Happy holiday, Jews. Today is the day we mark the liberation of Jerusalem. Our parents and grandparents dreamed of this city, which we do not appreciate enough, which has become something we take for granted – a city without walls and barbed wire. A city without sniper fire from Jordanian legionnaires on the Old City wall. One with free access to the Western Wall and Rachel's Tomb and Shimon HaTzadik (and somewhat less free access to the Temple Mount). A mixed city, in which terrorism and violence and extremism – despite the deceptive impression – are the exception, not the rule, while the threads that hold Jews and Arabs together in everyday normalcy are much more numerous and dominant; a complicated city that is home to Arabs and Jews and Haredim and secular people.
Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter
But also a city in which 40% of its Jewish residents, about 230,000 people, live in an area erroneously termed "east Jerusalem," to the north, south, and even east of the old borders that will never return.
Those borders will never return, not only thanks to the Jewish population that Israel planted there, and not only because of the renewed Jewish right to settle the city of David and the Old City between the walls. The old borders will never again return because of the demography of consciousness that has completely changed. When progressive circles in the US try, with help from research institutions, to redraw delusional borders to the city and create a division and feed with "two capitals" the decision-makers in the Biden administration, demography of thought tells a different story. Eighty-four percent of the 936,000 residents of the capital weren't born when the city was divided. They don't know the reality of a division. Many polls indicate that they don't want one. This wheel cannot be turned back, and that's a good thing. These same people comprise 90% of the city's Arab population (323,000 people) and about 80% of the city's Jews (467,000). Only 150,000 people (Jews and Arabs) out of the total population of Jerusalem were born before 1967 and lived here while the city was divided. It's doubtful they miss that same, slightly neglected, city, blocked off to construction and development from three sides.
What appears to unite most of the Jews and most of the Arabs in Jerusalem today is that they reject any physical division of the city, one that would entail a border with a fence and a wall, a border that could lead to a security, economic, and urban catastrophe. When it comes to everything else, we'll probably keep fighting, arguing, and winning, but we should all agree to this minimal demand: That Jerusalem not be divided again.
There are many issues in Jerusalem that can be improved. The level of services and infrastructure in its Arab neighborhoods, true freedom of access to the Temple Mount for Jews, a serious housing shortage, and more. Jerusalem is not a project for the fainthearted. We must not weary. It poses many challenges, but the liberation of Jerusalem and the return to our holiest places, which we mark today, are foundational, joyful events no less than another one we celebrate every year: Independence Day.
Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!
