We are not occupiers in Jerusalem, as the Palestinians repeatedly and falsely claim to the world. A nation is not an occupier in its land and in its capital. Nevertheless, over the last month, we have once again fallen into the trap and reverted to talking about security and strategy at a time when the issue of Jerusalem must not be raised in the context of existential and tactical claims alone.
Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram
Our ties and commitment to this city exceed the concern, important in and of itself, for physical existence and security. They mainly rely on the tradition, religion, culture, and Jewish history we have ceased to talk about. When Israel's first Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion was required in 1948 to join the campaign for Jerusalem, he reminded the people that "Jerusalem's value is immeasurable" and "cannot be weighed or counted."
"If the land had a soul," he explained, "then Jerusalem is its soul … The campaign for Jerusalem is a campaign, and not just from a military perspective … That oath 'on the rivers of Babylon' is just as binding today as it was in those days, otherwise, we would not be deserving of the name the people of Israel."
Today, though, there is no longer any talk of rights. Faced with the impertinent connection Hamas is trying to forge between the Gaza Strip and Jerusalem, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, Foreign Minister and Prime Minister-designate Yair Lapid, Finance Minister Avigdor Lieberman, and Defense Minister Benny Gantz have been left dumbstruck and disappeared from sight. Perhaps it is due to the fear of Mansour Abbas' Ra'am party that this impossible coalition is dependent on. Or perhaps it is an inherent weakness. Whatever the reason, the so-called "change" government has erased the rights discourse, in particular as concerns Jerusalem, which was once an inseparable part of our DNA.
Its absence is particularly conspicuous at this time, especially as it was so prominent in the Palestinian and greater Arab discourse on the issue. They are not ashamed to kiss the "earth of their land," to endlessly lie about their past here and to rewrite and falsify history.
Our language, by contrast, has grown weak and diluted. A legitimate, international demand cannot be made for Hebron beyond the "Green Line," or Beersheba within that line – and Jerusalem and the Temple Mount, the Western Wall, and the City of David, in particular – without the Bible, our ancestors, and Jewish history.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was right to describe Jerusalem as an Israeli settlement: It is the largest and most justifiable Israeli settlement in history.
Here we must talk about nature itself and the nature of our connection to this city and our firstborn rights to it, from the time of King David and the First and Second Temples to the 1929 riots, the 1967 Six-Day War, and up until our time.
We must speak clearly, without hesitation, and without apology. We must draw a red line and make clear that here, in Jerusalem - the Jewish people's most quintessential memory pattern – we are not occupiers. We must make clear that the Green Line is dead, that the renunciation of our rights in Jerusalem will undermine our right to the Land of Israel, and that there will no more divisions – of neighborhoods, of the Old City, and certainly not of the Temple Mount – here.
The Temple Mount may have been closed to Jews at the end of this Ramadan, but there, too, we must be able to speak to the truth: The only reason Jews have been praying along the Western Wall for over a thousand years is the barricades – whether diplomatic or Halachich – preventing them from praying on the Temple Mount itself.
Compared to all the other synagogues, the Western Wall may be the holiest spiritual place. But it is not a holy site. It isn't even the Western Wall of the temple, as was mistakenly reasoned for hundreds of years but rather the western wall of the Temple Mount compound. It is sanctified for its own reasons, but it is not the holiest place to the Jewish people as Foreign Minister and Prime Minister-designate Yair Lapid recently erroneously claimed.
The Temple Mount, upon which the Muslims established two houses of worship 1,300 years ago, is the holiest place for the Jews and just the third holiest place for Sunni Muslims, after Mecca and Medina. The Western Wall is the replacement for the Temple Mount - a retroactive solution and not the solution in the first place, and an apparently necessary step on the way to the mount. The Western Wall is the hallway, while the Temple Mount is the living room.
It was only a Halachic ruling, which has been largely overturned, that throughout generations prevented Jews from ascending the site and left us at the foot of the mount.
We are tied to the Western Wall through the thickness of tears and sanctity, but it is only the replacement. The source, which one day, too, will have Jewish prayer arranged there, is the mount.
Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!
