This declaration by PM Netanyahu goes directly against the stated objective by the U.S. and the majority of the UN, and it will be interesting to see their reaction, not to mention the EU, the Vatican, and the rest of the world:
Jerusalem will not be divided between Arabs and Jews, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday at an official Jerusalem Day ceremony in the capital.
Jerusalem Day commemorates the capture by Israel of the city’s Jordanian-controlled half, including the religiously significant Old City and the Temple Mount, Judaism’s holiest site, during the 1967 Six Day War, a conquest that brought the Arab half of the city’s population under Israeli control.
Speaking at a ceremony commemorating the war dead from that conflict on Jerusalem’s Ammunition Hill, the site of one of the fiercest battles in the Six Day War, Netanyahu vowed that “Jerusalem won’t become once again a wounded and bisected city. We will forever keep Jerusalem united under Israeli sovereignty.”
“On this special day it is clear to us that a divided Jerusalem is a memory. The future belongs to the complete Jerusalem that shall never again be divided,” he said.
Netanyahu’s message was not meant for Israelis’ ears alone.
“Jerusalem was only ever the capital of the Jewish people, not of any other people,” he said in comments his office then sent to the media. “Here our path as a nation began, this is our home and here we shall stay.”
Netanyahu also lauded the city’s progress under Israeli sovereignty. “Jerusalem is now in one of its most glorious epochs. We continue to build and nurture her, to expand her neighborhoods, and we have much still to do and to improve in all parts of the city for all her inhabitants.”
The Ammunition Hill ceremony was attended by Netanyahu, Rivlin, Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat, Zionist Union MK and deputy Knesset speaker Nachman Shai and Supreme Court Deputy Chief Justice Elyakim Rubinstein, along with IDF officers and other dignitaries.
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