Glory Days: On Jerusalem

6 August 2022

 

Faith is understood to form a transcendental phenomenon that may provide its bearers with spiritual purpose, sense of belonging, and a secure consciousness in a very uncertain world. Its presence and rituals whether they are peaceful or to the contrary as evidenced in America’s invention of and participation in the “war on terror” are not matters for rational inquiry. Faith’s political manifestations are varied and interconnected ranging from an attempt to invoke social norms in a given society to instructing liberation struggles often aimed at liberals’ and conservatives’ militarism denial. Faith could be transformed into a less divine abstraction categorized as a feeling or emotion, yearning or longing and perhaps even a desire subject to psychological tracing and behavioral investigation, no matter how incomplete.

 

But can faith, or cultural identity which in its ideological forms may resemble aspects of faith, source a right for political sovereignty in a distant geographic location? In plain, less abstract words, can Zionism birthed faraway from Palestine, legitimately claim a right to establish a state in a sensibly unwelcoming region? The answer is a clear and resounding no. Such affirmation remains valid regardless of the victimhood invoked particularly given its impertinence in time and place to the desired geographic area that is supposed to facilitate the yearned for homeland. Victimhood’s severity as an excessive form of reasoning is immaterial and fails to redeem the proposition that Zionism’s right for sovereignty in Palestine is conceptually not persuasive.

 

Enjoying political leverage in internationally powerful countries and gaining supportive statements as in the British 1917 Balfour Declaration, incorporated into the 1922 League of Nations Mandate over Palestine and the American vote in favor of the 1947 United Nations partition plan[1] do not detract from Zionism’s principally absent right for sovereignty in Palestine.

 

Succeeding to form the aspired sovereignty by causing grave legal and moral wrongs, in the form of ethnically cleansing more than two thirds of the original population, further shatters the claimed right for sovereignty. Boasting about it as in Rachel Shapira’s ‘Like a Wild Plant’[2] is an exercise in a sadistic ritual of a morally troubled community.

 

The ethnic cleansing and dispossession of Jerusalem’s Palestinians in 1948, West Jerusalem in today’s terminology, was not different from the Zionist practices in the entirety of Palestine.[3] Plans to place Jerusalem under international guardianship by various investigative commissions prior to Israel’s founding and in the 1947 partition plan should be grasped with healthy suspicion towards the international powers that advocated this arrangement as well as to the political formations in these countries which encompassed influential forces that supported Zionism’s colonial enterprise.

 

Having advanced the argument that Zionism’s contention for sovereignty in Palestine is groundless politically, jurisprudentially, and ethically, the submission is no less solid regarding Jerusalem, which includes sacred locations for three of the world’s religions. Multiplicity of sacred locations could trigger harmony or an assertion of exclusivity as we have been witnessing by the dominant Israeli Jewish group for decades making people, paraphrasing Sting’s 1991 melody, mad about the city.

 

Jerusalem’s biblical sentiment has been a central instrument for a country constantly occupied with nation building. It has settled in the minds and hearts of Israelis not only through the county’s indoctrinating educational system. The city’s mythological perception has been dominant in multifaceted dimensions of Israeli society: ordinary Israeli religiosity; excavating scholarly research seeking identity affirmation for the modern Zionist claim for sovereignty in Palestine; collectivist cultural performances by Noami Shemer, Saraleh Sharon, and the Israeli army’s entertainment troupes; Yoram Arbel’s spectacularism; the hedonism and nihilism of Lemon Popsicle films series; and the vulgarity of Erez Tal and Avri Gilad.

