Religion, Nationalism, and Terror

A woman walking down steps in the old city of Jerusalem, November 18, 2007. Photo by Michal Fattal/Flash90.

Flash 90

Uzi Benziman, A strange struggle for Jerusalem - Haaretz, December 9, 2007

Jerusalem as a whole is losing its productive backbone and is deepening its dependence on state handouts. Young, secular, educated people able to earn a wage are leaving it in droves, followed by their parents. The city leadership is in the hands of ultra-Orthodox elected officials who imbue their managerial style with concepts derived from their world and priorities. This process stems from demographics whose significance is highlighted by the following projection: In about eight years the number of students in Jerusalem’s ultra-Orthodox elementary schools will be more than three times the number of students in secular and religious public schools.

That is the backdrop against which we should judge recent statements by groups that call on the public to keep Jerusalem united. A ludicrous gap exists between the organizations’ rhetoric and the forces shaping the city. The fiery slogans the heads of these organizations spout, the noisy rallies they initiate, the poetic declarations by Knesset members when they try to hold the state to its obligation to keep Jerusalem unified are about a city looking more and more like Safed (with all due respect to that city). Some areas of Jerusalem are increasingly more reminiscent of Umm al-Fahm (with all due respect to that city).

Hatem Moussa/Associated Press

JERUSALEM Thousands of Israeli demonstrators gathered Monday to show their opposition to concessions to the Palestinians.

Rina Castelnuovo for The New York Times

GAZA Two of Hamas’s top leaders, Ismail Haniya, center, and Mahmoud Zahar, right, at a Palestinian conference on Monday.

Hamas Urges Taking Hard Line Against Israel, New York Times, November 27, 2007

By ISABEL KERSHNER and TAGHREED EL-KHODARY
Published: November 27, 2007

JERUSALEM, Nov. 26 — The leaders of Hamas espoused a hard line against Israel at a conference that they and the militant Islamic Jihad faction convened in Gaza on Monday, the eve of the American-sponsored Middle East peace gathering in Annapolis, Md.
Also on Monday, Israeli right-wing activists stepped up their campaign against possible concessions to the Palestinians with demonstrations in Jerusalem.

In Gaza, Ismail Haniya, Hamas’s leader, said, “Let the whole world hear us: We will not relinquish a centimeter of Palestine, and we will not recognize Israel.” Mr. Haniya, who is usually associated with the more pragmatic wing of the Islamic movement, was responding to a refugee from the 1948 Arab-Israeli war who came up to the podium showing the deed for land he had left behind in what is now Israel.

Daniel Seidelmann, Annapolis and the “Jerusalem paradigm” | openDemocracy, October 31, 2007

Sit any Friday afternoon on the corner of el-Wad Street and St Stephen’s Road in Jerusalem’s Old City, just opposite the Austrian hospice. Thousands of Muslim worshippers throng to the mosques on Haram al-Sharif. Additional thousands of Orthodox Jews flock to prayers at the Western Wall. And the brown-robed Franciscans bearing the cross turn the corner and proceed to the Third Station of the Cross. Lest this picture appear overly idyllic: CCTV security cameras are ever-present, as are patrols of the Israel border police, while a handful of messianic Jewish settlers dart out of the Muslim quarter alleys.

In that one small scene, you can see it all. Three mutually incompatible religious narratives (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) and two mutually incompatible national narratives (the Israeli and the Palestinian) cohabit the same sacred and secular space, not larger than three square kilometres in size. Jerusalem has an undeserved reputation for being nitroglycerin - any random jolt causes it to explode. That’s nonsense. For the past 1,300 years, Jerusalem has been the counter-paradigm to a “clash of civilisations”. It isn’t “fuzzy-warm” or “touchy-feely”, and no “it’s-a-small-world-after-all” tunes waft in the air, but it works.

That’s the good news. Here’s the bad news. Jerusalem’s Old City is also the playground for Muslim, Christian and Jewish exclusionary fundamentalists who seek, respectively: jihad, armageddon and wars of Mitzvah. Jerusalem may not be nitroglycerin, but if handled poorly, i.e., by allowing the radical fundamentalists to romp freely, it becomes a small atomic device.

The crucible

The forthcoming Annapolis meeting - at a date yet to be confirmed (possibly 26 November 2007) - is not merely an attempt to substantively address the core issues of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It is also (and perhaps foremost) an attempt to realign the forces of moderation in the middle east into a powerful, albeit uneasy, coalition that will not only combat but provide a positive option in face of an ascending radical Islam. As such, Jerusalem will not only be a prominent item on the Annapolis agenda. It will also be the physical embodiment of Annapolis’s goals - a non-violent interface between Islam, the Arab world and the west; or alternatively, an embodiment of Annapolis’s worst dreams - the place where the tectonic plates of Islam and the west crush and grind one another, with all that ensues.

For decades, Jerusalem has been peddled as the “most difficult to solve” and left to some undetermined future date. No longer: Jerusalem’s time has come. Regardless of how counterintuitive this may sound, seriously addressing the final-status issues relating to Jerusalem is one of the easier ways of generating high dividends at a reasonable cost.