42 years ago today, Israel defeated Jordan and the other Arab neighbours in the Six Day War, and Jerusalem was again united as one Jewish city, which could again become the Capital City of Israel and the Jewish People, with the Old City and the Western Wall at its heart.
After 2000 years, the Jewish people again had sovereignty over our holiest site. Last night I enjoyed being part of the celebrations in our united capital of Jerusalem, as ten's of thousands of people made their way to celebrate in the old city. Prior the refunification of the city, Jews found it very difficult if not impossible to pray at the Western Wall or even enter the old city. Now, under Israel's sovereignty, every religion is able to carry out their religion freely and safely.
I believe that Israel must therefore retain full sovereignty over the old city of Jerusalem.
This week Barak Obama and Binyamin Netanyahu met to discuss how peace could be reached between Israel and its Arab neighbourhs, before Obama this weeks meet with the Palestinian leadership.
According to reports the American President wants to achieve peace in the Middle East by Israel withdrawing from the West Bank and east Jersualem (including the old city). This plan is not very different from the many peace plans that have been promoted since 1947 and which each time have been rejected by our Arab neighbours, most notably by Yasser Araft in 2000.
Israel has continually shown it is happy to agree peace with the Arab nations, and even completely withdrew from Gaza. However, this independence for Gaza saw the rise of Hamas and the continual use of rockets by Hamas as they have been fired into southern Israel.
So I say to the new American President, yes we do want peace but before we can agree to peace, we need to be sure that our Arab neigbours will actually accept Israel as a Jewish State and not continually attack it, as they have done for the past 61 years.
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