ed - 70 years after partition, a two-state solution is still possible - composed by David Makovsky (who I know well).

It's theme: 

It isn't too late for a two-state solution. Bringing the land into focus proves it.

He suggests, or declares, that "partition is still feasible...territorial dimension is solvable" and he has a new website that uses civilian satellite imagery to provide "a better understanding of settler trends" for 

The interplay of geography and demography in the West Bank matters

Basically, he divides the population of revenant residents into various sub-group based of east or west of the security barrier.  He comes up with a figure of

just under 556,000 Israelis living inside, or west, of the security barrier and more than 97,000 living outside of the barrier.

It's not a perfect summing up but he then writes that if

in a two-state solution, there were an agreement between Israelis and Palestinians regarding the relocation of these settlers, the prospect of relocation would become increasingly difficult...Israel needs to align its settlement policy with a two-state approach that enables Israeli-Palestinian compromise...None of this suggests that the barrier would necessarily be the border in a final-status agreement. That border would remain to be negotiated by the parties.

I left there this comment:

The term "relocation" is employed.  As an aside, at least it is not "resettlement" with its historical echoes.I have but one question: do Arabs get relocated, too?Can parts of the Wadi Ara population be relocated?Or is it only Jews?Besides the question, I would suggest that Makovsky's plan would have a better chance to prove itself if it would proceed incrementally.  For example, first, an updated Begin-era autonomy/self-rule plan. Then a federation-with-Jordan plan. These would prove to all that the Arabs desiring an independent state of Palestine indeed have the desire, capability and wherewithal to maintain a state structure and its administration, halt incitement, stop terror, initiate peace programs, begin joint normalization projects, etc. Something has to be done other than creating ideas to undo 20 years of what the Palestinian Authority has wrought.

And then I added this:

Whatever the "solution", let's not forget that there was a Palestine Mandate. In 1922, the two-state solution was done and Jordan, geographically 75% of historic Palestine started off on its road to be an Arab state.The two-state solution was tried in 1937 and the Arabs refused.Again in 1947, and refused.A war by Arabs in 1967 was launched when no "occupation" existed nor were there any "settlements" as Jews had been ethnically cleansed from Judea, Samaria and Gaza (aka, the "West Bank" and Gaza) between 1920-1948.Has Makovsky solved those problems which caused the Arabs to reject the two-state solution previously, which would then facilitate a two-state solution today?

^

The "Ad Kan" Satire Show Does Haredim

The Kan network here in Israel, a state-sponsored and publicly funded broadcaster, airs, but of course, a satirical show called "Ad Kan!" (This Far and No Further").  It stars  Michael Hanegbi and as reported a while back:

In addition to its regular news programming, Kan has a variety of new shows coming to the air...The satirical show The Jews are Coming will migrate from IBA to air on Mondays at 10 p.m.

On Thursdays and Saturdays at 10 p.m. viewers can tune into Ad Kan! (Up to Here), a satirical current events show in which six panelists – three who consider themselves left-wing and three right-wing – argue about topics of the day.

It airs actually now on Tuesday evenings.

Last night they had a monologue which, in part touched on the very annoying Peleg group demonstrations.  But this allowed a swipe at all Haredim, as the Ultra-Orthodox are called.

Screen shots:

On one thing we can all agree: the Haredim are turds.

The Haredim are not kakot (turds)

They are simply different and took themselves out of a democratic society

  and formed for themselves a society that contributes just to and for itself

Okay, they're a bit shitty but that's okay

but one thing we're all in agreement on is that the Haredim are turds.

You laughing?

^

The Arabs Rejected UN Partition Proposal. Who Else?

I participated in the Foreign Ministry's Legal Conference on Jerusalem today, Tuesday, at the Bible Lands Museum.

It was introduced by Minister Ze'ev Elkin:

                   

And greeted by Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely: 

With a panel addressed by Prof. Eugene Kotorovich and Amb. Adam Baker: 

And there was even an upset Jordanian diplomat who was perturbed by some remarks on the Hashemite family history:

What I wish to highlight was the lecture of Dr. Jacques Gauthier. His research is an amazing contribution to the area of law and national rights, alongside my dear friend Howard Grief. He traced out his 1300 page PhD dissertation (details here) in brilliant form and some highlights I include below.

