Jerusalem

Preface


The city of Jerusalem has been the historic, spiritual, cultural, commercial and political capital for the Palestinians since they established it more than 5000 years ago. Beside the inalienable right of the Palestinian refugees to return to their homeland, it is the key to peace in the Middle East.

Israeli leaders and their powerful lobby machine around the world continue to repeat many lies to justify and give credence to their colonialist project in Palestine and Jerusalem.

Palestine’s history does not start nor end with Jewish history as Zionists proselytise. Similarly, the Zionist narrative of history and their Zionisation of the Bible to suit their colonialist project does not give legitimacy to their colonialism, racial discrimination and violations of human rights and international law.

When Israeli leaders say “Jerusalem has been the capital of Israel for three thousand years” they are maliciously attempting to rewrite history.

Jerusalem was established 5000 years ago by the Jebusites, an Arab Canaanite sub-group, whose descendants are the Palestinians of today, and has throughout history been their capital. They were a settled, urban and advanced society before nomadic Hebrews came to their homeland.

When Abraham and his Hebrew tribe arrived in Palestine for the first time from Ur in Mesopotamia (today’s Iraq), Palestine was already inhabited, and Jerusalem had been a prosperous and walled city for over 1000 years. The Old Testament tells us that the king of Jerusalem at the time, King al-Adel al-Sadek al-Salem, went to the outskirts of Jerusalem to welcome Abraham and his tribe and offered gifts of bread and wine.

When Moses led the Jews out of Egypt in circa 1250 BC to conquer the land of the Canaanites, he described it to them saying:

(It is full of) great and goodly cities which you did not build, and houses full of good things which you did not fill, and cisterns hewn out which you did not hew, and vineyards and olive trees which you did not plant … (Deuteronomy 6:10–11)

Jews have no historic right over Palestine or Jerusalem; if anyone has historic rights it is the indigenous Palestinian people.

Jerusalem is holy to Moslems, Christians and Jews; being holy to Jews however doesn’t give Jews the right to colonise the city, just as Catholic Americans have no right to colonise the Vatican because it’s holy to them and Indonesian Moslems to occupy Mecca because it’s holy to them; nor does it give Jews superior rights over the indigenous Moslems and Christians.

Throughout their long history Palestine and Jerusalem endured many invasions and occupations; some continued for centuries, but it has ultimately always been liberated. Jews in the past ruled Jerusalem for about 72 years.

Secondly, some Jews say Solomon’s Temple existed on the same location as al-Haram al-Sharif (The Noble Sanctuary) which houses the third Holy Mosque, al-Aqsa, and the Dome of the Rock Mosque and is one of the most sacred grounds in Islam. But no one knows where Solomon’s temple was. Some Jews and Bible scholars and archaeologists even doubt it was in Jerusalem.

Solomon is said to have used a vast quantity of copper in furnishing the temple in Jerusalem. Two colossal, hollow copper pillars eight meters tall, 1.7 meters in diameter and topped with 2.2-meter capitals are said to have stood at the entrance to the temple (1 Kings 7:15-16.). The copper "molten sea," a huge basin used by the priests for washing, had a capacity of 66,000 liters (1 Kings 7:23-26, 44-46). That's 66 tons in displacement volume.[i]

"And he made a molten sea, ten cubits from the one brim to the other: it was round all about, and his height was five cubits: and a line of thirty cubits did compass it round about." (1 Kings 7:23)

It is said the temple had 1.6 tons of gold, 16 tons of silver and 180 thousand workers participated in building it.

So, if the temple was in that spot of land and as huge as described, with such fixtures, surely such ruins and fixtures would have been found by now.

Certain claims of finding the ruins of David's Palace at the entrance to the Palestinian village of Silwan were rebutted by other Israeli professors of archaeology.[ii]

The archaeology of Jerusalem is diverse - decades of excavations in the Old City and the area surrounding before its occupation in 1967 and underneath al-Haram al-Sharif since, revealed Umayyad Islamic palaces, Roman ruins, Armenian ruins and others, but no tangible archaeological evidence has been produced to substantiate the existence of Solomon’s Temple at the same location as al-Haram al-Sharif.

Al-Buraq’s Wall, which is the western wall of al-Haram al-Sharif, called also the Western Wall and the Wailing Wall, consists of two parts. The bottom part which can be traced to the first century BC does not differ in any way from other walls found all around the city; the stones used to build this wall are no different from any other stone walls found all over the old city of Jerusalem, not in the type of the stone, nor in its finishing or anything else. The upper part was built during the Umayyad period when the Aqsa Mosque was built. From a topographic point of view, the wall is a retaining supportive wall of the structure of the Aqsa Mosque compound.

The first and second temples of Solomon, which no one knows exactly where they were, stood for a combined total of just over 800 years and have not existed for 2000 years, whereas al-Haram al-Sharif has existed for the last 1400 years. However, even if the temple had been there, it does not give Israel and its fanatics the right to destroy the magnificent and sacred 1400 year old compound, the Noble Sanctuary, holy to over one and half billion Moslems, particularly when Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, David, Solomon and other prophets are all part of Islam and Moslems’ beliefs. Let alone the fact that it was not the Moslems who destroyed the temple but the Babylonians and the Romans.

1. Essays
The history of Jerusalem by Mahdi Abdul Hadi
The Dome of the Rock: Jerusalem’s epicenter by Walid Khalidi
The transformation of Jerusalem, 1948 by Ibrahim Mattar
Jerusalem and its changing boundaries by the Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs
The status of Jerusalem in international law by Palestinian Negotiations Affairs Department
Jerusalem under United Nations resolutions by Henry Cattan
The strangulation of the Arab Palestinian city by Dr. Jad Isaac
Jerusalem and the peace process by Riziq Shuqair
Projecting Jerusalem by Edward W. Said
On Jerusalem by Sari Nusseibeh
Sharing Jerusalem: The condominium solution by John V. Whitbeck

2. Zionism and the Bible
The ideology of Zionism by Hassan Sa’b
The Bible says it’s Ours by Council for the Advancement of Arab British
Understanding Christian Zionists, Israel and American politics by Rev. Donald Wagner

3. Human Rights
Systemic racial and religious oppression by Ali Kazak
Human rights in East Jerusalem by Assocation for Civil Rights in Israel
A policy of discrimination by B’tselem

4. Facts and Figures
5. Quotes
6. Chronology
7. Documents
8. UN and other resolutions, communiqués, and declarations