THE STATE OF ISRAEL AND THE JERUSALEM QUESTION, 1948s-2017

Abstract

It is a given that every state chooses its capital, a right that is intrinsic to its sovereignty. In the country Israel, the hope which kept the dispersed Jewish people connected to the Eretz Yisrael (land of Israel) for two millennia became their national Anthem in the country found on the edge of dicey eventuality. Israel’s choice of Jerusalem as its undivided capital is an Act of the Knesset, the Jerusalem Law, 1980. The contrasting reactions and concerns that greeted American recognition of Jerusalem as Israeli’s capital on December 6, 2017 call for re-evaluation of the Jerusalem status. The status of Jerusalem as a corpus separatum (separated body) is the politically correct assumption or strategy which has failed to solve the old problem, the Israeli-Palestine conflict. It becomes pertinent to forge a new approach; because the Israeli question is pivotal to the intra-Mediterranean integration, global security and development. This study is a new approach, a historical approach into the Israeli question and its attendant interplay of war and peace, intimidation and occupation, development and contradiction which has marked its existence. While adopting qualitative method of historical analysis, which in the main is descriptive, chronological and thematic, the study examines Israel’s history from 1948 to 2017 through the prism of Challenge and Response theory. It is the finding of this paper that Israel has the clearest and greatest historical connection to Jerusalem. This historical fact, the paper suggests, is the spring board upon which the peace process and two- state solution will stand.