 

Invading military commander Mordechai Gur triumphantly declared that the “Temple Mount”, not far from where the Israeli Attorney General Office is located today in occupied East Jerusalem, “is in our hands”. President of the Israeli Supreme Court Shimon Agranat, an ardent American Jewish nationalist celebrated the occupation of the Eastern part of Jerusalem in a court ruling. Two scholars of law debated whether East Jerusalem is redeemable by Zionist ideology (Yehuda Blum) or a diplomatic aspect ought to be considered as well while actively taking grip of the city on the ground (Yoram Dinstein). The Knesset annexed and applied Israeli law in the occupied city shortly after 1967 generating a very fragile residency for Palestinians there while constantly encroaching on their national identity as well as basic political, social, economic, and cultural rights. Aliens in their homeland. International law proclaimed the contrary about the Israeli measures and its scholarly interpretations rendering them illegal.

 

The constant illegality of the Israeli policies regarding East Jerusalem is overwhelming. It persists to this day and encompasses all of Israel’s attempts to transform the city into another ancient Jewish one that suddenly awakened and became Israeli: the annexation, the settlements, and declaring it as the capital of Israel by a basic law that enjoys a constitutional standing domestically. United Nations Security Council resolutions, General Assembly resolutions, and the International Court of Justice have all declared and reiterated Israel’s illegal presence and conduct in East Jerusalem.[4]

 

UN Security Council resolution 478 of 20 August 1980, adopted with no objections while the United States abstained reaffirmed Israel’s refusal to comply with previous resolutions regarding its violative conduct in Jerusalem and abolished the validity of the Basic Law adopted in the Knesset which pronounced Jerusalem as the country’s capital. Not only did it breach international law, but was also null and void:

Recalling its resolution 476 (1980),

 

Reaffirming again that the acquisition of territory by force is inadmissible,

Deeply concerned over the enactment of a "basic law" in the Israeli Knesset proclaiming a change in the character and status of the Holy City of Jerusalem, with its implications for peace and security,

 

Noting that Israel has not complied with resolution 476 (1980),

 

Reaffirming its determination to examine practical ways and means, in accordance with the relevant provisions of the Charter of the United Nations, to secure the full implementation of its resolution 476 (1980), in the event of non-compliance by Israel,

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1. Censures in the strongest terms the enactment by Israel of the "basic law" on Jerusalem and the refusal to comply with relevant Security Council resolutions;

2. Affirms that the enactment of the "basic law" by Israel constitutes a violation of international law and does not affect the continued application of the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, of 12 August 1949, in the Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied since June 1967, including Jerusalem;

3. Determines that all legislative and administrative measures and actions taken by Israel, the occupying Power, which have altered or purport to alter the character and status of the Holy City of Jerusalem, and in particular the recent "basic law" on Jerusalem, are null and void and must be rescinded forthwith;

…

5. Decides not to recognize the "basic law" and such other actions by Israel that, as a result of this law, seek to alter the character and status of Jerusalem and calls upon: (a) All Member States to accept this decision;

(b) Those States that have established diplomatic missions at Jerusalem to withdraw such missions from the Holy City;

 

Following the lead of the Israeli government, Israeli courts, from the Supreme Court down, acknowledge the illegal annexation of East Jerusalem and deny international law’s clear opposite proclamation. While courts’ role in contributing to the reproduction of institutional history is not new nor interesting discovery, in Israel’s case it retains a special nationalist admission when it is emotionally lectured by a Supreme Court Judge. Daphna Barak-Erez continue to long for Ben-Gurion’s period, disregarding his and his era’s atrocities, in an attempt to help form a non-convincing imagined community that at best requires parallel conditions of being.[5]

 

In 1995 American Congress overwhelmingly adopted the Jerusalem Embassy Act which included grave historical an international law errors, aimed at keeping the entire city of Jerusalem, including the occupied part under Israeli sovereignty. American Presidents refrained from relocating the embassy to Jerusalem, in line with an exception in this act. In December 2017 financially endorsed by Sheldon Adelson American President Donald Trump followed the 1995 American act and its gross international law errors, acknowledged ‘unified’ Jerusalem as capital of Israel, and ordered to move the American embassy there. Trump’s move was debunked internationally.[6]

 

Full with fundamental and messianic passion about Israel, the current American President Joe Biden failed to revoke his predecessor’s Jerusalem decision which amounts to adopting Trump’s illegality. Biden, and his Secretary of State Blinken, have also remained silent about former Secretary of State Pompeo’s declaration that establishing Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories, including East Jerusalem, is not contrary to international law which is a near unanimous legal assertion internationally. Jerusalem, like Palestine, should be distanced from abusive domestic and foreign American policy. Diplomatically if possible or by any means necessary.

