Jewish Settlements Quotes
This quotation shows that in 1870 there was already a Jewish Zionist return to Palestine from Europe and the US well underway. They were welcomed by the Islamic Ottoman government. Some Arabs have developed a propaganda narrative that claims that Jews were not in Palestine and Jerusalem in particular until the British Mandate after WWI where the Christians let them in against the desire of the Muslims. Some of these same people claim that there never was a Jewish Kingdom in the area of Palestine nor were there substantial numbers of Jews every in Jerusalem and Palestine. This evidence is just one of the many ranging from Muslim Ottoman Turkish land deeds and other Jewish ownership documents to the Roman Census of 7 AD showing the large Jewish Population in Egypt as well as what we now call Palestine and Israel.
It was speeches like this which created a distrust of the Palestinian intentions when there were negotiations of land for peace. Worry that peace was just a pretext for war or takeover, inhibited many Israelis from wanting to give up anything unless they could get a more reliable partner. The Palestinians had a traditional fertility rate that was several times that of the Israelis.
The Temple Mount in Jerusalem is the base on which the Great Jewish Temple was erected. The temple was destroyed by the Romans. Hundreds of years later the Muslims built a mosque which the Prophet Muhammud himself is believed to have transported to. One side of the Temple Mount is the Wailing Wall, the holiest place on Earth for Orthodox Jews. When the Arabs controlled Jerusalem, they would not allow any Jews to pray at the Wailing Wall. When the Israelis gained control of the holy city they were more reasonable. They ceded day to day control of the Temple Mount—the top and the Mosque—to the Muslims and since then Jews have prayed at the side of the Mount and Muslims on the top. However there has been some friction about the archeology of the interior of the Mount itself. And some Muslims resent the fact that Israel controls the security and access to one of their holiest Mosques, and that in the event of some transgression in the Mount, Israeli civil law controls and not Islamic religious law—Sharia. Some permanent agreement will have to be made if there is to be an overall peace.