1. The Mandate for Palestine did not in itself "create" the future polity of the reconstituted Jewish national home but simply acted as an agent of nurturing and development:

This follows the concept that Jewish natural, historical and legal rights pre-existed the diplomatic events of World War One and were of a level that were recognized as having precedence over other communities of people residing in the territory of what was acknowledged as the Jewish National Home.

2.  And the "idea" of a renewed Jewish national home as decided upon in 1922 by the League of Nations continues through the power of the United Nations Article 80 (which, for example, assures Israel rights within the original territory until a future internationally-recognized arrangement or treaty is ever conclude):

3. Turkey transferred in a practical sense its rights to the area to the Principal Parties which were England, France, Italy, Japan and the United States and thus the subsequent territorial distribution was quite legal:

4.  Palestine was for the Jews.  At the Versailles Conference, Faisal made that clear as he did in the agreement he signed with Chaim Weizmann and Arabs received 95% of former Ottoman Empire areas in the Middle East:

5.  Any discrimination based on religion or nationality is illegal and that includes prohibiting Jews from owning property or visiting holy sites in all the area of the Mandate which, at the least, includes Judea, Samaria and Gaza. For example:

and that was confirmed even for the area east of the Jordan even if many rights that were contained in various articles excluded as detailed in this memorandum:

The geographical thinking of what the Mandate was to include was specified:

and the maps in that volume, as the one below, viewed the Holy Land, Palestine, as encompassing both banks of the Jordan as well as into portions of today's Lebanon:

A point always stress: Arabs were recognized as have rights to everywhere else in the Middle East other than Palestine and therefore, "Arabs" as a group do not appear in any of the foundational documents and decisions leading up and including the Mandate:

One other item that had escaped my attention for the past few decades, although I am sure I must have been aware, and needs repeating. And that is the British and UN recommendation GA 181:

The British rejected it and refused to implement the Partition proposal as, for example, described so by Prof. Mosh Maoz

Britain not only objected to the UN partition resolution, it also refused to help implement it or even to permit UN observers to prepare the ground for the partition - rejecting official UN requests.7 This British refusal was largely motivated by self-interest - to avoid damaging its relations with the Arab states that had overwhelmingly rejected the 1947 partition.    7 Yapp, op. cit., pp. 114-115; cf. Laqueur, op. cit., pp. 97-98.   

_______________________

And look who came to visit me at Shiloh:

Dr. & Mrs. Jacques Guathier and family
^

Jordanian Waqf in Jerusalem - Its Report

Jordan administers the Temple Mount.

Here's the heading of its official stationary

from the first page 

of its new report on the

destruction and tampering with Al-Aqsa Mosque

Some of the highlights (thanks to Google Translate)

Israeli violations during the period of the closure of Al Aqsa Mosque/Haram al-Sharif by an unjust Israeli government decision on Friday, July 14, 2017 and was followed by a series of arbitrary security and provocative measures that led to the prevention of the guards and employees of the Jerusalem Waqf from entering Al Aqsa Mosque/Temple Mount for 14 days during which the police and occupation authorities vandalized in most of the chapels and facilities of Al Aqsa Mosque.

Preliminary results:...the destruction of most of the locks and closets closed in Al-Aqsa Mosque and tampering with the contents, and open computers, To access their systems and make use of the information in them. Although all the committees that have been charged have confirmed that all the assets have not lost anything, whether they are manuscripts or holdings, records or files, where no record of any of them despite the scattered and tampering with them...

¨The occupation authorities and their military and technical devices planted iron screws in multiple parts in the walls of the Dome of the Rock, and these iron screws are believed to be monitoring devices and photography.

Explorations were carried out in various parts of the Dome of the Rock, including removing a tile from inside the cave, then attempting to return it, taking a sample of the rock in two places, and spraying a white material on certain parts of the rock, indicating that the closure was not as security as planned...Tampered with carpets and the opening of electricity fountains and tampering with them.(B) The tribal chapel:The occupation authorities installed screws on the wooden writing boards in the 40th place. A fragment of a marble piece was also seen above the door and in the lower corner of the painting...The carpets were removed, the door was broken and the stone cover of the channels was broken.All the minarets in Al-Aqsa Mosque and Omar Mosque were opened and tampering with them.

