To Start the Year off with a...er

...if I said "bang," I wonder what the comments section would say. Let's just say, a great and startling pronouncement from Olmert: Reuters reports that on Tuesday Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said, "The world that is friendly to Israel ... that really supports Israel, when it speaks of the future, it speaks of Israel in terms of the '67 borders. It speaks of the division of Jerusalem," in an interview with The Jerusalem Post. Thus, he's pretty much clear that a divided Jerusalem may be inevitable.

This is the second unusual source for such pronouncements in the last few months. Jewschool reported in November that Rabbi Yosef Kanefsky of B’nai David Judea in Los Angeles, an Orthodox rabbi in an Orthodox shul, also mentioned that he thought it would be impossible to pursue peace with Jerusalem off the table (a much lighter statement, but he still got creamed for it). Does this mean that it's possible that people are beginning to think more realistically about Israel's future?

Reuters continues:

Olmert's comments appeared to be another move by the prime minister to prepare Israeli public opinion for the possibility of a deal that would loosen Israel's control of all of Jerusalem.

His deputy and close confidant, Haim Ramon, has said Israel should in future negotiate creation of a "special regime" that would govern some of the sacred sites in Jerusalem's walled Old City.

Well, 2008 may be a very interesting year. May we see peace in it.

XP Jewschool