JERUSALEM page 60

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tional materials (including
posters, workbooks, CD-ROMs,
etc.) and encouraging correspon-
dence between children in the Di-
aspora and Jerusalem children
through its pen-pal program.
The Jerusalem Symphony Or-
chestra has commissioned three
works in honor of Jerusalem. One
is from Polish composer Kristof
Penderecki and the other two
from Israeli composers Noam
Sheriff and Yinam Leef. These
works will have their first per-
formance during the year at the
orchestra's subscription concerts.
Rumors abound about the pos-
sible appearances of stars like
Barbra Streisand and Whitney
Houston.
The city is also due to under-
take a major and extremely cost-

ly project to light up some 150
historical sites, which will make
the ancient city of David much
more accessible to tourists; an
amphitheater and a children's
park are being constructed by the
Jewish National Fund; and the
World Zionist Organization is
planning to build a model of the
city — "Jerusalem in Miniature."
It is written in a tractate in the
Babylonian Talmud, Kiddushin
49B, that `Ten measures of beau-
ty were bestowed upon the world;
nine were taken by Jerusalem
and one by the rest of the world."
Throughout 1996 this unique city
of beauty, unrivaled by any oth-
er in history, will hold an edu-
cational, artistic and cultural
feast of feasts — fit for the king
himself. ❑

Israel's Claim
In Jerusalem

LAWRENCE RIFKIN SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS

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T

hough some experts in in-
ternational law say there
is little real legal docu-
mentation backing Israel's
claim to Jerusalem, Israel bases
its claim on unwavering histori-
cal and demographic evidence.
The city has been the focal
point of the hopes and prayers of
the Jewish people for 3,000 years,
since Kung David made it his cap-
ital, and it is where David's son,
Solomon, built the Holy Temple.
It remained the capital city of the
Jewish people for the next mil-
lennium.
Jerusalem is mentioned hun-
dreds of times in Jewish prayers
and scriptures; Jews face in the
direction of the city when they
pray, and after they were exiled
by the Romans, Jews everywhere
would regularly recite the pas-
sage from Psalms 137: "If I for-
get thee, 0 Jerusalem, let my
right hand forget its cunning."
While the city is holy to adher-
ents of the two other great
monotheistic religions, for Jews
it is the most holy place. "No oth-
er city," wrote former Mayor Ted-
dy Kollek, "has played such a
dominant role in the history, cul-
ture, religion and consciousness
of a people as has Jerusalem in
the life of Jewry and Judaism."
Despite the millennia of exile,
Jews have always lived in the
city. In fact, by the 1830s, Jews
had become its largest single
community, and well before the
turn of the century they made up
the majority of its residents. To-
day, Jerusalem's population is
approximately three-quarters
Jewish.
Juridically, however, there is
little to go on. There have been
but two internationally recog-

nized decisions on Jerusalem: the
Status Quo, the 1852 Ottoman
capitulation to Europe over con-
trol of the city's Christian holy
sites, and the United Nations Se-
curity Council Resolution 181,
which, in 1947, recommended
that Palestine be partitioned into
Jewish and Arab sections and
Jerusalem made an interna-
tionally-controlled demilitarized
enclave.
According to Yehuda Blum, a
former Israel ambassador to the
U.N. and an expert on interna-
tional law, the 1948 Arab-Israeli
war effectively nullified Resolu-
tion 181. What's more, with the
British gone and Israel the only
sovereign state in what had been
Palestine, Israel was acting with-
in the law by extending its rule
to the areas its army was left
holding, which included
Jerusalem. By contrast, Mr.
Blum says, Jordan's claim to
Jerusalem was invalid because
it had invaded from across an in-
ternational border.
According to Hebrew Univer-
sity law professor Ruth Lapidoth,
Israel believes it was legally able
to extend its law and jurisdiction
to the eastern half of Jerusalem
following the 1967 Six-Day War
for the same reason it was able
to do so with the western half af-
ter the fighting of 1948. Israel be-
lieves its claim is strengthened
by the fact that in 1967, Jordan
fired the first shots.
In a recent issue of the legal
affairs magazine Justice, how-
ever, Professor Lapidoth ques-
tioned whether the extension of
Israeli law to eastern Jerusalem
and the subsequent extension of

ISRAEL'S CLAIM page 64