To the Editor:

In approving the Har Homa housing project for Jerusalem, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu acted according to the consensus of the Israeli people: Jerusalem is and will always be the capital of the state of Israel. It is the beating heart of the Jewish people. Israel need not apologize for developing and beautifying the city during the past three decades.

The Post's Feb. 27 editorial calling for a shared Jerusalem might mean a return to a city divided by barbed wire along religious and ethnic lines. Only once before in Jerusalem's 3,000-year history, during a period of 19 years following Israel's birth, did such conditions exist. To the detriment of all parties involved, the established walls created an atmosphere of confinement, discord and tension. Jews were the only people barred from worshipping in their holy places. This was the divided Jerusalem to which we will never return.

Perhaps The Post had in mind a city in which Jews, Christians and Muslims live freely together, combining religion, culture and history to provide a setting in which all groups exist comfortably. Indeed, this describes the Jerusalem that I have known since its reunification in 1967.

Today, Jews pray freely at the Western Wall in the Old City of Jerusalem, while Muslims worship at the Al Aqsa Mosque and Christians walk the Via Dolorosa. Before 1967, such a scenario could have happened only in a dream.

The housing projects initiated, coming in response to the urgent needs of all Jerusalemites, will provide some 6,000 housing units for Jews in Har Homa and some 3,000 housing units for Arabs in 10 different neighborhoods. Israel will continue to address the ever-growing housing need in Jerusalem. Failure to do so implies nothing less than a surrender to political blackmail.



ELIAHU BEN-ELISSAR
Ambassador
Embassy of Israel
Washington