JERUSALEM: "On the edge of wilderness." That is how one in all Israel's most renowned authors once described the world the place the brand new U.S. Embassy opened in Jerusalem on Monday. Others commit it to memory very otherwise.
Standing in the valley underneath the hillside the place Israeli and US flags had been being hoisted, Palestinians mentioned the land was the fields of Arab villagers, who grew fig trees, grapes and wheat there.
Everything about Jerusalem is contested, and all the time has been. The status of the holy town is at the middle of a sour struggle.
Upon something Israelis and Palestinians are agreed: the verdict of a global superpower to transport its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem - on Israel's 70th anniversary - is a definitive moment. But there settlement ends.
Israelis imagine that President Donald Trump's management lends weight to their long-held place that Jerusalem is the traditional capital of the Jewish people, and residential to sacred sites such because the Western Wall and the Jewish temples of antiquity.
But Palestinians are outraged at the U.S. stance on a town this is house to more than 300,000 Arabs, and is the third holiest town in Islam.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has refused to meet American officers, and mentioned the United States can not be regarded as a decent dealer.
And as a microcosm of the broader argument the little patch of land chosen for the embassy has its own package deal of complexities, sitting as it does in Arnona, now a mostly Jewish neighbourhood south of Jerusalem's Old City.
NO MAN'S LAND
The web page straddles the line between West Jerusalem and a space referred to as No Man's Land, which was created at the finish of the 1948 struggle between Israel and its Arab neighbours.
After a 1949 armistice Israeli forces pulled again to the west of an agreed line, and Jordanians to the east. In some spaces there was a space in between that became referred to as No Man's Land.
One of those spaces was an enclave between the Jewish neighbourhood of Talpiot and Arab villages to the east.
The space remained a demilitarised zone until the 1967 Six Day War, when Israel captured the West Bank from Jordan, later increasing the limits of Jerusalem and annexing one of the vital Arab villages into town.
The transfer was no longer recognised the world over and the Palestinians proceed to say East Jerusalem, demanding that it should be the capital of a long run Palestinian state.
In February, US State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert conceded that the embassy web page "is located partly in West Jerusalem and what's called the no man's land".
This was confirmed via a senior United Nations reliable, who was no longer accredited to talk publicly given the sensitivity of the problem.
"There is some uncertainty about exactly where the line runs through the property, but I don't think there is any uncertainty about the fact that the line runs through it," he instructed Reuters. "Under international law it is still occupied territory, because neither party had any right to occupy the area between the lines."
When Trump recognised Jerusalem as Israel's capital he left the door open for Israel and the Palestinians to divide town between them via declaring he was no longer taking a place on "the resolution of contested borders".
But Nabil Shaath, a veteran Palestinian diplomat, mentioned the embassy's relocation could complicate long run peace talks. "Setting the embassy on No Man's Land is really a violation of the demographic and geographic division of Jerusalem," he mentioned last week.
However Yossi Beilin, a former Israeli peace negotiator, mentioned the location of the embassy could be inconsequential had been Palestinians and Israelis to revive the peace procedure.
"Ultimately if we have to reach arrangements in Jerusalem, as I hope we will do, then we will have to set a very precise line and we will have to compensate," Beilin instructed Reuters.
END OF THE WORLD
On a clear day, the Dead Sea and Jordan can be noticed from the street that runs above the embassy compound.
That side road was once the edge of Talpiot, a neighbourhood constructed in the 1920s via newly arrived Jewish immigrants and which housed such figures as S.Y. Agnon, the daddy of modern Hebrew literature and a Nobel Laureate in 1966.
Decades later, one in all Israel's most renowned writers, Amos Oz, wrote in his 2002 autobiography, 'A Tale of Love and Darkness' of his own youth memories of Talpiot.
There Oz visited his uncle Joseph Klausner, a outstanding scholar and rival of Agnon, and describes his aunt and uncle on a Saturday night stroll down their side road status above the valley:
"At the end of the cul-de-sac which was also the end of Talpiot, the end of Jerusalem, and the end of the settled land: beyond stretched the grim, barren hills of the Judean desert. The Dead Sea sparkled in the distance like a platter of molten steel ... I can see them standing there, at the end of the world, on the edge of wilderness."
But Mohammad Jadallah, 96, a Palestinian from the village of Sur Baher - across the valley from the web page - says he recalls his father's generation tending the soil on that spot.
"Everything has changed. Now, it's the existence of the US embassy here - they are against the Arabs and the Palestinians," he mentioned.
