The Complexities of Living in Israel

July 5, 2017

The Status of Jerusalem

“Fifty years ago we returned to the heart of our capital and our country, and 50 years ago we did not conquer—we liberated…With the bravery of our soldiers and with the love of our people, Jerusalem was reunited and so, today, I say to the world with a loud and clear voice—Jerusalem was and always will be the capital of Israel. The Temple Mount and the Western Wall will always remain under Israeli sovereignty.”

Prime Minister Netanyahu, speaking at the Jerusalem Day ceremony

 “Was Jerusalem ever the capital of another people but the Jewish people? There was no such thing. Has anyone other than us guarded the freedom of worship of believers of all religions? Quite the opposite. This is guaranteed to all religions only under Israeli sovereignty.”

PM Netanyahu speaking at Ammunition Hill on Jerusalem Day

“East Jerusalem, with its holy sites for Islam and Christianity, is the capital of the Palestinian state and will remain so forever.”

Spokesman for PA President Abbas, responding to PM Netanyahu

“We will always insist on Jerusalem…There never has been, there will never be any other reality. Here, in these stones, beats the heart of the Jewish people…Jerusalem is the heart of the State of Israel, and the Kotel (Wall) is the heart of Jerusalem…We gave our all for Jerusalem.”

President Rivlin speaking at the Jerusalem Day ceremony

Jewish Construction in Judea and Samaria

[The European Parliament] called for Israel to immediately stop construction of new settlements as they were “illegal under international law, undermine the two-state solution, and constitute a major obstacle to peace efforts.”

Resolution passed by the European Parliament

“How could I feel like a settler? I am at home here,” he said.

Yohanan Ben Yaakov, 72-year-old who was born in Kfar Etzion, was evacuated in 1948 and returned in 1967

“We will continue to safeguard the settlement enterprise and strengthen it… no one will be uprooted from his home… I am doing all that is necessary in order to preserve the settlement in Judea and Samaria. We can safeguard the settlement enterprise without bringing a catastrophe on it, if we work together. The past has proven that when we worked together we succeeded, and when we split up, the State of Israel was harmed.”

PM Netanyahu, speaking at an event to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Six Day War

 “The Israeli settlements are illegal—by extension, all settlement goods are tainted by illegality. The UK should no longer be party to this.”

Kate Allen, Director of Amnesty International, UK

Palestinian Incitement

“Peace can never take root in an environment where violence is tolerated, funded and even rewarded…We must be resolute in condemning such acts in a single unified voice.”

US President Trump speaking to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas

Payments to Palestinian terrorists “are an official incentive program for murder that in any other context would be recognized as state sponsorship of terror.”

The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board

“I heard Abu Mazen, who praises terrorists and pays them according to the severity of the murders they committed against Israelis,” Netanyahu said. “I heard Abu Mazen say that the Palestinians are also educating their children for peace. I regret that this is simply incorrect. They name their schools after mass murderers of Israelis and they pay terrorists.”

PM Netanyahu speaking after President Trump met President Abbas in Washington DC

Commitment to Negotiate

“I don’t think Israel can offer more. Listen. Take, for example, the disengagement [from Gaza]…in 2005. We left Gaza, we dismantled the settlements, the army left, we even left them with 3,000 greenhouses for them to build an economy for themselves, and instead of doing so, they fired 15,000 missiles on our children and women and elderly…The question is not how you draw the map. The question is the seriousness of the players involved. We are serious. We’ve been serious for many, many years now, and the Palestinians were playing games.”

Yair Lapid, head of Yesh Atid, during an interview on Fox News

 “The root of the matter is the stubborn, violent refusal of the Palestinian side to accept the Jewish state—and the capital of the Jews—in any borders.”

PM Netanyahu speaking at a plenum session of the Knesset on Jerusalem Day

“There can be no concession over any part of the land of Palestine, for whatever reason and under any circumstances and pressures, and no matter how long the occupation … Hamas rejects any alternative to the total liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea.”

Excerpt from Hamas’s new political platform presented by Khaled Meshaal

“If we liberate Palestine though the resistance until the 1967 borders, we will go directly to liberate the rest of Palestine and the territories of 1948, and there will be no negotiations.”

Hamas co-founder Mahmoud al-Zahar, speaking in Gaza

And What Does the Lord Say?

“‘I will plant them in their land, and no longer shall they be pulled up from the land I have given them,’ says the LORD your God” (Amos 9:15).

“Against all My evil neighbors who touch the inheritance which I have caused My people Israel to inherit—behold…if they will learn carefully the ways of My people, to swear by My name, ‘As the LORD lives,’ as they taught My people to swear by Baal, then they shall be established in the midst of My people. But if they do not obey, I will utterly pluck up and destroy that nation,” says the LORD (Jer. 12:14, 16–17).

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