Beset by questions about Jerusalems future in talks with the Palestinians, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reached for the Bible on Wednesday to stake out the Jewish states contested claim on the city. Netanyahu told a parliamentary session commemorating Israels capture of East Jerusalem from Jordan in the 1967 war that Jerusalem and its alternative Hebrew name Zion appear 850 times in the Old Testament, Judaisms core canon. As to how many times Jerusalem is mentioned in the holy scriptures of other faiths, I recommend you check, he said. Citing such ancestry, Israel calls all of Jerusalem its eternal and indivisible capital -- a designation not recognized abroad, where many powers support Arab claims to East Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state. The dispute is further inflamed by the fact East Jerusalem houses al-Aqsa mosque, Islams third-holiest shrine, on a plaza that Jews revere as the vestige of two biblical Jewish temples. Heckled by a lawmaker from Israels Arab minority, Netanyahu offered a lesson in comparative religion from the lectern. Because you asked: Jerusalem is mentioned 142 times in the New Testament, and none of the 16 various Arabic names for Jerusalem is mentioned in the Koran. But in an expanded interpretation of the Koran from the 12th century, one passage is said to refer to Jerusalem, he said. Responding to Netanyahus citations, Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat said: I find it very distasteful, this use of religion to incite hatred and fear. East Jerusalem is an occupied Palestinian town, and East Jerusalem cannot continue to be occupied if there is to be peace. MANY RULERS Destroyed as a Jewish capital by the Romans in the 1st century AD, Jerusalem was a Christian city under their Byzantine successors before falling to Muslim Arabs in the 7th. European Crusaders regained it for a century, after which came 700 years of Muslim rule until Britain defeated the Ottoman Turks in 1917. As Britain prepared to quit, the United Nations proposed international rule for the city in 1947 as a corpus separatum. That proposal was overtaken by fighting that left Israel holding West Jerusalem in 1948 and Jordanian forces in East Jerusalem. Israel then took the rest in the Six Day War of 1967. The city, within boundaries defined by Israel but not recognized internationally, is now home to 750,000 people, two in three of them Jews and the rest mostly Muslim Palestinians.
Posted on: Mon, 11 Aug 2014 18:17:29 +0000
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