By: Editorial Board Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Ever since reports first surfaced alleging ongoing negotiations between the Olmert government and the Palestinians concerning the division of Jerusalem, we’ve been witness to a blizzard of conflicting information. Prime Minister Olmert promptly denied the reports and went on to reassure the leadership of the Shas Party – which had threatened to bolt the government if the allegations were true – that nothing of the kind was transpiring.

On the heels of Mr. Olmert’s claim that Jerusalem was not a current topic of discussion, a succession of PA officials, some directly involved in the post-Annapolis negotiations, stated that negotiations over Jerusalem were indeed ongoing and actually quite well advanced.

Mr. Olmert countered with the claim that discussing Jerusalem would serve only to upend negotiations, adding that PA negotiators agreed the issue should be shelved until the latter stages of the talks. Not so, said PA spokesmen, who reiterated that Jerusalem was already being discussed in detail.

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni went public as well with the view that there was no reason to delay discussing Jerusalem. Ominously, she observed to The Jerusalem Post that Israel had learned from past experience that conducting negotiations “under the floodlights” would not be productive, and that “for this reason, and this reason only, I have neither related to reports about agreements seemingly reached during negotiations nor will I do so in the future…[but] you cannot conclude anything from my lack of response, and the absence of a denial is not any form of confirmation.”

We’ll leave it to others to parse these statements, though it’s clear that something about Jerusalem is going on. That belief is only strengthened by a new poster that was distributed to all schools in Israel by the Education Ministry – a poster that features a severely compressed and doctored depiction of the Kotel and its surroundings.

The poster not only portrays the Dome of the Rock as the overarching and commanding presence with a plainly subservient Kotel in the foreground, it also artificially moves to close proximity with the Kotel the minaret of another mosque that, in reality, is well removed from the Kotel area.

In addition, the poster introduces, out of whole cloth, a non-existent Christian church.

To an untutored eye viewing the poster, the core of Jerusalem seems to belong jointly and in equal measure to three religions – Islam, Judaism and Christianity – with Islam being the first among equals. It most certainly does not suggest that Jerusalem is the eternal Jewish capital of Eretz Yisrael.

Yet to anyone who actually surveys the area from the ground, it is the Kotel that dominates; the rest is just periphery. One can only conclude that the poster, with its skewed perspective, is meant to legitimize the notion of a Jerusalem stripped of its Jewish sovereignty – a Jerusalem dismembered for the sake of diplomatic expediency.

Indeed, the Education Ministry, responding to a letter of protest from a Jerusalem city council member, acknowledged that “in order to express in pictorial manner the fact that Israel’s capital Jerusalem is sacred to the three religions, a Jerusalem church spire was incorporated into the photograph. This was an act of graphic design whose purpose was to concretize the matter.”

We certainly recognize an artist’s license to interpret and portray reality as he or she sees fit. But the Education Ministry poster was released to the public – again, it must be emphasized that it was distributed to schools across Israel – not as a quirky artist’s rendition but as a photographic rendering of facts on the ground.

The fact that the physical reality was altered is all one needs to know about the message the Education Ministry – and by extension the Olmert government – wished to send. Obviously, facts on the ground mean nothing to this bunch.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 3rd, 2008 and is filed under opinion. You can leave a response.