Standing in the valley underneath the hillside the place Israeli and US flags had been being hoisted, Palestinians mentioned the land was the fields of Arab villagers, who grew fig trees, grapes and wheat there.
Everything about Jerusalem is contested, and all the time has been. The status of the holy town is at the middle of a sour struggle.
Upon something Israelis and Palestinians are agreed: the verdict of a global superpower to transport its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem - on Israel's 70th anniversary - is a definitive moment. But there settlement ends.
Israelis imagine that President Donald Trump's management lends weight to their long-held place that Jerusalem is the traditional capital of the Jewish people, and residential to sacred sites such because the Western Wall and the Jewish temples of antiquity.
But Palestinians are outraged at the U.S. stance on a town this is house to more than 300,000 Arabs, and is the third holiest town in Islam.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has refused to meet American officers, and mentioned the United States can not be regarded as a decent dealer.
And as a microcosm of the broader argument the little patch of land chosen for the embassy has its own package deal of complexities, sitting as it does in Arnona, now a mostly Jewish neighbourhood south of Jerusalem's Old City.
NO MAN'S LAND
The web page straddles the line between West Jerusalem and a space referred to as No Man's Land, which was created at the finish of the 1948 struggle between Israel and its Arab neighbours.
After a 1949 armistice Israeli forces pulled again to the west of an agreed line, and Jordanians to the east. In some spaces there was a space in between that became referred to as No Man's Land.
One of those spaces was an enclave between the Jewish neighbourhood of Talpiot and Arab villages to the east.
The space remained a demilitarised zone until the 1967 Six Day War, when Israel captured the West Bank from Jordan, later increasing the limits of Jerusalem and annexing one of the vital Arab villages into town.
The transfer was no longer recognised the world over and the Palestinians proceed to say East Jerusalem, demanding that it should be the capital of a long run Palestinian state.
In February, US State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert conceded that the embassy web page "is located partly in West Jerusalem and what's called the no man's land".
This was confirmed via a senior United Nations reliable, who was no longer accredited to talk publicly given the sensitivity of the problem.
"There is some uncertainty about exactly where the line runs through the property, but I don't think there is any uncertainty about the fact that the line runs through it," he instructed Reuters. "Under international law it is still occupied territory, because neither party had any right to occupy the area between the lines."
When Trump recognised Jerusalem as Israel's capital he left the door open for Israel and the Palestinians to divide town between them via declaring he was no longer taking a place on "the resolution of contested borders".
But Nabil Shaath, a veteran Palestinian diplomat, mentioned the embassy's relocation could complicate long run peace talks. "Setting the embassy on No Man's Land is really a violation of the demographic and geographic division of Jerusalem," he mentioned last week.
However Yossi Beilin, a former Israeli peace negotiator, mentioned the location of the embassy could be inconsequential had been Palestinians and Israelis to revive the peace procedure.
"Ultimately if we have to reach arrangements in Jerusalem, as I hope we will do, then we will have to set a very precise line and we will have to compensate," Beilin instructed Reuters.
END OF THE WORLD
On a clear day, the Dead Sea and Jordan can be noticed from the street that runs above the embassy compound.
That side road was once the edge of Talpiot, a neighbourhood constructed in the 1920s via newly arrived Jewish immigrants and which housed such figures as S.Y. Agnon, the daddy of modern Hebrew literature and a Nobel Laureate in 1966.
Decades later, one in all Israel's most renowned writers, Amos Oz, wrote in his 2002 autobiography, 'A Tale of Love and Darkness' of his own youth memories of Talpiot.
There Oz visited his uncle Joseph Klausner, a outstanding scholar and rival of Agnon, and describes his aunt and uncle on a Saturday night stroll down their side road status above the valley:
"At the end of the cul-de-sac which was also the end of Talpiot, the end of Jerusalem, and the end of the settled land: beyond stretched the grim, barren hills of the Judean desert. The Dead Sea sparkled in the distance like a platter of molten steel ... I can see them standing there, at the end of the world, on the edge of wilderness."
But Mohammad Jadallah, 96, a Palestinian from the village of Sur Baher - across the valley from the web page - says he recalls his father's generation tending the soil on that spot.
"Everything has changed. Now, it's the existence of the US embassy here - they are against the Arabs and the Palestinians," he mentioned.
US Jerusalem embassy lies 'at the end of the world'
![US Jerusalem embassy lies 'at the end of the world']()
Reviewed by Kailash
on
May 14, 2018
Rating:
