Jerusalem is one of my favorite cities in the whole world. Not just because of the spectacular integrity of the Old City, as a concept and a reality. Not even because it has an intriguing little street called “Queen Helena Street”… (Boy, did the eponymous Queen H.have a lot to answer for, in terms of getting Christianity entangled into the affairs of imperial governance, the subsequent development of so-called “Just War” doctrine, and so on… Maybe I should just change my name??)
In the summer of 1989, Bill the spouse and I took our then-four-year-old daughter to live in the old Palm House at the American Colony, in East Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, for most of the summer. My father, a very sincere and traditional Anglican believer, came to stay with us there for ten days or so. Every morning he would set out with his milord English panama hat and his milord English walking stick and walk with complete equanimity around the whole of the city, centering himself on the sites of pilgrimage that spoke to him in a far deeper or anyway different way than they speak to me. It was during the first intifada, and a couple of my sisters were concerned about his safety. I said No, I think he’ll be quite safe and have a great time– which he did. The nearest he came to suffering serious injury was when one of the lemons fell off the big lemon tree in the garden at the Palm House and hit him on his shoulder. (It narrowly missed falling directly, and more helpfully, straight into his gin and tonic.)
So yes, I understand that Jerusalem is special in different ways to everyone.
It breaks my heart that so many Palestinians, who have a love for the city that is considerably deeper and more rooted in history than my own, are prevented from visiting it even once. That includes Palestinians from the rest of the West Bank, from Gaza, and from the whole of the Palestinian diaspsora– apart from those lucky few who have the kinds of foreign passports that allow them to visit Israel. Israel claims that all of Jerusalem, including the eastern part of the city that contains the whole of the historic, walled “Old City”, all of which was occupied along with the rest of the West Bank by their army in 1967 and has been under occupation rule ever since, is an integral part of, indeed, the capital of, the State of Israel.
As I’ve written here before, the Israelis’ exclusion of the Palestinians of the rest of the West Bank, and of Gaza, from Jerusalem is a situation that they imposed mainly after the conclusion of the Oslo Agreement in 1993.
What I really want to write about here, though, is three key ways in which I see Jerusalem as being special as a political issue, and what that means for the present, post-“Annapolis” peace process.
Here they are:
(1) This one is fairly well-recognized. Jerusalem is of great personal and political importance to the majority of both Jewish and Muslim believers around the whole world. (It is also of importance to Christian believers but not, I think, in a way that is currently as politically pressing as the way it is important to Jews and Muslims around the world.) So that is around 14 million Jewish people around the world– and around 1.5 billion Muslim believers– who consider the status of Jerusalem to be an extremely important issue.
It takes considerable ignorance, lack of empathy, or arrogance, to imagine that the interests of the world’s Muslim believers in Jerusalem’s wellbeing, including their right to conduct pilgrimages and maintain buoyant religious, educational, and social institutions there, can simply be swept under the carpet or marginalized forever. That was well proven back in 2000 when Egypt and Saudi Arabia, majority-Muslim states that are staunch US allies, expressed strong objections to the concessions that President Clinton was demanding from Yasser Arafat over the Jerusalem issue, and those objections helped scupper Clinton’s whole, very last-minute and ad-hoc attempt to broker a Palestinian-Israeli peace agreement.
Do we have any reason to imagine that those two governments or any other strategically significant Muslim countries in the world would be prepared today to support any final-status arrangement for Jerusalem that might emerge from the (im-)balance of power within the present Palestinian-Israeli-US negotiations?
I doubt it.
(2) “Jerusalem”, however defined, is anyway the current major deal-breaker at the purely territorial level for any possibility of a viable two-state solution. Israelis define “Jerusalem” very broadly, as including all the many settlements they have implanted in a broad swathe around the area that, prior to 1967, constituted municipal East Jerusalem. And Israelis have a broad (though not total) consensus that they will never leave that swathe of settlements. Indeed, even since Annapolis they have continued to defy the world, and to tweak Washington, by announcing and then rapidly starting to implement successive new large-scale building plans there.
So it is not only the sensitivities of the Muslim world regarding the historic core of Jerusalem that stand in the way of a two-state final peace agreement. (Those sensitivities could, just possibly, be met through some combination of special status for the Holy Places and large religious and educational institutions, or whatever.) But Israel’s continued insistence on biting a gargantuan chunk out of the rest of the West Bank and digesting it into what they think of as “Jerusalem”, and therefore refuse to withdraw from, makes it almost impossible to build the basis for a viable Palestinian state in just the divided portions that remain of the West Bank, along with Gaza.
(3) Finally, for the chronically fractured Palestinian national community itself, Jerusalem is important as a crucial “bridge” between the Palestinians within the occupied territories as a whole, and those within Israel itself. Jerusalem’s 180,000 Palestinians live in a very vulnerable situation. During the first intifada, the leaders of their community played a central role coordinating the numerous acts of self-assertion and defiance that lay at the heart of that intifada. Leaders of the Palestinian cities, towns, and villages from throughout the West Bank and Gaza (and also from Israel itself) could easily travel to East Jerusalem to plan their efforts. Faisal Husseini (RIP), Hanan Ashrawi, Sari Nuseibeh, and other Jerusalemites were the main public face of the intifada, holding their press conferences in the National Palace Hotel, or meeting with Secretary of State Baker or other dignitaries….
