Jerusalem is the capital of the Jewish people forever. Even in the darkest times, when the Temple went up in flames and the Romans changed the city's name to Aelia Capitolina, the Jewish people continued to dream of the Temple Mount from a distance, from their desperate exile. As then-Prime Minister Menachem Begin once said, Jerusalem is the capital of the Jewish people by right, not by might. Well, certainly not by might alone. Israeli paratroopers who charged through the Lions Gate in the Six-Day-War, 1,897 years after the destruction of the Temple, did not turn the Temple Mount into a short cut for pedestrians, which is prohibited by Jewish tradition. They came with the prayer "Return in mercy to Jerusalem your city" on their lips, and in their hearts the desire to realize the city's destination as "Jerusalem of Gold," encapsulated just a month earlier in Naomi Shemer's song. That is an axiom. The Six-Day War amended a terrible injustice: the expulsion of Jews from the Old City by the Arabs in 1948. However it left Israel with a political hot potato, and it was no wonder that the government's national religious faction feared Jerusalem's liberation more than others. Amid that instinctive mighty roar of triumph at the sight of the Western Wall, then-Defense Minister Moshe Dayan made an exceptionally wise decision. Acting on the advice of Military Advocate General Meir Shamgar, he ordered the removal of the blue and white flag from the Temple Mount, which was an eyesore to every Muslim, and gave the continued supervision of the holy site to the Jordanian Wakf under Israeli policing. He also, despite the opinions of many people, removed the barriers and barbed wires that had cut the city off, and united it, which was the main purpose. Today there are those who criticize the decision, but in practice, Dayan was the one who enabled the creation of a reality that separates the world's attitude toward Jerusalem from its attitude to any other area in Judea and Samaria. The issue of Jerusalem is the most complicated of all and is yet to be resolved. However, Dayan's decision has allowed the city to maintain its unique tapestry of life for the past 48 years. This year Israel is facing unique political challenges, and it is enough to listen to the voices coming from the U.S., Europe and the Vatican to realize this. The issue of Jerusalem is perhaps the most difficult in the thicket of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But it may be possible to find an interim arrangement there that would take the heavy pressure off Israel's shoulders, in the form of a compromise of Israel administering the Holy Basin together with representatives from the Arab world (not necessarily Palestine) and the U.N. Not so as to let the city slip from our hands, but the opposite, so that most of it stays in Israel's hands.
