Conflict Over Jerusalem

* Amy Wilentz writes as if the history of Jerusalem began in 1967 (Opinion, July 23). Israel did not “take” the Old City from the Jordanians in 1967. In 1948 the British-led and British-financed army of the Emirate of Transjordan, called the Arab Legion, crossed the Jordan River, attacked the new state of Israel and captured East Jerusalem as well as Judea and Samaria (now called the West Bank). Jews living there, some for hundreds of years, were either killed or expelled, their synagogues blown up and their cemeteries desecrated. King Abdullah, who ruled Transjordan, then annexed this newly conquered territory and started calling his country Jordan. Thus Israel “took” nothing from Jordan when it recaptured the Old City and the West Bank in 1967; Jordan was only made to give up the fruits of its 1948 aggression.

No doubt, Arabs have their claims to East Jerusalem, but it is a disservice to readers for Wilentz to misrepresent history that forms the factual basis for the Middle East peace negotiations.

GIDEON KANNER

Burbank

*

Daniel Pipes is dead wrong when he argues that “the debate over Jerusalem consists of an argument between Jews and Muslims over who has the older, better documented and deeper ties to the Holy City” (Commentary, July 21). His biased, selective and derogatory reading of the Muslim attachment to the city fails to comprehend the centrality of Jerusalem to Islam’s profound belief that it is a continuation of the Abrahamic tradition.

More important, however, the issue of Jerusalem is not about feelings and sentiments. It is an issue of conquest and oppression, a political battle between an occupying power and an occupied people and a matter of law and justice. Israel is conducting a military occupation of East Jerusalem. U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, which emphasizes “the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by force,” obliges Israel to withdraw from the territories it seized in 1967, including East Jerusalem, in exchange for peace. The Palestinian people, who are entitled to sovereignty in their capital of East Jerusalem, include both Muslims and Christians. International law and simple human justice demand that the occupation of Arab East Jerusalem end. For genuine and lasting peace to emerge, Palestinians and Israelis, Jews, Muslims and Christians alike, must share the Holy City.

RASHID I. KHALIDI, Director

Center for International

Studies, University of Chicago