And then, after Oslo, Israel walled East Jerusalem off from the rest of the West Bank; walled Gaza off from the whole world, including East Jerusalem; and started clamping down on the all the Palestinian political institutions in Jerusalem, starting with Orient House.
When Arafat “returned” to the West Bank, he did so to Ramallah, not to Jerusalem. Always jealous of any other, possibly competing centers of power, he connived in the marginalization of Faisal Husseini and all the other Jerusalem community leaders.
Meanwhile, from the Israeli governmental side, successive Israeli governments from 1967 on have promulgated the myth that East Jerusalem is “an integral part of the state of Israel.” They tried, but generally failed, to impose Israeli identity cards on all the city’s Palestinians. They bring to their land-use planning processes there exactly the same kind of discriminatory Zionist vision that they use in their land-use planning inside 1948 Israel– that is, a process completely dominated by Jewish interests, that marginalizes or excludes any equal consideration of the voice or interests of the indigenous Palestinian Arabs.
Thus we have the phenomenon of the Israeli government demolishing Palestinian housing in Jerusalem that is deemed to be illegal– in exactly in the same way that it demolishes the housing of many “bedouin” Palestinians who are citizens of and within the State of Israel. (See HRW’s recent report on this.)
Now, it is true that the Israeli government demolishes Palestinian housing in the West Bank and Gaza, too. But usually, these days, those demolitions are not done on the basis of highly discriminatory and exclusionary zoning practices, but for reasons that are either punitive, “military”, or just plain vindictive. It is the discriminatory zoning practices I am interested in here, and the way in which they make the Palestinians of Jerusalems into a sort of bridge constituency between the Palestinians who are residents of the rest of the occupied territories, and those who are citizens of Israel.
Israel’s insistence that East Jerusalem is “part of Israel” has meant that the 1.2 million citizens of Israel who are ethnic Palestinians have very free access to East Jerusalem. Indeed, some Palestinian Jerusalemites say that over recent years the Palestinian Israelis who make a point of trying to visit the city as often as they can, and to spend their discretionary income in Palestinian shops, restaurants, and other establishments there, have provided an important economic lifeline for their ever-threatened community, especially in the Old City.
So here’s where this seems to lead: What the Israelis have done in and around Jerusalem has (a) made the achievement of a two-state solution considerably harder, if not impossible, while it has also (b) laid the basis for a new form of unification of the Palestinian people: one that unites the Palestinians who are citizens of Israel with their cousins and brothers who are residents of the occupied territories.
Interesting…
14 thoughts on “Why Jerusalem is special”
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yet another elegant illustration of the ways in which the israeli government’s strategy has pushed the two state ‘solution’ even farther into the realms of myth and pipedream over the past decade.
the access to jerusalem which palestinian citizens of israel have has interesting implications for the right of return for palestinian refugees as well. if members of a family which fled west into haifa during the ethnic cleansing of the galilee can go to jerusalem (or even move there to live), it’s harder to justify denying the same rights to members of a family which fled north to lebanon from the same village…
What about the access of Jews to Jerusalem, the Jewish Quarter of the Old City and the Western wall – the Jewish equivalent to the Kaaba shrine – when it was under Arab control between 1948 and 1967?
And what happened in 1948 to the 100,000 Jews living in East Jerusalem? Kindly tell us what happened to the convoys bringing food, medicine and other supplies on the road from the coastal plain to Jerusalem’s Jews?
Yes, Truesdell, of course those Jews ethnically cleansed from East Jerusalem in 1948 (and their legitimate descendants)should be allowed to return to their homes or properties there– just as all the Palestinians ethnically cleansed from West Jerusalem should be given the same rights, there.
And Jews from around the world should have extensive rights to conduct pilgrimages and religious observances in meaningful parts of Jerusalem and to support the institutions that allow that– just as the 1.5 billion Muslims around the world should also have similar rights of religious/pilgrims access.
But rights of religious/pilgrimage access are not the same as “sovereignty” rights over a whole chunk of land, which are a different matter that should rightfully be decided by the institutions of this world. The institutions of this world– primarily, at present, the UN– are based on the human equality of all persons and cannot recognize any claims of “chosen-ness” by anyone… Why on earth should they?
If rights of religious/pilgrimage access were equivalent to sovereignty rights, then every Catholic could claim political, naturalization, and residency rights in Rome (or Jerusalem), and every Muslim could claim the same in Mecca– or in Jerusalem! Religious access is certainly not the same as sovereignty.
No Helena, I think you have it quite backwards. The “institutions of the world”, as you call them, should only have the obligation to make certain that the sovereign guarantees the religious/piligrmage rights, not in determining who the sovereign is. Truesdell is simply pointing out that they did a miserable job of this between 1948 and 1967.
Religious/piligrimage rights need not be the same as sovereignty, and I believe that this was something that Israel did agree to at Camp David. However, Muslims have had a pretty poor record of providing “religious/pilgrimage” rights to Jews when they have had sovereignty, going back to the Ottoman Empire.
