The Legal Status of the Holy Places in Jerusalem

1994 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 589-600
Author(s):  
Izhak Englard

The legal problems relating to the Holy Places in Jerusalem are of a very complex and delicate nature. The issue has a long history, and its complexity is the result of turbulent religious, ethnic, national and international conflicts over the Holy Places. The problems were not created by the State of Israel, but the establishment of the Jewish State added new dimensions to the age-old contest. I shall first describe briefly the ideological background of the problem, then analyze its legal aspects and finally illustrate its complexity by a number of Israel court decisions.

1957 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 213-219
Author(s):  
Edward B. Glick

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.


2018 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-88
Author(s):  
Rafał Soroczyński

The territory to which the State of Israel had a title as a newly-created state corresponded to the areas allotted to Jews by the provisions of the resolution 181(II) adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations on November 29, 1947, which had recommended the partition of Palestine and creation of the Arab state, the Jewish state and the City of Jerusalem as a corpus separatum. As this territorial regime had been modified during the Arab-Israeli war of 1948-1949 and Israel’s government has recognized the areas seized by it during the war as part of its territorial domain, the problem arose as to Israel’s title to those additional territories situated between the 1947 partition lines and the lines established in accordance with the armistice agreements of 1949. Due to important characteristics of the legal status of former mandatory Palestine and to the fact that considerable parts thereof became occupied territories, the process of consolidation of the title thereto required the consent of the international community as a whole. This consent has in fact been granted, both by the international community and by representatives of Palestinian Arabs, in respect of large parts of territories situated between the 1947 partition lines and the 1949 armistice lines. There are no doubts that the State of Israel has sovereign, uncontested rights to these areas. As it constitutes important departure from the generally accepted principle that the use of force in any form cannot serve as a root of title to territory, this situation is of particular interest, providing support for the view that this principle cannot be analyzed without due regard paid to those exceptional situations where the international community decided to depart from its strict application in order to safeguard stability of territorial solutions.


Pólemos ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-62
Author(s):  
Paolo Coen

Abstract This article revolves in essence around the contributions made by the architect Moshe Safdie to the Yad Vashem memorial and museum in Jerusalem. Both probably need at least a brief introduction, if for no other reason than the nature of the present publication, which has a somewhat different scope than the type of art-historical or architectural-historical journals to which reflections of this kind are usually consigned. The first part draws a profile of Safdie, who enjoys a well-established international reputation, even if he has not yet been fully acknowledged in Italy. In order to better understand who he is, we shall focus on the initial phase of his career, up to 1967, and his multiple ties to Israel. The range of projects discussed includes the Habitat 67 complex in Montreal and a significant number of works devised for various contexts within the Jewish state. The second part focuses on the memorial and museum complex in Jerusalem that is usually referred to as Yad Vashem. We will trace Yad Vashem from its conception, to its developments between the 1950s and 1970s, up until the interventions of Safdie himself. Safdie has in fact been deeply and extensively involved with Yad Vashem. It is exactly to this architect that a good share of the current appearance of this important institute is due. Through the analysis of three specific contributions – the Children’s Memorial, the Cattle Car Memorial and the Holocaust History Museum – and a consideration of the broader context, this article shows that Yad Vashem is today, also and especially thanks to Safdie, a key element in the formation of the identity of the state of Israel from 1967 up until our present time.


2002 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 5-39 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ilan Saban ◽  
Muhammad Amara

AbstractThe status of Arabic in Israel gives rise to question. Israel is a rare case of an ethnic nation-state that grants the language of minority group with a legal status which isprima facieone of equality. Both Hebrew and Arabic are the official languages of the State of Israel. What are the reasons for this special state of affairs? The answer is threefold: historic, sociological and legal. In various ways the potential inherent in the legal status of Arabic has been depleted of content, and as a result of that, as well as other reasons, the socio-political status of Arabic closely resembles what you would expect the status of a language of a minority group in a state that identifies itself as the state of the majority group to be. This answer, however, is another source of puzzlement – how does such a dissonance between law and practice evolve, what perpetuates it for so long, is change possible, is it to be expected?We present an analysis of the legal status of Arabic in Israel and at the same time we proceed to try and answer the questions regarding the gap between the legal and the sociopolitical status of Arabic. We reach some of our answers through a comparison with the use of law to change the status of the French language in Canada. One of these answers is that given the present constellation in Israel, the sociopolitical status of Arabic cannot meaningfully be altered by legal means.


