Rattling the Cage: Obama, it's about time

[grassfed]

First, a little moral clarity on our crisis with Washington. If it were possible to build 1,600 apartments for Palestinians in the Jewish parts of Jerusalem, there would be no problem with Ramat Shlomo, the planned housing project that set off the Obama administration’s anger.

If you could build Palestinian housing in Jewish Jerusalem, then Israel’s capital would be a city with liberty, justice and equality for all, and Ramat Shlomo would just be another neighborhood.

But you can’t build housing for Palestinians in Jewish Jerusalem. By Israeli law, Arabs are effectively prohibited not only from building new homes but even from buying old ones in the Jewish parts of the city.

Meanwhile, Jews can buy and build in the capital wherever they want – in the Jewish parts and the Arab parts. This has been going on since the end of the Six Day War, and now about 200,000 Jewish residents live on the “liberated” side of Jerusalem. Ramat Shlomo would increase their population by another 10,000 or so. The system for Jews and Arabs in Jerusalem is not liberty, justice and equality. The system is separate and unequal, and this has been official policy in Israel’s capital for 43 years. The only way to change it, the only possible way to bring democracy to Jerusalem, is to let the Palestinians build their capital on their side of the city, the side Israel conquered in 1967.

The problem with Ramat Shlomo is that it takes away that much more land from a would-be Palestinian capital, making it that much harder to create a Palestinian state next to Israel, which makes it that much harder to bring liberty, justice, equality and peace to this land.

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1. Michael Oren Israeli ambassador lies about Arab building rights in NYT

"Consistently, Israel has held that Jerusalem should remain its undivided capital and that both Jews and Arabs have the right to build anywhere in the city."
- Michael Oren NY Times Mar 17