Jerusalem, shared ‘security blanket,’ key to Israeli-Palestinian peace

Catholic News Service ^ | August 14, 2013 | Judith Sudilovsky

[haffast]

JERUSALEM (CNS) — Coveted as a spiritual and political capital by both Israelis and Palestinians, the status of the city of Jerusalem has stood out as one of the pivotal topics in their ongoing peace negotiations.

snip

“Jerusalem is very critical to the negotiations,” said Bernard Sabella, associate professor of sociology at Bethlehem University and a member of the Palestinian parliament. “U.N. resolutions and even the United States recognize East Jerusalem as occupied territory. We are going to have to find a solution set-up which is acceptable to both parties.

snip

Rabbi Rosen said that although there are some fringe Jewish extremists who want to exert control over the Temple Mount, the vast majority of rabbinical authorities continue to maintain that Jews are not in a position to rebuild the temple.

“What Jews want is recognition from the Muslim world that this is our holy site, too, and more than that, that it became their holy site because it was our holy site,” he said.

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The Vatican continues to believe that the special status of Jerusalem must be guaranteed and internationally recognized in order to ensure the protection of its historic and religious character. It maintains its position that any agreement on the sovereignty of Jerusalem once reached should then also “ensure freedom of religion and of conscience for all; equality before the law of the three monotheistic religions and their institutions and faithful; respect for the identity and sacred character of the city, its universal religious significance and its cultural heritage; freedom of access to the shrines and worship within them; and respect for the Status Quo,” the long-standing agreement regulating the legal and financial status of key Christian sites and access to them.

[Lera]

It is a halfway idea for Israel to surrender its sovereignty over Jerusalem (or as Jews describe it in their liturgy, “Jerusalem the holy city”) to Christian interlopers regardless of their denomination. Nice try.

Catholics are NOT Christians .
Christians follow Jesus and the scriptures and believe in the God of Abraham , Issac and Jacob (who is not the same as the allah of the muslims).
Catholics follow a man called the pope and worship a piece of bread that they call Jesus and follow man made tradition and insist that the God of Abraham , Issac and Jacob is the same as the allah of the muslims.Catholics will tell you that it doesn't matter what the bible says you have to follow the pope.

[flaglady47]

“Catholics are NOT Christians .”

Oh cut it out with that crap. Not only do your comments on this thread make no sense, you are an anti-Catholic bigot to boot. There would be no Bible for you to claim if the Caatholic Church had not put it together. And it always amazes me how the Protestant religions can jump into the religious soup in the 14-1500’s and suddenly claim the Bible and Christianity as their own when they hadn’t even been around for the first 1500 years of Christianity’s existence. What gaul. What hubris. What a crock.

[flaglady47]

Whoops. Gaul = gall above. Typing too fast.