Olmert: Jerusalem must be partitioned

[politicus]

Jerusalem should have been put under UN sovereignty in 1948 because it is a holy city for three major religions, but that didn't happen and its water under the bridge. Today Jerusalem belongs to Israel by the right of conquest and is surrounded by Israeli suburbs. There is no point in clinging to the dated idea, that East Jerusalem is the capital of Palestine.
You guys may be right, that there will never be peace in the area as long as Jerusalem is united, but you might as well say, that the there will never be peace before the Palestinians start to get realistic about Jerusalem. Other peoples have had to give up important historical cities and areas and live with it. Konstantinopel is no longer Greek, Karelia is no longer Finnish, most of Armenia including the holy mountain Ararat is in Turkey etc.  In the same way the Palestinians will at some point have to give up the idea that Jerusalem belongs to them.

[politicus]

Even for a thread on this subject... urgh... trainwreck. Verging on CiF level trainwreck.

Partly my fault, but I think one of the reasons is that the specific topic itself is not all that interesting. Olmert is more or less a has been in Israeli politics, so his views are not terribly interesting compared to the big question of Jerusalem and its future.

All the "who is worst Saudis or Palestinians" talk is of course unnecessary. 

[politicus]

I find the effort to portray Israeli rule as more benevolent than that offered by a hypothetical Palestinian state nothing but evasion, because at issue is not the quality of Palestinian leadership in relation to anyone else, but their right to territory.  The Israeli annexation of East Jerusalem is illegal; it is a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, U.N. Resolution 478 is not debatable, and only the most tendentious interpretations of Resolution 242 can legitimate Israel's conduct in the West Bank. We shouldn't confuse the inability of Israel and the Palestinian Authority to reach a mutually beneficial settlement with what the Palestinian Authority is entitled to under international law; the question of security is another matter entirely.  

But Israel did conquer it i 1967, and the question is if the UN decision not to recognize this is helping a resolution to the conflict. It gives the Palestinians a false hope that they will regain the city some day and prevents a recognition of the facts on the ground. The UN resolutions doesn't necessarily play a positive role in solving this conflict because they involve the concept of a legal right in something that is basically a military and political conflict.