 

Jerusalem forms part of the Question of Palestine, simply because it is an integral segment of its geography historically, politically, and culturally. It ought not be reduced to an Israeli civil rights issue, or an object for humanitarian activity. Israel’s insistence to deny Jerusalem’s character and basic rights for Palestinians by the brute force of its bureaucracy, military, and a-historical nationalism in all of its forms are a demonstration of its inherent apartheid nature. It is a glaring invitation to engage in informed oppositional behavior.

 

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[1] See, for example, Kermit Roosevelt, “The Partition of Palestine: A Lesson in Pressure Politics”, 2(1) Middle East Journal, pp. 1-16 (1948); Bruce Evensen, “The Limits of Presidential Leadership: Truman at War with Zionists, the Press, Public Opinion, and His Own State Department Over Palestine”, 23(2) Presidential Studies Quarterly, pp.269-287 (1993).

[2] Here performed by singer Si Heyman. See also Meron Benvenisti, “The Hebrew Map”, 11 Theory and Criticism, pp.7-29 (1997)(Hebrew); Meir Amor, “And in the Leading Role: The White Native Israeli”, Ha-Okets, 7 October 2012 (Hebrew).

[3] See Nathan Krystal, “The De-Arabisation of West Jerusalem 1947 – 50”, 27(2) Journal of Palestine Studies, pp.5-22 (1998); Jerusalem 1948: The Arab Neighborhoods and their Fate in the War (Salim Tamari Ed.)(The Institute of Jerusalem Studies & Badil Resource Center, 2002); George Bisharat, “Talbiyeh Days: At Villa Harun Ar-Rashid”, 30 Jerusalem Quarterly, pp.88-98 (2007).

[4] See UN Security Council resolutions 252 of 21 May 1968; 267 of 3 July 1969; 271 of 15 September 1969; 298 of 25 September 1971; 465 of 1 March 1980; 672 of 12 October 1990; 1073 of 28 September 1993; and 2334 of 23 December 2016. UN General Assembly resolutions 2253 (ES-V) of 4 July 1967; 2254 of 14 July 1967; 36/120 E of 10 December 1981; 56/31 of 10 December 2001; ES-10/19 of 21 December 2017; and 76/12 of 6 December 2021. Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Advisory Opinion, I.C.J. Reports 2004, 9 July 2004, p.136, paras.75-78.

[5] Daphan Barak Erez, Law, History, and Culture in Israel, Lecture in Honor of Prof. Yoram Shahar, Reichman University, 18 May 2022. In October 2021 she also lectured about Biblical Justice and Law in Israel at a local religious seminar. Barak Erez has cultivated close ties with contract law Prof. Nilli Cohen, Daniel Friedman’s student and main collaborative colleague, who ignited a war of administrative attrition simply because she was not appointed to the position of a Supreme Court judge. Friedman, probably the archetype of the Israeli attorney and judge (nationalist, civil law oriented, on the verge of manipulative on international law issues, easy to refute, and uninspiring) is a product of and continue to long for Israel’s early days. He also has the audacity to lecture about the status of Palestinians in Israel in his ‘historical writings’. The three, Freidman, Cohen, and Barak Erez should be dismissed as problematic and irrelevant forming part of Israel’s endless national project. See Ronit Vardi, “The Shadows Woman”, Globes, 6 March 2007 (Hebrew).

[6] Peter Beaumont, “US outnumbered 14 to 1 as it vetoes UN vote on Status of Jerusalem”, The Guardian, 19 December 2017; Peter Beaumont, “UN votes resoundingly to reject Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as capital”, The Guardian, 21 December 2017.