Jerusalem Affairs Minister Z’ev Elkin (Likud) called attention to the neglect of east Jerusalem on Wednesday, emphasizing that the capital should be viewed as an Israeli city like any other and that residents should be able to live wherever they choose.
Speaking at the 40th Jerusalem Institute Conference, Elkin criticized both the right and left for neglecting the city’s predominantly Palestinian neighborhoods.
“Israeli sovereignty over all of Jerusalem has implications both ways,” he said.
“On the one hand, Israel is responsible for what is happening here. Unfortunately, Arab neighborhoods are neglected, because of both the left and the right. The left says ‘we may return it so why invest?’ and the right says ‘they are Arabs so why invest?’”
“These approaches are wrong and we must take moral responsibility,” he continued. “There is no sovereignty without responsibility.”
Minister Elkin’s words at Wednesday’s conference represent exactly the kind of thinking Israel needs from our leaders. The Jewish people don’t merely have a right to the land of Israel but rather an obligation to the land and everyone in it. The surest way for Israel to assert sovereignty over Jerusalem is to take actual responsibility for the needs of all her residents, whether Jew or gentile.
Elkin, who has for years lived in the Judean village of Kfar Eldad, placed third in Jerusalem’s recent mayoral race. As part of his campaign, he called for the construction of 100,000 homes for residents of all sectors of Jerusalem, demonstrating a position sorely lacking from Israel’s current national conversation.
Unlike what passes for Israel’s political center today, Elkin appears to be transcending the nation’s linear spectrum by incorporating the positive rather than the negative elements of both ends of the political map.
On a superficial level, the Israeli “left” cares about Palestinians but is willing to divide the country while the national camp fights for the Jewish homeland but relates to Palestinians as a destructive enemy population. Israel’s current “center” borrows the negative attributes of both caricatures, championing the international community’s “two-state solution” as a means of ridding the Jewish state of unwanted Palestinians.
A healthier political center, by contrast, would express what’s true and just in both leftist and rightist caricatures, demonstrating that only a vision equally committed to Jewish national aspirations and Hebrew standards of social justice can successfully advance Israeli society forward.
