Cities with walls in their hearts are never happy places. The armistice line has been much of a controversial plan carried out but a necessity to protect citizens against terror attacks. Some of you did send me these few questions and I did my best in my opinion to answer them.

Is Jerusalem a problem on its own right or a parable for wider conflict?

Well, it is a problem in its own right because Jews and Arabs have found no way either to share or divide it. Even the Saudi plan which calls for the 1967 pre-war territorial establishment and there is a fear that the problem might wider in conflict as in Jerusalem God and History have made sharing bitterly hard. This is a city where religion and nationalism collide. Although the world has invented multitude of peace plans, none has stuck.

Has the United Nations failed to solve this ongoing conflict?

The United Nations’ still born partition plan of 1947 said that the city should be internationalised but in 1948 Israel and Jordan preferred to keep the land the parts they grabbed in war. In 1998, Former President Bill Clinton sketched out in his parameters a plan to divide the city. Instead came a new sort of war, in the shape of intifada. Now, we are in 2009 and the situation has changed and the 1967 plan cannot be accepted as part of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict solution and outcome.

It is a fact to say that Israel’s policy has been to entrench its control that cannot be reversed.

This has entailed reshaping the physical and demographic geography of the city. Natural growth which the government backs cannot be stop but the government is doing its best to remove illegal settlement.