The Vatican, Latin America, and Jerusalem
Viewed from its widest angle, the dormant but still unsettled question of the internationalization of Jerusalem is, in reality, a struggle between the Holy See and the Jewish state. Thus one protagonist will inform the United Nations that “the Catholic body throughout the world…will not be contented with a mere internationalization of the Holy Places in Jerusalem” and the other will proclaim to the Israeli Parliament that “for the state of Israel there is, has been and always will be one capital only, Jerusalem, the Eternal”. Since 1947 the Vatican has directed a campaign designed to make unmistakably clear to Israel and the UN that nothing less than the complete territorial internationalization of Jerusalem would be satisfactory; with equal steadfastness has Israel maintained her claim to sovereignty over the entire New City of Jerusalem.