*Jewish Leaders slam Olmert for 'willingness to divide Judaism's capital'*

Posted: October 16, 2007
News From Israel

TEL AVIV – A group of hundreds of prominent Israeli rabbis yesterday
called on Jews worldwide to speak out against what rabbinic leaders
called the "crime of dividing Jerusalem as proposed by the current
Israeli government."

The move follows a flurry of media reports that Prime Minister Ehud
Olmert is contemplating handing over sections of Jerusalem to
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah organization.

Yesterday Olmert hinted he would be willing to divide Jerusalem, asking
during a speech whether it was "really necessary" to retain certain Arab
neighborhoods in Judaism's capital.

At a Tel Aviv press conference yesterday, leaders of the Rabbinical
Congress for Peace, a coalition of more than 350 Israeli rabbinic
leaders and pulpit rabbis, including some of Israel's most prominent
Jewish leaders, urged Jews worldwide to speak out.

"We must scream and protest not only to go through the motions, but
maybe our protest will bring another one in its chain and awaken the
public," said RCP leader Rabbi David Drukman, the rabbinic leader of the
Kiryat Motzkin Israeli community.

"It pains us to see that there is no public outcry against this;
everyone is complacent," Drukman said at the press conference.

Rabbi Meir Horowitz, leader of the Hassidic Bostoner community and a
U.S. citizen, addressed U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice directly:

"Madam Secretary, we request that you convey to President Bush and to
the leaders of the civilized world that although Jerusalem is also holy
to the three great faiths of the world, for the Jewish people it is our
only holy city; therefore, no one can expect the Jewish people to forgo
the central theme and focus of their religion."

Rabbi Avrohom Yaakov Shreiber, who was the rabbinic leader of Kfar
Darom, one of the largest Gaza Strip Jewish communities evacuated by
Israel in 2005, pointed out that while most Jewish expulsions throughout
history were perpetuated by non-Jews, he was "stunned" the Jewish state
would "expel their brothers from their homes."

Meir Porush, a nationalist Knesset Member, called Jerusalem "the soul of
the nation and just like a man cannot live without a soul, so we cannot
live without Jerusalem."

Rabbi Gerlitzky, chairman of the Rabbinical Congress, commented, "It has
been several months now that the government has been discussing dividing
Jerusalem, but it was done quietly behind our back. Now when it came out
in the open, there is no outcry. I feel as though the public has been
sprayed with some kind of sleeping gas."

A Rabbinic Congress resolution, passed at yesterday's meeting, urged the
Olmert government to "come back to your senses."

"The Congress calls on the government to abandon the 'land for peace'
formula. It never worked in the past, it doesn’t work now and will never
work in the future. This formula is obsolete, outdated, leads to bloodshed."

The rabbis' statements followed a speech yesterday in which Olmert asked
whether it was "really necessary" for Israel to control Arab
neighborhoods in Jerusalem.

Last week, Vice Premier Haim Ramon, a member of Olmert's ruling Kadima
party, mapped out a future partition of Jerusalem under a deal with the
Palestinians.

Ramon reportedly wrote in a letter published by the Israeli media that
under his plan, "The Jewish neighborhoods (of Jerusalem) will be
recognized as Israeli and under Israeli sovereignty. Accordingly, the
Arab neighborhoods will be recognized as Palestinian."

Knesset Member Otniel Schneller, a Kadima party colleague of Olmert and
Ramon known for his close relationship to the prime minister, claimed
the plan violated Kadima's platform.

But as was first reported in 2006 it was Schneller who first floated a
Kadima plan for dividing Jerusalem.

"The Old City, Mount Scopus, the Mount of Olives, the City of David,
Sheikh Jarra will remain in our hands, but [regarding] Kafr Akeb,
Abu-Ram, Shuafat, Hizma, Abu-Zaim, Abu-Tur, Abu Dis, in the future, when
the Palestinian state is established, they will become its capital,"
said Schneller at the small Jerusalem debate in May 2006, covered by WND.