¨ The occupation authorities broke the locks of the wells in the old Al Aqsa and discovered that they had conducted excavations of the old stone in many areas of the well, and some of the stones of the walls were noted for cracking. This was repeated in the upper area located on the eastern side of Omar Mosque.  Various stones were removed and rebuilt in the southern façade...

¨ The occupation authorities broke down and opened all the electricity cabinets and tampering with several reconstruction committee and opened a stone slab of water channel covers on the surface of Marwani. ¨ In the cradle of Issa was removed part of the marble terrace of the Nativity as well as the effects of digging beside the Nativity.

¨ The occupation authorities carried out a hole in the upper part of the door on the eastern side of the wall.

The occupation authorities removed an ancient stone plaque on the roofs of the Dome of the Rock from the south, and tried to return and carried out many explorations in the bases of Albuayak, and confiscated some of the chemicals used in the laboratory manuscripts and school laboratories and the confiscation of electronic bags students.

¨ The occupation authorities messed in the ear [amplification? broadcasting?] room and the alarm and communications room, where he lost some electronic pieces, which are accurate and expensive and stolen a video camera and tampering with the computers of the audio room.

But the plan to affix surveillance cameras inside the compound, as initiated and suggested by King Abdallah and agreed upon by Israel and the United States, has not been implemented.

^ 

Haaretz and the Balfour Declaration

If I had the time, one way to spend it would be to review in depth the Haaretz line-up this year for the centenary of the Balfour Declaration, and even include some from previous years, to show the paper's utter contempt for Zionism.

Take for example, this op-ed which bemoans

the racism of the British government 100 years ago, which disturbingly, continues to reverberate in the conflict to this day.

and that

The British government’s interest in the weapon of supposed Jewish power far outweighed their concern with the future of Zionism in the Holy Land.They did not engage in any wartime planning regarding the development of "a national home for the Jewish people." 

and

the Cabinet had no intention of giving Judaea to the Jews

and

British Orientalists saw the Palestinian population, instead, as an impure mix of different races, who were not 'authentic', 'racial' Arabs. This was why the Declaration invoked the phrase "non-Jewish communities" to describe the Arabs who constituted approximately 90% of the population.

If Ken Livingston and crew accuse Zionism of collaborating/cooperating with Nazism, well this predates Zionism's "sins".

In an earlier article, four years ago, the author, James Renton, a Senior Lecturer in History at Edge Hill University whose lectures  have been sponsored by anti-Zionists, wrote in Haaretz that

the Balfour Declaration of 1917 was based on miscalculations, anti-Semitism and propaganda

Some of the other articles this year included

The Curse of the Balfour Declaration

Balfour Declaration Wasn't About Israel

Balfour Declaration's Legacy Is Toxic for Both Israelis and Palestinians

Balfour's Original Sin

How India's Muslim Backlash, Led by Jinnah, Thwarted the Balfour Declaration

Britain Facilitated Palestine's Ethnic Cleansing. Today, Britain's Celebrating It

Britain's Broken Its Promises to the Palestinians From Balfour Onwards.

Now It Must Make Amends

(which uncritically quotes a Gazan Arab saying: 

“The Jewish people took their rights after Hitler 

committed massacres against them...

Britain gave our lands to the Israelis 

and they never cared to give us our rights.")

Oh, there were some good ones.  Here. Here. And here. Even here.

The paper, however, was negatively overloaded, and I am not inclduing the "news" stories on the events and how they spun out.

Zionist history, a la Haaretz.

^

Haaretz Interprets the 1947 Partition Plan

Haaretz content:

"From the perspective of the Jews, the advantage of Mohn’s map was clear: It gave the future Jewish state 62 percent of the territory of the land, even though demographically the Arab population was double that of the Jews"

Always turning a Zionist disadvantage into an advantage!

In 1922, Transjordan removed, actually postponed or application withheld as per Article 25, from the terms of the Mandate.

In 1937, a first partition suggested with other versions over the next year.

In 1939, a British White Paper reneges on the original intent of the Mandate, to reconstitute a Jewish homeland in, at least, all of Western Palestine.

And as for that Arab demographic item above, many tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of Arabs were no less 'recent immigrants' to Palestine than the Jews.  And most of them illegal as well.

Haaretz: in dredt.

