Column One: Olmert’s Plan for Jerusalem, by Caroline Glick
Excerpts;
Olmert apparently thinks that partitioning the city will secure the Jewish majority of the city. Yet, taking these neighborhoods out of the city will actually endanger that majority.
Over the past few months, a team of American and Israeli researchers conducted a demographic study of Jerusalem and its environs. Last year the same researchers – Bennett Zimmerman, Roberta Seid, Michael Weiss and Yoram Ettinger – conducted the first independent study of the Palestinian population data published by the PA’s Central Bureau of Statistics in 1997. Their study exposed that the PA had inflated the number of Palestinians in Judea, Samaria and Gaza by some 1.5 million or 50 percent. Olmert and his colleagues in Kadima and the Labor Party have justified their plan to surrender Judea and Samaria to Hamas on the basis of these inflated numbers which falsely project that by 2015 there will be more Arabs than Jews between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
The team’s research methods and their findings were reviewed by the leading American demographer Nicholas Eberstadt from the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, DC. At the Herzliya Conference in January, Eberstadt praised the team’s research methods and stated that their conclusions were “not only plausible but quite persuasive.”
Their study showed that today Jews comprise 59 percent of the overall population of the areas that include sovereign Israel, Judea and Samaria and Gaza and 67 percent of the population of Judea, Samaria and sovereign Israel. Far from becoming the minority by 2015, the group’s projections show that in 2025, Jews will comprise between 56-71 percent of the overall population of Judea, Samaria and sovereign Israel. In other words, the team showed that there is no demographic threat to Israel’s Jewish majority.
The team noted at the outset that Olmert’s claim – that by placing Arab neighborhoods outside the municipal boundaries he would be reducing the Arab population of the capital by tens of thousands – ignores the fact that Arabs can move. As legal residents of Jerusalem these Arabs are under no obligation to remain in the neighborhoods slotted for transfer to Hamas.
Indeed, since the government’s intention to partition the city was made clear by the route of the security fence, thousands of Arabs with Jerusalem ID cards who had previously lived in Judea and in neighborhoods set to be placed outside the city’s boundaries started converging on the city. Residents of Pisgat Ze’ev and Neveh Ya’acov relate that Arabs are moving into their neighborhoods in droves. This is also the case in the city’s Arab neighborhoods not set for transfer to Hamas such as Beit Tzafafa, Wadi Joz and Abu Tor. Rather than reduce the number of Arabs in the city, Olmert’s plan is just crowding the city’s population into shrunken boundaries.
As Zimmerman and his team members note, in Jerusalem’s current municipal boundaries, 487,000 Jews make up 68% of the population and 231,000 Arabs make up 32%. Fertility rates of the two populations are nearly identical, with a Jewish fertility rate of 3.8 and an Arab fertility rate of 4.1 per woman.
The team checked what would happen if, rather than partitioning the city, Israel were to expand the boundaries of the city. They found that if Israel were to extend the borders of the capital to include the Adumim bloc, the Etzion bloc, the Adam bloc, the Givon bloc, Mevasseret Zion and its satellite neighborhoods, the Tekoa area, Abu Dis and Bir Naballah and incorporate all these communities’ Jewish and Arab residents into the city, Jerusalem’s demographic balance would remain the same. The enlarged city would have 704,000 or 68% Jewish residents and 335,000 or 32% Arab residents.
Retaining Israeli control over the areas around Jerusalem’s current boundaries would also protect Bethlehem’s status as a Christian city while Olmert’s plan, which places these areas under terrorist control, guarantees that Jesus’s birth city will become a Muslim majority city with all the religious and political consequences that such a religious transformation would involve for the Christian world.
And it goes without saying that an enlarged Jerusalem would be safer than a partitioned city with its removed sections under terrorist control.
In answer to reporters’ queries, this week Olmert repeatedly stated that he would never give up the Temple Mount. But his statements are meaningless. You cannot give up what you already surrendered. No, Olmert is not giving up the Temple Mount. Olmert is giving up all of Jerusalem.
To read the full article; click Column One: Olmert’s Plan for Jerusalem
Commentary;
1/ Dr. Eberstadt, who Caroline Glick refers to in her report as having attended the Herzliya Conference and who praised the Zimmerman, Seid and Wise group for their report; The Million Person Gap: A Critical Look at Palestinian Demography gave more than mere praise for the group’s work, he said the following; “The conclusions are logical and overwhelmingly convincing. This study caught the demographers sleeping on guard duty.”
2/ But did this study catch them sleeping, or were Israeli demographers complicit in a massive cover-up? Perhaps the same cover-up whch keeps Yosef Q. Israeli totally ignorant of the truth, even as much as Yoram Ettinger, Caroline Glick and others try to scream it from the rafters.
3/ Further, Ehud Olmert attended the most recent Herzliya Conference and spoke there.
Either Olmert is an intelligent, aggressive and high-powered lawyer or a bumbling buffoon. In the humble opinion of this author, he knows very well about the work of the Zimmerman, Seid and Wise group as well as it’s credentials, endorsements and credibility.
So why is it that Ehud Olmert apparently ignores and disregards the findings of “The Million Person Gap” and keeps peddling the same worn out and bogus “p.a.(sic)” demographics stats? Why is it that he, as did Rabin, Peres and others before him, give Arabs weapons knowing full well that they would NOT be used for their stated purpose, to restore order and bolster Fatah vs Hamas, but in fact would be turned on the Jews?
These are some very shocking and disturbing questions for which there could be some equally shocking and disturbing answers. Again, the question, did this study catch Israeli demographers sleeping, or were they complicit in a massive cover-up? Why are Israeli demographers seemingly married to “p.a.(sic)” demographics stats?
Could there be a conspiracy of silence, emanating from as high as the Prime Minister’s office, to keep Israelis ignorant of and in the dark regarding any report unfavorable to “the Kadima agenda?” In so doing, Olmert and his Kadima mafia could continue to hide behind the knowingly bogus “p.a.(sic)” demographics stats and thus develop a rationale for convergence, consolidation, realignment, or whatever the plan is named today, to continue to endoctrinate a largely a naive and gullible public.
The people seem in denial, they want so much to believe that their leaders want what’s best for the nation and that they are not operating out of self-preservation, self-interest or self-aggrandisement. As a result, the people are blinded to the inconsistencies, the inaccuracies, the contradictions and hypocracies of a government and a justice system seemingly biased and prejudiced against certain segments of the Jewish people, Jewish lifestyles, Jewish traditions and attachment to the land. It seems obvious to this author what is behind bowing at the altar of bogus “p.a.(sic)” demographics stats. It is part of the regime’s appparent dogmatic, hard-hearted decree against Torah; to separate Israelis from Jews, to separate Israelis from all aspects of their Judaism so that “a land of all of it’s people would prevail.” And this hard-heartedness is soo pervasive within the mafia which is this regime that they are oblivious to the truth; that the Arab, Islamic thirst for Israel’s destruction knows no distinction between National Religious, Chareidi, S’fardi or secular Jews. To the Arabs, to the Islamics; A Jew is a Jew is a Jew, just as was with the Nazis 66 years ago.
Caroline Glick is right, although she addresses politics, but not the apparent anti-religious, anti-Torah bias and agenda laying beneath the politics and not the Biblical, historical Jewish connection with the Jewish land, when she states that “Olmert is giving up all of Jerusalem.” He is indeed surrendering the Jewish State, the Jewish Land. MB