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Trump Recognizes that Humiliating Israel Didn't Bring Peace

(Wall Street Journal) Yoram Hazony - For nearly seven decades, alone among the nations of the world, the State of Israel has endured an unusual humiliation: it has been denied the sovereign right to determine its own capital. For the better part of a century, the U.S. has led what is effectively an international boycott of Jerusalem as Israel's capital, keeping its embassy in Tel Aviv as part of a fiction that the status of Jerusalem remains undetermined. After Jerusalem was united under Israeli rule in 1967, rather than recognizing Israeli sovereignty, the international community decided to leave Jerusalem's status for "future negotiations." Yet now half a century has passed, and still there is nothing but Jewish sovereignty over Jerusalem anywhere in sight. The dream of rebuilding Jerusalem, destroyed in Roman times, is the linchpin that holds Jewish faith and nationhood together. Israel will never agree for Jerusalem to be divided as Berlin was, with mutually hostile police forces on either side of a security barrier. Jerusalem was divided in this way from 1948 to 1967, and anyone who lived through that time of snipers on the city walls knows that such a scheme amounts to destroying Jerusalem, not rebuilding it. For 70 years, the U.S. and most other nations have declined to stand with the Jewish people on this, believing that peace would somehow be forthcoming if Israel were humiliated in this way. But this approach has not brought peace. It has only encouraged Israel's enemies. All over the world, Jews are saying shehehianu, the traditional blessing thanking God for letting us live to see this day. The writer is president of the Jerusalem-based Herzl Institute.
2017-12-08 00:00:00
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