Beset by questions about Jerusalem’s future in talks with the Palestinians, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reached for the Bible on Wednesday to stake out the Jewish state’s contested claim on the city.
Netanyahu told a parliamentary session commemorating Israel’s capture of East Jerusalem from Jordan in the 1967 war that “Jerusalem” and its alternative Hebrew name “Zion” appear 850 times in the Old Testament, Judaism’s core canon.
“As to how many times Jerusalem is mentioned in the holy scriptures of other faiths, I recommend you check,” he said.
Citing such ancestry, Israel calls all of Jerusalem its “eternal and indivisible” capital — a designation not recognised abroad, where many powers support Arab claims to East Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state.
Full story: Netanyahu turns to Bible in tussle over Jerusalem – Yahoo! Singapore News