Word: jerusalem
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...things are as monumentally ugly as the Israeli separation wall on Jerusalem's edge. For miles and miles, it runs along stony hills and across valleys terraced with olive trees, cutting through towns and fields, cleaving families from their homes, farmers from their land. Its concrete slabs are more than 20 ft. high and crowned with coils of razor wire; the wind seems to blow every stray plastic bag in the Holy Land into its cold shadows. The Palestinians like to say, accurately or not, that the wall can be seen from outer space...
...Jerusalem Sins of Omission Sometimes it's what you don't say that hurts. Pope Benedict XVI's visit to the Middle East, including historic trips to the Western Wall and the Dome of the Rock, drew complaints that the German Pontiff had glossed over Nazism in a May 11 speech on the Holocaust. Muslim leaders also awaited an apology, for his hinting in a 2006 speech that Islam was violent and irrational...
Meanwhile, Israel's government is built on a right-wing consensus at odds with such fundamentals of the peace process as Palestinian statehood, freezing and evacuating West Bank settlements, and sharing Jerusalem. But even when Israel was led by the centrist Ehud Olmert, Abbas reportedly rejected the best peace deal the Israeli leader was able to offer during last year's talks about talks - an offer that reportedly conceded more territory to the Palestinian state than the deal turned down by Yasser Arafat at Camp David. So the gulf between Israel's best offer and the bottom line...
...Arab League to forge an international consensus on the parameters for a fair solution to the conflict. That would require outlining the borders between two states (the formula for doing so, based on the 1967 borders, is already enshrined in existing documents such as the "Roadmap"), how to share Jerusalem, the fate of West Bank settlements and of Palestinian refugee families who lost land and homes inside Israel in 1948. In such a scenario, the focus of diplomacy would shift to coaxing, cajoling and nudging both sides toward implementing such a solution. (See pictures of George W. Bush...
...that message sufficient? Rabbi David Rosen, the Jerusalem-based chair of the umbrella International Jewish Committee on Interreligious Consultations, says the Williamson affair is an "absolute gift" because it enabled the Pope to reiterate his affection for the Jews. Yet while Benedict may have been unaware of Williamson's Holocaust-denying interview, the Pope--who has been trying to pull the SSPX back into the fold for decades--must have been aware that anti-Semitism was something of an SSPX calling card. Says Eugene Fisher, a former Jewish-affairs expert for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, who generally lauds...