^

The Guardian Wipes Out Jewish Gaza

In a story on Gaza, which, by the way notes that Gaza is but 40th in a 2014 rank of most densely populated cities worldwide, also informs the reader that

Gaza City, famed for its port, is more than 5,000 years old. Over centuries various empires between the Nile River and Middle East – Philistines, Egyptians, Assyrians, Persians, Alexander the Great, Romans, Byzantines, Moguls, Ottomans, among others – ruled Gaza

While, on the one hand, at least Israel isn't accused of occupying Gaza in centuries ago, Gaza was part of the Land of Israel and even part of the Mandate territory to become the Jewish national home.

Let's be clear, the Jewish connection to Gaza, in various forms and over many centuries, was strong. Up until 1929, when a small community of Jews there were expelled by Arab terrorist pogroms and later, when Kfar Darom was overrun in 1948.

The territory that the tribe of Judah received after the Israelites entered the Land included Gaza (Joshua 15.47), yet they failed to occupy this area at that time (Joshua 13.3)...Gaza was conquered by King David about 1000 BCE. His son Salomon ruled over Gaza (I Kings 5.4), but its population seemed to remain Philistine. The Northern kingdom controlled Gaza after the United Kingdom was divided. 

and

The city was subsequently attacked and reconquered by Jonathan the Hasmonean during 145 BCE (1 Macc. 11:61-62). 
During the Hasmonean civil war, the city was taken by Alexander Janneaeus in 96 BCE. The Roman Pomey restored the city and Galbinus, also a Roman official, rebuilt the city (circa 57 BCE). 
King Herod the Great held the city for a short time, but after his death, it came under the authority of the Roman proconsul of Syria.

A synagogue existed there 1500 years ago. 

Whether Jews ruled the area and just resided there, wiping out the Jewishness of the territory is not proper journalism.

^

Rubble Dribble

In this interview playwright Dan Fishback declares:

"I’ve been part of the Jewish cultural world all my adult life and I’ve seen how anti-Zionist Jewish voices are being blocked from different institutions." 

I have no way to judge the quantity nor the quality of being "part of the Jewish world". I cannot even define that adequately.  So I will give Fishback a pass on that. But another statement of his I can deal with:

I love the Jewish people, I care about the Jewish people, but I think Zionism hurts Jews. When I visited Israel I felt terrible sadness. I grew up believing that Jews are people who fought for justice and it made me very sad to see Jews oppressing other people.”

He is dribbling rubbish there.  

And it was followed by a question whether he would accept the idea of two states for two peoples, or does he oppose the idea of a Jewish state regardless of where its borders are located, he replies

“I’m for full human rights for all people, all Palestinians and all Israelis, and it doesn’t matter to me how many states there are. For me, all that matters is that human rights are guaranteed.”

The playwright was quite disappoint that his play, "Rubble, Rubble", had its reading cancelled and demanded that

Jewish communities need to protect dissident voices

While the play itself is not the subject pf this post, you should know that it "is a half-play/half-musical that charts a Jewish family's century-long arc from Left to Right, and explores the ever-widening rift in the Jewish world over, not just Israel, but the purpose of life itself.'

He is suffering from DISS.

It undermined and crippled Jewish national thought and action in generations past: by ultra-Orthodox, Bundists, assimilationists, disappointed human rights activists, embarrassed Jews, ASHamed Jews and a host of others.

His rubble is dribble.

^

Do You Suffer from DISS?

DISS.

DISS is DIasporic Supremacist Syndrome.

It seems to have invaded the ideological, psychological, societal, cultural, religious and intellectual genes of a growing number of Jews, most of them Jewish establishment types and our normal rebellious children (see here).

If it does not cease or come under control, in a generation or two, those contaged will cease to exist as Jews. In the meantime, DISS sabotages and undermines the proper existence of the Jewish national home.

So, yes, if those suffering DISS insist on interfering in Israel's affairs, not because you are a citizen, or pay taxes or serve in its armed forces, but out of identification and commitment, know well that we have the same right to interject our views into your conversations.

UPDATE: An example of DISS Thnking -

There is plenty to fisk in Peter Beinart's Ha'aretz article criticizing Elie Wiesel for defending Netanyahu's upcoming speech to Congress...