Author(s):  
Lital Levy

This introductory chapter sets out the book's purpose, which is to examine the lives and afterlives of Arabic and Hebrew in Israeli literature, culture, and society. Hebrew is the spiritual, historical, and ideological cornerstone of the State of Israel, and Hebrew literature, having accompanied the national project from its inception, is an integral part of Israeli society. Yet in its broader geopolitical context, Hebrew is the language of a small state that views itself as an embattled island in a hostile Arabic-language sea. The book presents an alternative story of the evolution of language and ideology in the Jewish state. It takes a long historical perspective, beginning not in 1948 with the foundation of the state but rather at the turn of the century, with the early days of Zionist settlement in Palestine. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.


1968 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 562-578 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Z. Feller

Both the facts of The State of Israel v. Siman Tov, and the solution adopted in that case by the Supreme Court, raise, it is felt, a number of legal problems which warrant particular attention.The respondent, Siman Tov, owner of a grocer's shop, sold goods worth IL. 6,000 on credit to someone called Pressman. When Siman Tov requested payment from Pressman, the latter offered him U.S. $4,000 which Siman Tov was to deposit with a third party of his own choice in return for a loan of IL. 12,000, on the understanding that Siman Tov would deduct the money owing to him from this last sum and hand over the balance of IL. 6,000 to Pressman. Siman Tov accepted the offer and received from Pressman a package containing 4,000 ostensibly genuine dollar banknotes. He then approached a neighbour, Binat, who agreed to accept the dollars as security for a loan of the equivalent sum in Israeli pounds. On examining the package and finding that the dollars were counterfeit, Binat returned them to Siman Tov and refused to go on with the transaction. Siman Tov for his part had believed the notes to be genuine until Binat's disclosure.


2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Abdullah Al-Ahsan

The question of Palestine (and the city of Jerusalem) is a core issue that remains at the centre of the Muslim mind in our time. This is because most Muslims feel that the Zionist Movement created the State of Israel in Palestine after World War II by depriving the local population of their fundamental right to exist in their ancestral homeland. The global Zionist Movement conspired, resorted to terrorist tactics and executed an ethnic cleansing campaign to create the State of Israel. The Zionists first secured the support of British politicians and then the American leaders in favour of their search for an exclusive Jewish state covering the entirety of the former British Mandate of Palestine. Although the Palestinians – like Muslims in various parts of the world – quickly developed a national consciousness in the inter-war period and tried to protect their fundamental rights, they were no match for the Zionists who had already secured the support of major powers of the globe (e.g. Britain and the US). Later, Israel managed to obtain UN membership in its third attempt with the commitment to allow all Palestinians to return to their ancestral home. But in practice, Israel has ignored all UN resolutions regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israel has gradually developed a legal framework to deny the citizenship rights of the original population of Palestine and continues to build new Jewish settlements by demolishing Palestinian homes. While the Palestinians continue to suffer under Israeli repression, the OIC (Organization of Islamic Cooperation) and most Muslim governments have largely abandoned the Palestinian cause of liberation. This, in turn, frustrates much of the Muslim youth around the world – fuelling fundamentalism and extremism.  


Author(s):  
Zeev Levy

Ahad Ha’am (Asher Hirsch Ginzberg) was one of the most remarkable Jewish thinkers and Zionist ideologists of his time. Born in the province of Kiev in the Ukraine, he moved in 1884 to Odessa, an important centre of Hebrew literary activity. In 1907 he moved on to London, and in 1922 settled in the young city of Tel Aviv. He attended the universities of Vienna, Berlin and Breslau but did not pursue any regular course of study and was primarily an autodidact. Never a systematic philosopher, Ginzberg, who wrote in Hebrew and adopted the pen name Ahad Ha’am, ‘one of the people’, became a first-rate and widely read essayist and polemicist. He engaged in controversies over the practical problems of the early Jewish settlements in Palestine, his opposition to Theodore Herzl’s drive to create a Jewish state, and numerous problems of Hebrew culture, tradition and literature. No single principle or theme stands out as the guiding idea of his thought. Indeed, his ideas are sometimes inconsistent. But his writings preserve the flavour of his values and commitments. Although his outlook never became the main road of Zionist ideology, its impact on Zionist thought was powerful, especially after the establishment of the State of Israel.


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