Yet, in those 19 years, Israel, though building a powerful citizen army, never attempted to dislodge the Jordanian Army from the West Bank bulge, nor from the old city of Jerusalem.ĭuring those 19 years, bloody terrorist atrocities took place from one end of Israel to another from the Golan, Southern Lebanon, Gaza, and the West Bank, guerrilla bands infiltrated Israeli farms and towns, killing men, women, and children. The map of Israel from 1948 to 1967 shows clearly the terrible vulnerability of the little country to attack from the Golan, Gaza and Egypt, and from the West Bank. In a bloody war, Israel managed to hang on to a narrow strip of land between Haifa and Gaza which included the city of Tel Aviv, and which featured a huge double bulge of territory on the West Bank of the Jordan, extending up into the mountains and down across the maritime plain to within only 10 kilometers of the Mediterranean, occupied by Jordan. Immediately, combined Arab armies from Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, Iraq and Egypt attacked the fledgling little Jewish state. The very next day came the unilateral declaration of independence of the state of Israel. Wretched escapees from Hitler’s extermination camps were forced to remain aboard their overcrowded ships, to cry helplessly as they saw Haifa fading into the distance as their ship sailed for Cyprus, or back to Europe.įinally, in May of 1948, the British occupying forces with-drew from Palestine. Many shiploads were turned back by the British. For years, frantic refugees from Europe, from ports in Southern France, tried to emigrate to Palestine. When the true horrors of the Holocaust became known, a conscience-stricken United Nations finally passed a resolution allowing the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, on May 14, 1948. Israel, one of the smallest nations on earth, sandwiched between hostile Arab neighbors in the Middle East, wants only one thing: peace. Why should this city of biblical history, the city of David, the “city of peace,” be such a perennial bone of contention a city of violence, riot, and murder? Why should the question of who controls Jerusalem be at the root of WAR? Why should Jerusalem be such a boiling trouble spot? Perhaps no issue in the Arab-Israeli conflict is more volatile than the move toward building a temple in Jerusalem. During our recently-completed visit to Jerusalem, we interviewed Gershon Salomon, leader of the “Temple Mount Faithful.” His attempt, only a few months ago, to lay a symbolic cornerstone for a new temple created a riotous stone-throwing response from Arabs, resulting in the shooting deaths of 21 Arab youths. What infuriates them, and many Arab governments throughout Islam, is that two of the holiest places to all Muslims, the Al Aqsa and Dome of the Rock Mosques, are located on the site of the former Jewish temples. Palestinian Arabs are bitterly aware of plans by Jewish sects to build a temple in Jerusalem.
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