By Marney Blom
Jerusalem Day.
Each year tens of thousands of Jewish Israeli youth take to the streets to celebrate their united capital, Jerusalem.
With flags and banners they dance across the green line – the dividing line at the centre of international contention over Israel’s rights to East Jerusalem.
The virtual boundary bisects Jerusalem into east and west and can be traced back to the first Arab-Israeli war in 1948. It became the boundary separating Israel from neighbouring Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. Israel’s victory in the 1967 Six-Day War erased those lines and established Israel’s territory within its current borders prior to its withdrawal from the Sinai and Gaza.
East Jerusalem was under Jordanian rule before 1967, not Palestinian Arab rule. East and West Jerusalem were reunited as a result of the Israeli victory of the Six-Day War. Today, however, Israel is being pressured by the international community to freeze all development east of Jerusalem’s green line. Construction has been labelled as settlements and by implication, occupied territory.
East Jerusalem has emerged as a significant factor in the current US-mediated peace negotiations.
UN General Secretary Ban Ki-moon took it a step further on a visit to Israel earlier this year. “All (Israeli) settlement activity is illegal anywhere in occupied territory and must stop,” he said.
Israeli building in East Jerusalem is not illegal according to international law set out at the San Remo Conference of 1920. At the conference it was incorporated into international law that the legal title to the land of Israel, including Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, belonged to the Jewish people. The mandate was issued by the League of Nations and has never been cancelled by any subsequent treaty or binding international resolution. According to this law, Israel has the right to build because the disputed territories are within the borders of the Jewish people’s homeland.
Is the international community refusing to acknowledge existing law? It appears so.
Settlements are covered in article six of the mandate of Palestine, the legal international document said watchdog organization Myths and Truths president Eli E. Hertz. “Not only do the Jews have the right to settlement; the world has the obligation to help them settle.”
Israeli Knesset Member and World Likud chair Danny Danon compared demands that Jews refrain from building in Jerusalem to the White House stating that Hispanics or African Americans could not build in Washington. “He (Obama) (would not be permitted) to say so. So why do we accept that motion?”
Jerusalem, the city of peace, is increasingly coming into the spotlight as a stumbling block to peace.
The prophet Zechariah foretold the events that would precede the coming of the Messiah. “Behold, I am going to make Jerusalem a cup that causes reeling to all the peoples around and when the siege is against Jerusalem, it will also be against Judah…. and all the nations of the earth will be gathered against it. (Zech 12:2,3).
So what time is it in relation to end-time events? Viewing the current scenario against the backdrop of Biblical prophecy, it could be later than we think.
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