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Kerry slams Israel
Kerry launched bitter public attack on Israeli policies in the West Bank...
[Times of Israel]
The United States and the Indivisibility of Jerusalem - Shlomo Slonim
- The U.S. State Department has a favorite mantra: that Washington's policy on Jerusalem has not changed since the status of the city arose as part of the Partition Plan in the Truman era. This is quite inaccurate.
- The Nixon administration's Rogers Plan for settling the Arab-Israeli dispute, while acknowledging a Jordanian interest in Jerusalem, also emphasized that Jerusalem should be "a unified city."
- Each successive administration recognized that Jerusalem was never to be divided again. While various presidents have adopted different attitudes to the question of the status of east Jerusalem - some implying that Israeli sovereignty extended there, and others denying such sovereignty - all adhered firmly to the position that the city must remain united.
- For its part, the U.S. Congress has declared by concurrent resolution that it: "(1) acknowledges that Jerusalem is and should remain the capital of the State of Israel;" "(2) strongly believes that Jerusalem must remain an undivided city in which the rights of every ethnic religious groups are protected."
- Israel has maintained that under international law Israeli sovereignty extends over Jerusalem in its entirety. The promoter of the Oslo accords, Shimon Peres, declared: "We are very adamant about our position. Jerusalem will not be redivided. It will not be a Berlin."
- Yitzhak Rabin stated categorically to the Knesset: "United Jerusalem will not be open to negotiation. It has been and will forever be the capital of the Jewish people, under Israeli sovereignty."
The writer is a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
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