A satisfactory and consensual political resolution of the question of Jerusalem has eluded diplomats and statesmen. The British Peel Commission of 1937 recommended a two-state solution in the land that included a Jewish state and an Arab state, with greater Jerusalem to be administered by the British authorities. In 1947 the United Nations Partition Resolution also proposed that Jerusalem be a separate entity under international trusteeship, thus excluded from the sovereign domain of the Jewish and Arab states as proposed. When the Israeli-Jordanian fighting ended in Jerusalem in late 1948, the city was effectively divided between Jewish west Jerusalem and Arab east Jerusalem. This was a result of war and not a prescription for peace.

The division of the city did not prevent the Israeli government from declaring it the capital of the state, nor obstruct Jewish demographic growth which doubled to 200,000 by 1967. Jordan meanwhile proved to be the serial violator of its obligations under the Armistice Agreement, destroying Jewish synagogues and desecrating the Mount of Olives cemetery, denying Jewish access to the Western Wall while sniping at Jewish residents and buildings adjacent to the Old City in western Jerusalem.

The liberation of east Jerusalem in the Six Day War led to the unification of the city under Israeli sovereignty and subject to Israeli law. To solidify Jewish control and presence across the former armistice lines dividing the city, we can detect two periods in construction projects and Jewish demographic expansion.

Mayor Teddy Kollek, fulfilling a vision of prime minister Levi Eshkol, promoted the reconstruction of the Jewish Quarter in the Old City and the development of large new Jewish neighborhoods, like Gilo and Armon HaNatziv at the southern end of the city, Ramat Eshkol and French Hill adjacent to the former frontier boundary, and Neve Ya’akov and Pisgat Ze’ev in the north.…

Under successive mayors—Olmert, Lupolianski and Barkat—an additional and alternative conception guided the Jewish spread throughout the city, through establishing a Jewish presence in Arab-inhabited areas: facilitating Jewish property acquisition or sometimes reacquisition of former Jewish homes in the Muslim and Christian quarters of the Old City, developing the City of David in Silwan/Hashiloah, as in Sheikh Jarrah/Shimon Hazaddik, with small groups of Jews in A-Tur/Mount of Olives, Abu Tor, Beit Orot/Mt. Scopus, Ras al-Amud/Ma’ale Zeitim, and Beit Nissan Beck/Giorgia quarter opposite the Damascus/ Shechem Gate of the Old City.

These and additional locations were designed to have Jews in east Jerusalem politically hinder the possibility of a future Israeli withdrawal from parts of the eastern city areas. By 2012 the population of Jerusalem approximated three quarters of a million people, some two-thirds of which are Jews and a third Arabs.…

Israel’s multi-faceted policy toward Jerusalem and the geo-demographic processes of the last decades have established the city as a single political and administrative unit. The Arab population chooses not to vote in municipal elections for fear of providing legitimacy to Israeli rule, yet this enables Israel to actually imprint its political monopoly over the entire city. This dialectical development affords insight into the subtle dynamic of things. Israel exercises de facto sovereign rule over the city, no less consistent with the 1980 Jerusalem: Basic Law, yet concedes daily authority to the Muslims over the Temple Mount. The Palestinians for their part enjoy the full range of liberty of movement and expression, though they have succumbed to a numbing state of collective de-politicization.…

The prospect is therefore one of continued Israeli control for the foreseeable future. For Israel to withdraw from any part of Jerusalem and allow a Palestinian capital in the city would be a depletion of the soul of the Jewish people. Palestinian sovereignty in east Jerusalem, no less any official recognition of Islamic control over the Temple Mount, would spark Muslim militancy and bellicosity throughout the country, and beyond. For Israel to withdraw from any part of Jerusalem would expose the Jews of the city to grave security threats and terrorism.… In order to secure west Jerusalem as the focus of vibrant Jewish life, Israel must maintain its control over east Jerusalem as well.…

The Jewish people have come home to their historic and spiritual capital, and Israel is fulfilling its national mandate in governing and developing Greater Jerusalem. This is a blessing which many curse, but a blessing whose splendor spreads its light to all peoples and faiths—inhabitants, tourists, and pilgrims—to enjoy the freedom and security, prosperity and poetry, of the Holy City.