Finally, if religious/pilgrimage rights are separate from sovereignty rights, then every human should be able to visit Mecca, irrespective of their religion and of the “chosen-ness” of the 1.5 billion Muslims in the world. Maybe your “institutions” should work on this for a while (or perhaps on the return to the Jews of stolen land in the Hijaz).
or perhaps on the return to the Jews of stolen land in the Hijaz
Oh, wow, you’re getting good JES. I’m sure it is carefully documented in all the careful massive documentation of Jewish ownership. But give us a link. I don’t seem to remember many Jews in the Hejaz in Ottoman times, so it can’t have been a big problem. Yemen yes, Hejaz no. And of course you are in favour of the return of stolen land to Palestinians in I/P. That’s a more important issue.
JES, of course the institutions of this world have the biggest role in determining WHO the sovereign is. (Do you imagine that a “title deed from the Almighty” could be given any credence in the global– and determinedly multicultural– age, for anyone?)
Ever since the Treaty of Westphalia and until today, it has been the formal recognition of other states that accords and cements the sovereignty rights of any state; and often in the post-1945 era this recognition has been accorded by those other, already existing and “recognized”, states through the U.N.
Hence the great importance the Kosovars and their supporters give to winning recognition of “Kosovo” from other states (and ultimately also the UN.)
Israel’s status as a state in the modern world was granted its legitimacy in the Partition Plan of 1947, through which the UN determined that there should be both a Jewish state and an Arab state, living side by side in the terrain of Mandate Palestine. That is still the formal position of the world body, representing just about every state in the world with the anomalous exception of Switzerland.
Alex, I suggest you take a look at the history of Islam, and particularly Khaybar. Since that time, the “chosen-ness” of the Muslims has kept Jews from Mecca and Medina.
Helena, interesting definition of “institutions”, but they still did a poor job of guaranteeing between 1948 and 1967 the kinds of rights for Jews that you are currently demanding for Muslims.
JES
“interesting definition of “institutions”.
Really? Perhaps you would care to share your own less interesting and more prosaic definition with us.
“but they still did a poor job of guaranteeing between 1948 and 1967 the kinds of rights for Jews that you are currently demanding for Muslims”.
In Britain we have a cartoon character called Mr Irrelevant who reminds me a lot of you. Helena is talking about the conditions for a just peace settlement now, not about who did what to who in the past. Doubtless if she proposed measures to deal with genocide you would with equal pertinence point out that such measures were not taken in the 1940s. Finally, I was previously unaware of the central status of Mecca and Medina in the Jewish religion, so would certainly welcome further information from you on this point.
Alex, I suggest you take a look at the history of Islam, and particularly Khaybar. Since that time, the “chosen-ness” of the Muslims has kept Jews from Mecca and Medina.
Oh well, if we’re talking about the time of the Prophet! We can talk about many wrongs 1500 or 2000 years ago. At any rate, all those Jewish tribes in Arabia at the time of the Prophet were Arabs of Jewish religion.
It is good to hear that we can call this “stolen land in the Hejaz”
Israel’s status as a state in the modern world was granted its legitimacy in the Partition Plan of 1947, through which the UN determined that there should be both a Jewish state and an Arab state, living side by side in the terrain of Mandate Palestine.
and??? Why didn’t that solve the problem?
Well, “mighty hannibal” thank you for your erudite input and for setting me in the right direction!
I don’t believe that Weber would have classified a sovereign state as an “institution” and, at any rate, Helen was very explicityly attempting to distinguish institutions, guaranteeing “human equality”, with sovereignty.
Excuse me, it’s early. That should have been distinguishing those institutions from state sovereignty.
BTW, “hannibal”, I agree that we should put the past behind us. That’s why I am against a literal right of return.
Alex, my reason for bringing up what happened during the time of the “Prophet[sic]” had to do with Helena’s “chosen-ness” comment. Jewish access to our holy sites, our cemetaries and our univeristy are not issues of “chosen-ness”.
Just out of interest: As to your assertions concerning the Jewish tribes of Yathrib and Mecca, exactly what made them Arab tribes?
Such fraudulent historians have come to inhabit this site. Muslim Chosen-ness? Jewish claim to Medina? What is the injustice of the Muslim denial of Jewish entry to Mecca?
Are the sins of one greater than the other? What exactly is the merit today of the supposed divine justification behind Joshua’s conquest of the promised land millenia ago? Was the Cannanite claim to the western hills above the Jordan River less valid than the Jews who once lived in Yathrib?
When you begin to ask such absurd questions you are led to the most absurd of all. What is the merit of any Jew’s claim today to land allegedly Promised to Abraham? Especially when we view the history of sacred and profane over more than four hundred centuries?
The anachronism of any attempt to draw such synonymous historical parallels is proof of how demented is the politics of our age. The heart of the problem today is reconciling multi-cultural populations in lands like the cities of Jerusalem, Baghdad, Kirkuk and Beirut.
The mentality of “never forget, never forgive” is the reason why the problem persists, and it does no good to keep score about victimhood.
Victimhood is for pea brains.