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can go around unprotected through
the Jewish and the Arab parts of the
city without any hesitation any time
of day or night."
Commented the Minister of De–
velopment and Tourism, Mr. Moshe
Kol: "When I carne to Cleveland,
the mayor of Cleveland gave me the
key to the city and said: 'When I
walked
in
Jerusalem with Mayor
Teddy Kollek, we needed no guard!
But in Cleveland, you cannot walk
without a guard.'"
But to Edward Ghorra, Leba–
non's permanent representative to
the U.N., this is all quite irrelevant
to the ultimate status ·of Jerusalem:
"1 really don' t know about all these
details, but it is not important -
whether you have a robbery on the
street doesn't justify the robbery of
the whole city of Jerusalem, which is
so dear and sacred to the Arab
people, Christian and Moslem
alike."
Mayor Kollek recognizes the deep
yearnings of the Arab peoples: .
"Arabs in Jerusalem are good patri–
ots, and they would like to see their
part of the city again under Arab
sovereignty. They have a little di–
lemma, you know; they have in fact
a better life today; they have more
freedom of expression today - there
is no censorship. We have two Arab
newspapers, whereas under the Jor–
danians for the last year before the
1967 war, the Arab newspapers
were closed down because the Jeru–
salemites were a little too indepen–
dent and didn't exactly hold the line
that the people from the capital in
Aroman told them to. So Arabs
today have in Jerusalem freer ex–
pression and a slightly better life, as
well as freedom of movement - this
to be weighed against being occu–
pied by a foreign people. So it isn't
easy for them to make up their mind
- and we shall have to find ways of
giving them a lot more indepen–
dence within the city, which one day
they will accept."
What about Israel's rapid prac–
tica! annexation of the old city -
new apartment buildings, the link–
ing together of electrical networks,
sewer systems, bus lines?
PLAIN TRUTH February 1974
To the former Jordanian repre–
sentative to the United Nations, Mr.
Baba Ud-Din Toukan, it is a very
serious violation of international
law: "Why did they do it? They
shouldn't bave done it. I mean, it is
occupied territory. Never in history
has occupied territory been annexed
and changed, overnight."
How does Mayor Kollek answer
the Arab charges that much of the
construction is an attempt to make a
new Jewish cíty in former Jordanian
territory?
"This is a complicated business,
and it's, of course, charged with a lot
of feeling. You see, the city was one
Jerusalem for 4,000 years. It was di–
vided into a Jordanian and Israelí
territory only for nineteen years.
"The people have different políti–
ca! ambitions, but they have learned
to live together. Now, mind you, we
have a different pattern than Ameri–
can cities. We have no ideal of a
'melting pot.' We feel that commu–
nities can live together, side by side,
guarding
the~r
own traditions, their
own cultural content and their own
way oflife.l'm not speaking only of
Arabs and Jews. We have Christian
communities who have been living
there for 1,500 years."
Said Ambassador Ghorra of
Lebanon: "There have been two
resolutions of the General Assembly
in 1968,
t~ree
resolutions by the
Security Council in 1968 and 1969
~hich
have declared annexation
null and void and all the measures
taken by Israel as null and void.
These resolutions have called on
Israel to rescind all the measures
that it has taken. Israel so far has
done nothing."
Concluded Mayor Kollek: "lf you
look at the city as a whole, it has
had a Jewish majority for the last
120 years, so we are not suddenly
turning it into a Jewish majority or a
Jewish city.''
The Holy Places
Jerusalem is considered holy by
Islam and Christianity as well as by
Judaism. Mayor KoJlek had this to
say about the holy places: "We have
always said that we would like the
holy places, the Christian holy
places, to be run by the Christian
world, and we are willing to give
them the status that foreign em–
bassies have. The problem is that
the Christians - and this doesn't sit
well for me, as a Jew, to say - but
the Christians among themselves -
Catholics, Greek Orthodox, Arme–
nians, Protestants - do not get to–
gether to forro one ecumenical body
in order to decide how they would
like to run the holy places."
Commented Ambassador Ghorra:
"I don't want to argue with what
they say. I would like to say that
their claiin to be custodian to the
holy p1aces doesn't have any histori–
cal background. This is something
that they have arrogated to them–
selves after the occupation of the
Old City of Jerusalem. The real cus–
todian of the holy places in old Jeru–
salem is the Arabs."
But Gideon Hausner says: "The
only time - the only time - when
we had no access to the Wailing
Wall, to our synagogue there, to our
shrines, were the twenty years of
Arab occupation. And not a single
Jew could enter there unless he
carne on a foreign passport that
didn't disclose the fact that he was
Jewish."
lnternationalization
While most of the world advo–
cates internationalizing Jerusalem,
perhaps under the shield of the
United Nations, the Israelis are
fiercely determined to resist it.
Mayor Kollek has remarked: "I
really can't understand it. Suddenly
everybody is very conscientious
about Jerusalem. Let me be, as I
understand it, slightly aggressive on
this. The Christian world has great
difficulties in getting accustomed to
the fact this is again a Jewish city."
Israelis are bitter that while there
is much world outcry to inter–
nationalize Jerusalem today, be–
tween 1948 and 1967, when Jordan
controlled old Jerusalem, one never
heard much about it.
Gabriel Stein, Professor of Physi-
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