Jerusalem is calling upon you; it is the bride of Arabism. These were the desperate words of the renowned Arab nationalist poet Muzaffar Al Nawab in 1982 when Israel announced that the occupied city would be its "eternal and united capital".
His words do not ring more urgently than today. The holy city is under siege, literally. Its sanctity is being violated as never before in its history.
The Israeli occupation has begun an unprecedented campaign to uproot its Arab identity by demolishing Palestinian houses and building new Jewish neighbourhoods to pre-empt any plan to establish an independent Palestinian state which naturally would have Jerusalem as its capital.
The irony is that the Israeli measures are intensifying at a time when the city has been named the Capital of Arab Culture for 2009. What is frustrating is that the Arab League and its Jerusalem Committee are oblivious to the Israeli measures. Both bodies have yet to move a finger in defence of the jewel of Arab cities.
But more frustrating, outrageous in fact, is the attitude of the major Palestinian factions which are locked in a power struggle, and ignoring the cruel truth that very soon they will not have a land in which any of them would exercise any power at all.