"a nuclear Iran would likely mean “‘the annihilation and destruction’ of Israel.” This, too, requires evidence that Wiesel does not provide. After all, Benny Gantz, who just retired as Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces, has argued that while an Iranian nuke would be dangerous, “The Iranian leadership is composed of very rational people.”

One of his predecessors in that job, Dan Halutz, has said that, “Iran poses a serious threat but not an existential one.” Earlier this month, former Mossad head Ephraim Halevy added that, “I think it is a terrible mistake to use the term ‘existential threat’ because I do not believe there is an existential threat to Israel.”

Beinart, on the other hand, hates the current elected Israeli government so much that he is willing to take the position that the murder of hundreds of thousands of Israelis is really not that big a deal just to criticize a human rights icon for daring to speak out forcefully in favor of Bibi's defending the lives of his people. 

^

Dear JFS Pupils (UPDATED)

Dear pupils, (there are Updates at end)

I have read the Jewish Chronicle item on Ethan Saunders' intervention of the talk by Dr. Hirsh. I am not sure he is this Saunders (whose account info suggests we read Norman Finkelstein's The Holocaust Industry).

It seems, in his challenge, he said that Hirsh hadn't "told the whole truth..." or "hadn’t explained that Begin was a terrorist and about Sabra and Shatila".  There was also this: "‘You haven’t explained to the students about the Ha’avara Agreement and the real collaboration between the Nazis and the Zionists. ‘You haven’t explained that it was Israel who was responsible for nurturing Hamas at the beginning, and Hamas is a creature of Israel’.”

As I wasn't there, I am treading on loose soil but the sound of that conversation is all too familiar.  It is that of a voice of a radical and even extreme anti-Zionist or, to be fair, a politically leftist progressive Jew who rejects Zionism, prefers socialism, will champion the Diaspora over a Jewish national home.  Of course, he could be psychotic in his hatred for his own Jewish identity.

Let me be short, as you may have some homework to do or after-school sports to engage in.

a) one can never tell the whole truth.  So, it's up to you to read and be as informed and knowledgeable as possible.  I don't mind telling you never to trust any teacher completely or any lecturer. Always check, even me (and with Google, you can do that in the classroom while he/she is talking).

b) as for Menachem Begin being a terrorist (oh, by the way, he was awarded a Nobel Prize for Peace which, I must admit, was also awarded to Yasser Arafat), he also could be a "militant", or a "guerrilla leader" as even the NYTimes notes.  Or perhaps a "revolutionary".  I prefer freedom fighter.  Be that as it may, please, study the history of the Mandate and especially the British White Paper of 1939 and ask yourselves, was Great Britain complicit in the preventing of Jews fleeing Nazi Europe by shutting the gates to immigration, thus contributing to Hitler's "success" in killing so many who couldn't get out? 

Did England renege on the terms of the League of Nations Mandate and instead of a Jewish national home in the Jewish people's historic homeland, it decided to alter its purpose and afford preferential treatment for Arabs, many who had illegally entered the country seeking employment, education and health benefits in the only really developing Middle East country at the time (and today, too)?  Could those be good reasons to wage a war of liberation against an oppressive regime?

As for Sabra and Shatilla, nothing sinister there. Begin had no basis to believe Israel's allies would act as they did.  And the Fallangists were the sole direct responsible party for those killings, Arabs by Arabs.

c)  Regarding the Transfer Agreement (HaAvarah), even the Independent carried an op-ed demolishing the theory of Zionists "collaborating" with Nazis. Even Haaretz's radical Chemi Shalev knows that. Even the Guardian.  Edwin Black wrote a book on it. Do you really think Jews worked together with Nazis, except to find a way to get out of the hell that was Nazi Germany?

And here in The Fathom, Paul Bogdanor's article, An Anti-Semitic Hoax.

And I now found this in the TLS:

I’m not sure which history book the former London mayor has been reading, but it presumably isn’t Peter Longerich’s Holocaust (2010), in which we can find (on page 67, should Livingstone wish to consult it) a very clear explanation of the Reich’s policy on Palestine:

“on 16 January 1937 [well before Hitler, in Livingstone’s estimation, ‘went mad’] the Reich Minister of the Interior informed the German  Foreign Office that it was planning to continue to support the policy of Jewish emigration regardless of the destination countries [including Palestine]. But after it began to emerge in early 1937 that Britain’s Peel Commission might opt for a Jewish state in Palestine, on 1 June the Foreign Minister, Neurath, sent guidelines to the embassies in London and Baghdad and to the Consul General in Jerusalem in which he made it crystal clear that he was against the formulation of a Jewish state or ‘anything resembling that state’”.

