Until recently, Abu Dis was touted as the budding village that could serve as an alternate Jerusalem in a compromise deal. However, the Palestinians found this offer very insulting and obviously unacceptable. Not that any Jewish civilian has stepped in these places in the last 15 years to give a progress report. Let's Go book that you discover to resemble the Raid Motel than the Ritz. Now that we have called a spade a spade, we are faced with the dilemma that the only territory left to give the Palestinians that qualifies as Jerusalem is, gulp, parts of East Jerusalem.
Democracies work in strange ways, but usually in the eyes of the beholders.
52 years ago, Israel declared a state of emergency in order to give the government the latitude it needed to provide for the security of the state of Israel. Taken from the British book, many of these regulations had been used to keep the Jews down once upon a time. The main rules involve security, such as empowering the state to exercise administrative detention, in which it can arrest and jail someone without charges. And so, Justice Minister rode in on his high horse to declare war on the regulations. However, with looming strikes by the Histadrut labor union, he suddenly feels the need to extend them.