“Attempts to exclude Jewish Jerusalem from Israel are not calculated to establish peace in the Middle East and least of all in Jerusalem itself,” Premier David Ben Gurion declared today in addressing a session of the Israel Parliament. He emphasized that “the Jews will sacrifice themselves for Jerusalem as would the English for London, the Russians for Moscow, the Americans for Washington.”
The Israel Premier said that “Jewish Jerusalem is an organic and inseparable part” of the state of Israel. His declaration was unanimously endorsed by the Knesset, which proclaimed Jerusalem as an inseparable part of Israel pledging that the city will not be submitted to foreign rule.
“we are ready freely and willingly to make the necessary arrangements for enabling adherents of other faiths to fulfill their religious needs in Jerusalem,” Ben Gurion said. “We shall give the United Nations all our assistance for assuring this, but we cannot conceive that the United Nations will try to tear Jerusalem from Israel or to impair Israel’s sovereignty in its eternal capital.
“We cannot today regard the United Nations decision of Nov. 29, 1947, as possessed of any further moral force since the United Nations has not succeeded in implementing its own decisions. It is our view that the decision of Nov. 29, 1947, about Jerusalem is null and void,” the Premier declared.
ISRAEL WILL NOT GIVE UP JERUSALEM BY ITS OWN FREE WILL
Agreeing to the establishment of adequate U.N. supervision over the Holy Places in accordance with a pact to be concluded between the United Nations and Israel, Mr. Ben Gurion said: “We do not admit for one minute that the United Nations will take Jerusalem away from Israel by force. We declare that Israel will not give up Jerusalem by its own free will, just as throughout thousands of years it did not surrender its faith in its national identity and its hope to return to Jerusalem and to Zion despite unparalleled persecutions that it suffered during its history.
“The same people that faithfully honored for 2,500 years the oath sworn by the first exiles on the rivers of Babylon not to forget Jerusalem–this people will never reconcile itself to the separation of Jerusalem. Jewish Jerusalem will never accept foreign rule after thousands of her sons and daughters have freed their homeland and spared Jerusalem from complete destruction,” the Israel Premier warned.
Pointing out that if it were not for the successful Jewish stand against the Arab aggressors who were defying the United Nations, Jewish Jerusalem would have been wiped off the fact of the earth and the entire Jewish population would have been annihilated, the Premier stated: “For the first time in the history of this land, a state governing Jerusalem has voluntarily accepted the principle of international supervision over the city’s Holy Places. It is perhaps no coincidence that this was done by the very people that made Jerusalem a religious center for the world.”
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