In other words, and not surprisingly, the Nazi Party was not happy, in the words of Longerich, with the idea of “an internationally recognized power base for world Jewry”.

d) in bringing up these topics, this teacher simply wants to play mind tricks on you.  Don't let him.  The facts are available. Be careful of ideological spins.  You can always write to me and I'll help you overcome your doubts and befuddlement.

^

UPDATE

I now see that there are petitions up (here and here; UPDATE: they are down) and that a slightly different account of the exchange was published.  As for the petitions, I am all for an investigation which may result in a no-finding or a reprimand, suspension or termination of employment.   In any case, the issue is one of education and the pupils must be made aware that questioning and doubt is at the heart of learning processes but not purposeful undermining by unfair presentations of fact and history.

The different account, based on talks with pupils present, includes that the

teacher had mentioned the Ha’avara Agreement “merely to add context and point out the possible fallacies in Dr Hirsh’s presentation”.

Let us be clear here: mixing in the Ha'arvara Agreement to save German Jewry be entering into a forced economic arrangement with Germany in 1933 (!) , despite it being opposed, for example, by the Revisionist Movement as Ze'ev Jabotinsky had called for a boycott of Nazi Germany in March 1933 which was sabotaged by assimilationist Jews in power, into a debate whether there was Nazi-Zionist cooperation is more than playing around with semantics.  Saunders, even if he only did that was committing an error of grave proportions and injuring his pupils ability to learn, to discern and to comprehend complex historical situations.  Again, if true, he was playing mind games with them.  And those corrupt.

There are no fallacies in Hirsh's argument, which I heard recently in Jerusalem, that anti-Semites use that issue to confound and pervert.

__________

And I see now that someone thinks that his impression of what occurred

is that the approach to Jewish history can be patchy and unsystematic.

and that

if the JFS controversy does highlight one thing, it is that Jewish history should not be an add-on, it should be an essential component of the curriculum in Jewish schools.

Is anything happening of an investigation or is JFS hoping we'll all forget?

^

An Extreme British Academic Failure

From this report on Cambridge’s implementation of the government’s Prevent legislation in which one of  one of the questions posed in the online training, which asked participants to identify extremist views from a list, which included: “Anti-immigration”, “Pro-life”, “Vocal support for the creation of a Palestinian state?”, and “Opposition to Israeli West Bank settlements”:

"Dr Yaqoob told Varsity that, while the University’s definition of extremism was “vague”, the training did not “directly state” that opposition to Israeli settlement in Gaza, for example, could be considered “extremist”."

Huh?

There are no "settlements" there.

Israel removed them in 2005.

It didn't satisfy the Arabs who call themselves Palestinians who continue to shell Israeli civilians, dig terror tunnels and refuse to make peace.

In fact, Hamas which rules Gaza (and is trying to take over the rest of the area) doesn't acknowledge the right of Jews to live anywhere in the area.

I think that is quite extreme and to promote further Hamas rule is extreme.

And this is Cambridge?

^

There's Also A Christian Status Quo

For the record:

Statement on Jerusalem and Status Quo
By WCC Executive Committee, Amman, Jordan, 22 November 2017

The Executive Committee of the World Council of Churches, meeting in Amman, Jordan, on 17-23 November 2017, has heard of the ongoing struggle of the churches of the Holy Land, and particularly of Jerusalem, for the future of their communities and witness in this region.

In particular, the Executive Committee has heard with concern from the heads of the churches in Jerusalem of the ways in which church institutions and properties in Jerusalem are threatened as a result of a combination of contracts of disputed legality, the efforts of radical settler groups, and policies of the Government of Israel.

...Initiatives that threaten the delicate historic set of relationships, rights and obligations encompassed in the ‘Status Quo’ arrangements risk further destabilization of the situation in Jerusalem and the Holy Land. The Executive Committee calls on the Government of Israel to stop and refrain from any such initiatives that may upset this important foundation for inter-communal relations in the city and region.

^