“The city being of such evidently minor religious importance, why does it now loom so large for Muslims, to the point that a Muslim Zionism seems to be in the making across the Muslim world? Why do Palestinian demonstrators take to the streets shouting “We will sacrifice our blood and souls for you, Jerusalem” and their brethren in Jordan yell “We sacrifice our blood and soul for Al-Aqsa”? Why does King Fahd of Saudi Arabia call on Muslim states to protect “the holy city [that] belongs to all Muslims across the world”? Why did two surveys of American Muslims find Jerusalem their most pressing foreign policy issue?

Because of politics. An historical survey shows that the stature of the city, and the emotions surrounding it, inevitably rises for Muslims when Jerusalem has political significance. Conversely, when the utility of Jerusalem expires, so does its status and the passions about it. This pattern first emerged during the lifetime of the Prophet Muhammad in the early seventh century. Since then, it has been repeated on five occasions: in the late seventh century, in the twelfth century Countercrusade, in the thirteenth century Crusades, during the era of British rule (1917-48), and since Israel took the city in 1967. The consistency that emerges in such a long period provides an important perspective on the current confrontation.”

Their claim is of recent vintage and it has to do with the conflict with the Jews. Jerusalem has never been any more holy to them than any other place they conquered.

Some Muslims for that matter consider al andalus too as holy place in dar al Islam.

In a few years they may even come to consider New York a holy place.

http://www.danielpipes.org/article/84

Gregor, the Arabs never claimed Israel as their holy land and its deceptive to say that they did. Saudi Arabia is their holy land not Israel.

Some people get it:

“Sunday’s Demo

About 700 people turned up yesterday to show their solidarity with Israel yesterday – a mix of anti-fascist groups and the general public. A demanding route leaves my legs in pain, some rain at the start turned into sunshine by the end but all in all a nice action.”

Partioning land and creating separate states isn’t the same as allowing people the right to live in what they consider their holy land. It is deceptive to claim that it is.

Middle Ground in the Middle East?

Audio available at 11:05 a.m.

The war in Lebanon continues. There’s speculation about an expanded conflict involving Syria and Iran. This leads to a question: where’s the middle ground in the Middle East now? Today on Weekday we’ll find out who the moderates are on all sides. And we’ll ask what they’re thinking. What proposals have a chance of bringing the various sides together?

Guests:

Ellis Goldberg is an expert on middle east politics and a political science professor at the University of Washington.

Daniel Levy was a member of the official Israeli negotiating team at the Oslo and Taba talks and the lead Israeli drafter of the Geneva Initiative.

Walid Jumblatt is a Druze leader who sparked the Cedar Revolution in February 2005. He heads Lebanon’s Progressive Socialist Party.

http://www.kuow.org/programs/weekday.asp

It will be available as a streaming archive, and it podcasts too.

It will also stream ‘live’ again at 12:00 (Midnight) Eastern (Friday, officially, but Thursday night) / 9:00 PM Pacific (Thursday night) here: http://www.kxot.org

But they didn’t deny it in 1948 when the Jews accepted the Un partition plan but the Arabs rejected it.

They didn’t deny it in 1967 when they hoped the Arabs would sign a peace treaty in set up an Arab State on the West Bank and Gaza. They didn’t deny it in 2000 when they hoped Arafat would accept a peace accord setting up a Palestinian State and they didn’t deny it last year when they pulled out of Gaza.

It’s the Palestinian Arabs who keep denying the Jews a right to their own State and prefer to send their children to kill Jews.

While it is true that in most conflicts worldwide, refugees are settled in the countries they end up in and do not return home, Israel/Palestine is an extraordinary place with some extraordinary problems.

One thing that has hurt the cause of the Palestinian refugees is the tendency of Westerners and Israelis to lump all Arabic-speaking peoples together under the moniker “Arabs” and ignore real ethnic and cultural differences that have hindered assimilation almost as much as the politics.

Jordan is an excellent example — even the majority Palestinian population outside the refugee camps has been a source of very real strife and contention with the ethnically non-Palestinian Arab population that has historically held the power (thanks to the Hashemite monarchy. The power struggles between Palestinian refugees and the governments of Iraq, Lebanon, and Jordan are easily forgotten by Western commentators to whom an “Arab” population can easily be seen settled in a nearby “Arab” state.

Ultimately the current “peace process” that is focusing on a two-state solution is doomed to failure. Even if the right of return were to be granted (and it will certainly not be without a miracle on the Israeli side), Israel will never give up its strategic control over the Palestinian “state” and the result will be a set of Bantustans in the midst of an Israel that has already demonstrated that it is perfectly willing to conduct military operations at will in any nation anywhere for the sake of defense against terrorist threats.

So yes, I agree with the comments above which suggest that a one-state solution is the only way a lasting and just peace can be brought to the region. The only other possibility is complete Israeli dominance over a Palestinian Bantustan which will be a state in name only, an economic failure, and a festering morass of armed revolt. Right of return to such a state would be like allowing Polish Jews in 1940 the right to “return” from the concentration camps to the Warsaw Ghetto.