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Monday, October 07, 2013

Czech president floats idea of moving embassy to Jerusalem, Arabs freak

From UPI:
Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat accused Czech President Milos Zeman of attempting to undermine the Middle East peace process.

Zeman said last week he might move the Czech Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, the official Czech news agency CTK reported.

Zeman made the statements while attending a Days of Israel forum in east Bohemia where he said he planned to try to persuade whoever becomes prime minister and foreign minister following coming elections to consider moving the embassy, CTK said. Currently there are no foreign embassies in Jerusalem.

Erekat said Zeman's statements impact questions related to the final status of Jerusalem and called on the Arab League, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and the Non-Aligned Movement to discuss Zeman's remarks.

The Palestinians seek to name East Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state. By moving its embassy to Jerusalem, the Czech Republic would be viewed by Palestinians as officially recognizing Jerusalem the capital of Israel, complicating peace negotiations.
Assuming that the embassy would be in the undisputed part of Jerusalem, why does this freak out the "moderate" Erekat? (as well as Hamas and the OIC)

I guess Israel's "peace partners" regard all of Jerusalem as Arab and that the Green Line is not quite as much of a "border" as they pretend it is to Western media.

This Czech news site is very sympathetic to the idea of moving the embassy.
Briefly: The blame for how things are today can be attributed to the Arabs, who rejected the plan for the partition from the UN itself, which resulted in Arab aggression against Israel militarily. ....If Israel in the first war with the Arabs (1948-1949) had lost, it probably would not exist. By winning a war and gaining that part of Jerusalem, [Israel] could choose it as its capital. The fact that a third war with the Arabs (1967) allowed [Israel] to gain the remaining (East) section of the city is from this perspective essential. It is essential that the capital of Israel was (since 1949), is and will remain Jerusalem. It has all the attributes of the vast majority of the major capitals of the world: the seat of the head of state, government and parliament and other central authorities.

...The holy city became the capital of ancient Israel's monarchy three thousand years ago.

Yet we have see incredible absurdity. Jews are denied the right to freely choose their capital. Although the parliamentary process democratically chose Jerusalem, the vast majority of embassies are located in Tel Aviv. Including the Embassy of the Czech Republic. To this nonsense the Czech president wants to issue a red card - to move the mission of the Tel Aviv district administrative center to the capital of the host country. This effort deserves sympathy, recognition and support.
It is sad that one so rarely sees something that makes so much sense regarding Israel in the non-Zionist media.