While the PLO is building its propaganda campaign to redivide and make this city the capital of a Palestinian state,is paralyzed. The Palestinians are using the same tactics thatthe news clips of the intifada into the Oslo agreements and. Staged demonstrations and other "media events" coordinated the Faisal Husseini in the Orient House are creating broadand support for Arab claims on Jerusalem.

Despite this threat to the heart of the Jewish people, thegovernment, like its predecessors, is taking no action,a disruption of the peace process. Although Ehud Olmert, Mayor of Jerusalem, threatens to act, even if he has the legal to close the Orient House (which is zoned for use as a), without a carefully prepared public relations campaign, thecosts of this move, in isolation, would be very high.

Israeli leaders have given little if any thought to the long-termoffensive necessary to maintain control of. The celebrations of the 3000th anniversary of King's founding of Jerusalem, planned for 1997, are small steps inright direction, but by itself, this event will have little impactthe media or the diplomatic community.

The events that occurred between 1948 and 1967, when thecontrolled the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem, provide a firmfor such a public-relations offensive. During that, the Palestinians sought to systematically erase every trace 3000 years of Jewish life in Jerusalem. After the 1967 war, deliberate and organized acts of vandalism were documented by Israeli government's Commission for the Examination of theof the Burial Grounds on the Mount of Olives.

The Hurva, the central synagogue of the Ashkenazi community,built in the early 18th century, was totally destroyed, as Tifereth Israel. The complex of four synagogues, Yohanan Ben, Eliyahu Hanavi, Istanbuli, and Kahal Zion (also known the Middle), was totally desecrated and only the broken walls remained. the Jewish Quarter was retaken in 1967, these sites were ruins, with dung, garbage, and animal carcasses. A road was carved through the Jewish Cemetery on the Mount of Olives, which back to the Second Temple, and 38,000 graves were defaced or.

To preserve a united and Jewish Jerusalem, and to prevent ato the pre-1967 occupation and a repeat of the campaign of, Israel needs to take and maintain a broad offensive. Into publicizing the way in which the Palestinians"protected" Jerusalem when this area was under their control, the hundreds of institutions and the thousands of individuals whose was destroyed should begin legal actions against theauthority and its leaders.

The financial aspect of this process, as well as the outcome, is; the major objective is to create media attention and pressure. A sustained series of public hearings and trials over a number of years will focus attention on the responsibility for the systematic destruction of, and provide a rationale and support for rejection ofclaims for any sovereignty or autonomy in this city.

It should also be possible to identify those individuals whopart in the desecration and destruction of this historic andsites. What role did Faisal Husseini and his family play in process? (His uncle, Haj Amin al-Husseini was the Mufti ofand responsible for much of the hatred and terrorism against before and during the 1948 war.) Although the Jordanian and military were legally responsible for the Jewish, and will share much of the blame, the Palestinians were theoffenders.

In every political conflict that has arisen since 1967, Israel been on the defensive, and has been losing ground. The have seized and held the initiative, attacking andat every turn. The PLO is now applying the same strategy to, and the Israeli response has been typically weak, defensivereactive.

In international politics, like in war, a defensive strategy the enemy the ability to choose the nature of the engagement, to control its outcome with the knowledge that it has nothing to. As long as our government is strictly defensive, the PLO has to lose in putting pressure on Israel to redivide Jerusalem allow the Palestinians to declare the city their "historic". If Israel and the Jewish people hope to win the battle for, we must adopt an offensive strategy and fight on a broad.