Newsletter
Newsletter Support JNS

Nadav Shragai

Nadav Shragai is a veteran Israeli journalist.

The transfer of Palestinians has been proposed before. Dr. Yoav Gelber delves into the historical and current options.
The Turkish cultural and nationalist awakening in Israel’s capital, strongly felt by the residents of eastern Jerusalem, is backed by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who as we know sees himself as the father of an Ottoman caliphate that will one day return to Jerusalem.
Beyond international law, on which Britain ostensibly relies when it refers to eastern Jerusalem as “occupied Palestinian territory,” someone needs to respectfully give Prince William a history lesson on the city: In a nutshell, Islam, which demands Jerusalem and its holy sites, only showed up on the scene some 2,000 years after the people of Israel became a nation.
Eastern Jerusalem, if you need to be reminded, is not an isolated settlement or a fringe outpost. Some 40 percent of the city’s Jews, some 215,000 people, live there. Altogether, the area makes up about 61 percent of the total population.
Israel must not ignore the ridiculous statements from the Turkish president, bizarre though they might be, because many people in the Muslim street buy what he says.
The United States is effectively saying that there will be no future negotiations over west Jerusalem, but this is not the case with regard to the east.
For years, the main threats to the Temple Mount came from Jewish extremists. But two recently thwarted attacks planned by cells of Israeli Arab ISIS supporters indicate that the volatile holy site is now the target of jihadi terrorism.