VOA常速英语2007年-Status of Jerusalem Top Issue in Mideast Peace

By Jeff Swicord
Jerusalem
28 November 2007
 

In Annapolis, Maryland, the leaders of Israel and the Palestinian Authority agreed to restart long-stalled peace talks.  As the Mideast peace conference convened¹ in the U.S., the leaders each spoke² of the long lists of issues they must address.  Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said in his prepared remarks any deal should ensure Palestinians have East Jerusalem.  In a major policy shift, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert recently said he is ready to hand over some Arab neighborhoods in that section of the city. 

VOA’s Jeff Swicord took a walk through Jerusalem's old city to get a sense of what people are thinking.

For thousands of years Jerusalem has been at the core of the Muslim, Christian³ and Jewish faiths.  Many wars have been fought for control of the city, which has been conquered over 30 times in the past 3,000 years.

Today, the controversy⁴ over control of the city continues.  Palestinian and Israeli leaders met in Annapolis, and the status of Jerusalem is one of the issues they discussed.

Israel captured East Jerusalem, including the sacred Old City, from Jordan during the Six Day War in 1967. The controversy over the city's future is never far from the surface.

Atallah Hanna is a Palestinian archbishop in the Greek Orthodox Christian Church. He is often at odds⁵ with the Israeli government. "Jerusalem is very important to civilization and humanity.  And it is very important for the Arab people and the Palestinian people.  It has religious importance for the Christians⁶ and the Muslims only,” he says. “We are one people; one family and we are looking forward to ending the Israeli occupation, returning our people to Jerusalem, and building our state."

In Jerusalem's ancient Jewish quarter, Mark Bar-on, a Ukrainian Jew, owns a jewelry⁷ and souvenir shop.  He strongly disagrees with the archbishop.  His family was killed by the Nazis⁸ during World War II. Like many Jews from around the world, he came to Israel 35 years ago to help build a Jewish state with Jerusalem as its rightful capital.

"Why is everyone now speaking about dividing Jerusalem?  Why before 1967 was Jerusalem not the center of this attention when it was left here for thousands of years with nobody paying much attention to it?” asks the storeowner. “Jerusalem is the capital of all Jewish people and we invested all of our time to return here and to rebuild it."

All Palestinians living in Israel hold Israeli identity cards.  Without them, they could not live in or even enter Israel.  If Arab East Jerusalem were not part of a new Palestinian state, people like Mousa Sayem, a Muslim who owns what he claims is the oldest coffee shop in Jerusalem, would be in a difficult situation.  One option is that they would live in Israel as Palestinian citizens.  Like most people in the coffee shop today, Mousa is confident that will never happen. "We don't spend our whole life in Israel, we will have our own state," he says emphatically.

Abrahem Shabane has been selling newspapers outside the Damascus Gate, in the Arab Quarter since the 1950s.  He is also a Muslim and wants to see Jerusalem divided with East Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital.  But, most importantly, he wants to see Arabs and Jews live in peace.

"First of all we would like to live in peace.  Jerusalem is an Arab city, it is a Palestinian city.  Of course I want it to be a Palestinian city.  And we don't mind if we live together with the Jews."

Over the weekend, the organization Jerusalem-One, a Jewish organization that lobbies for a united Jerusalem under Israeli control, took out an advertisement in the Jerusalem Post.  In it, they reminded Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, that in 1995 as mayor of Jerusalem, he signed a petition calling for an undivided Jerusalem. 

All sides are feeling the pressure. And most agree this is the most difficult issue the two sides will face on the road to a peace agreement. 

1 convened   

召开( convene的过去式 )； 召集； （为正式会议而）聚集； 集合

参考例句：

• The chairman convened the committee to put the issue to a vote. 主席召集委员们开会对这个问题进行表决。
• The governor convened his troops to put down the revolt. 总督召集他的部队去镇压叛乱。

2 spoke   

n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说

参考例句：

• They sourced the spoke nuts from our company.他们的轮辐螺帽是从我们公司获得的。
• The spokes of a wheel are the bars that connect the outer ring to the centre.辐条是轮子上连接外圈与中心的条棒。

3 Christian   

adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒

参考例句：

• They always addressed each other by their Christian name.他们总是以教名互相称呼。
• His mother is a sincere Christian.他母亲是个虔诚的基督教徒。

4 controversy   

n.争论，辩论，争吵

参考例句：

• That is a fact beyond controversy.那是一个无可争论的事实。
• We ran the risk of becoming the butt of every controversy.我们要冒使自己在所有的纷争中都成为众矢之的的风险。

5 odds   

n.让步，机率，可能性，比率；胜败优劣之别

参考例句：

• The odds are 5 to 1 that she will win.她获胜的机会是五比一。
• Do you know the odds of winning the lottery once?你知道赢得一次彩票的几率多大吗？

6 Christians   

n.基督教徒( Christian的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Christians of all denominations attended the conference. 基督教所有教派的人都出席了这次会议。
• His novel about Jesus caused a furore among Christians. 他关于耶稣的小说激起了基督教徒的公愤。

7 jewelry   

n.（jewllery）（总称）珠宝

参考例句：

• The burglars walked off with all my jewelry.夜盗偷走了我的全部珠宝。
• Jewelry and lace are mostly feminine belongings.珠宝和花边多数是女性用品。

8 Nazis   

n.（德国的）纳粹党员( Nazi的名词复数 )；纳粹主义

参考例句：

• The Nazis worked them over with gun butts. 纳粹分子用枪托毒打他们。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The Nazis were responsible for the mass murder of Jews during World War Ⅱ. 纳粹必须为第二次世界大战中对犹太人的大屠杀负责。 来自《简明英汉词典》