Jerusalem. The Biography

Jerusalemite version of the Vatican’s Swiss Guards. The Arabs might not accept America, the Israelis distrust the UN and the EU, so perhaps the job could be done by NATO with Russia, which is once again keen to playa role in Jerusalem. * It is hard to internationalize the Temple Mount itself because no Israeli politician could totally surrender any claim to the Foundation Stone of the Temple and live to tell the tale, while no Islamic potentate could acknowledge full Israeli sovereignty over the Noble Sanctuary and survive. Besides, international or free cities, from Danzigto Trieste, have usually ended badly.
    The Temple Mount is hard to divide. The Haram and the Kotel, the Dome, the Aqsa and the Wall are all part of the same structure: ‘no one can monopolize holiness,’ added Peres. ‘Jerusalem is more a flame than a city and no one can divide a flame.’ Flame or not, someone has to hold the sovereignty, so the various plans give the surface to the Muslims and the tunnels and cisterns beneath (and therefore the Foundation Stone) to Israel. The minute complexities of the twilight world of subterranean caverns, pipes and waterways there are breathtaking, if peculiarly Jerusalemite: who owns the earth, who owns the land, who owns the heavens?
    No deal can be agreed nor will it endure without something else. Political sovereignty can be drawn on a map, expressed in legal agreements, enforced with M-16s but it will be futile and meaningless without the historic, mystical and emotional. ‘Two thirds of the Arab–Israeli conflict is psychology,’ said Sadat. The real conditions for peace are not just the details of which Herodian cistern will be Palestinian or Israeli but the heartfelt intangibles of mutual trust and respect. On both sides, some elements deny the history of the Other. If this book has any mission, I passionately hope that it might encourage each side to recognize and respect the ancient heritage of the Other: Arafat’s denial of Jewish history in Jerusalem was regarded as absurd by his own historians (who all happily accept that history in private), but none would risk contradicting him. Even in 2010, only the philosopher Sari Nusseibeh has had the courage to admit that the Haram al-Sharif was the site of the Jewish Temple. Israeli settlement-building undermines Arab confidence and the practicality a Palestinian state. Yet Palestinian denial of the ancient Jewish claim is just as disastrous to peace-making. And this isbefore we reach an even greater challenge: each must recognize the Other’s sacred modern narratives of tragedy and heroism. This is a lot to ask since both of these stories stars the Other as arch-villain – yet this too is possible.
    This being Jerusalem, one could easily imagine the unthinkable: will Jerusalem even exist five or forty years on? There is always the possibility that extremists could destroy the Temple Mount at any moment, break the heart of the world and convince fundamentalists of every persuasion that Judgement Day is nigh and the war of Christ and Anti-Christ is beginning.
    Amos Oz, the Jerusalemite writer who now lives in the Negev, offers this droll solution: ‘We should remove every stone of the Holy Sites and transport them to Scandinavia for a hundred years and not return them until everyone has learned to live together in Jerusalem.’ Sadly this is slightly impractical.
    For 1,000 years, Jerusalem was exclusively Jewish; for about 400 years, Christian; for 1,300 years, Islamic; and not one of the three faiths ever gained Jerusalem without the sword, the mangonel or the howitzer. Their nationalistic histories tell a rigid story of inevitable progressions to heroic triumphs and abrupt disasters, but in this history I have tried to show that nothing was inevitable, there were always choices. The fates and identities of Jerusalemites were rarely clear cut. Life in Herodian, Crusader, or British Jerusalem was always just as complex and nuanced as life is for us today.
    There were quiet evolutions as well as dramatic revolutions. Sometimes it was dynamite, steel and blood that changed Jerusalem, sometimes it was more the slow descent of generations, of songs sung and passed down, stories told, poems recited, sculptures carved, and the blurred half-conscious routines of families over many centuries taking small steps down winding stairways, quick leaps over Neighbouring thresholds and the smoothing of rough stones until they shone. 1
    Jerusalem, so loveable