Jerusalem Day

Jerusalem Day on May 16 commemorates the day that Jerusalem was recaptured by Israeli forces in 1967. This was an unintended consequence of the Jordanian entry into the Six Day War. Jews were completely excluded from access to the Jordanian-controlled east side of the city for 19 years, from the War of Independence in 1948, and the synagogues and all Old City Jewish areas were destroyed and devastated and left in ruins. It was miraculous that Israeli forces finally recovered the Old City and reunited it into one whole under Israeli administration. Note that Israeli Arabs and Jerusalem residents have complete access to the city and no Muslim mosques or sites were harmed during the reunification (in fact there is still a mosque right in the middle of the Jewish Quarter of the Old City).
In the past 40 years the development of Jerusalem has been amazing. The whole of the Jewish Quarter was rebuilt, and now they are reconstructing the largest synagogue, the Hurva, that was deliberately destroyed by the Arabs, to its former glory. I remember visiting the excavations at the Old City wall for the first time many years ago when it was a mess, but now there is the impressive Davidson Center. After it was unified the city limits of Jerusalem were extended to double the size of the city. The city extends to Mevasseret Zion in the west and to the controversial area of Har Homah in the east. It now has ca. 730,000 inhabitants and is the largest city in Israel.
Doubling the size of Jerusalem has had some unforeseen consequences. The inclusion of many Arab villages to the east of Jerusalem in its boundaries has increased the Arab population. But, also there has been essentially unhindered immigration of Arabs from the adjacent West Bank areas into those villages and so the Arab population has increased significantly. In Jerusalem, as in Israel they get far better welfare payments than they do in the PA and it is a lot safer. Then when the separation wall/fence was being built many Arabs moved into Jerusalem to have free access rather than be cut off. At present there are 67% Jews and 33% Arabs (Muslims and some Christians), but with twice the birthrate among the Arabs this is predicted to shift to 40% Arabs by the year 2012 and by the year 2020 the two will be equal (some dispute these statistics). Also, young Jews, especially couples, are leaving Jerusalem at the rate of 12,000 per year, mainly because of the costs of apartments and the difficulty in finding jobs. Notwithstanding immigration to Jerusalem, there is a next loss of some 5,000 Jews per year. In twenty years time it is predicted that there could be a majority of Arabs in Jerusalem, and this could have untoward consequences, especially with an increase in support for Hamas. So the demographic bomb is ticking, and as a Hamas spokesman said, they can win with the womb rather than with the gun. This requires some long-term planning (not something Israelis seem to be good at), and today the PM established a fund of m5.75 NIS to support the development of Jerusalem, although that may be too little too late.
While unified Jerusalem is the capital of the Jewish State, many countries, including the US and EU, do not recognize this status and so will boycott the official Knesset celebrations. We still have a lot of problems, but we continue to celebrate Jerusalem as our eternal capital.