At a special cabinet meeting on Jerusalem Sunday, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert announced plans to channel NIS 5.75 billion worth of benefits into the capital over the next five years, in an attempt to reverse the capital’s demographic trends which Jerusalem Mayor Uri Lupolianski warned could lead to Hamas taking over the city without firing a shot. ‘Jerusalem could, God forbid, end up not under Jewish sovereignty, but rather that of Hamas,’ Lupolianski said at the meeting, held at the Menachem Begin Heritage Center overlooking the Old City walls in honor of the 40th anniversary of the unification of the capital. Hamas, Lupolianski said, ‘knows that it is possible to capture Jerusalem through demography within 12 years. We need a plan, and not crumbs, so that Jerusalem will remain Israel’s capital forever.’ A recent study carried out by Hebrew University demographer Prof. Sergio Della Pergola predicted that if the situation – and Jerusalem’s borders – remained unchanged, only 60% of Jerusalem’s residents would be Jews by 2020, with the remaining 40% Arab, while another survey predicted that the number of Jews and Arabs living in the city would reach parity within a quarter century. The cabinet […]