Cross purposes How do we solve an unholy mess like Jerusalem?

As ultranationalist Israelis clash with Palestinians the historic city is once again in the news. But as our Foreign Editor reports, it’s the struggle for control of East Jerusalem that is the real faultline the world must watch out for

THERE are few cities like it anywhere. The very name conjures up so much in the minds of so many people. Standing as it does, battle-scarred from thousands of years of conflict and as a sacred symbol of Islam, Judaism and Christianity, Jerusalem invokes reactions from all who live there or visit it.

Perhaps because of how contentious its existence has been and the divisions among those who have claimed it as their own, many visitors who have encountered this walled city of domes, minarets, dazzling light and stone have sometimes viewed it less than favourably.

In his study Jerusalem: City of Mirrors, the Israeli historian Amos Elon tells of how the great American writer Mark Twain, in his famous travel book The Innocents Abroad, published in 1867, once described the city as “the abode of ignorant, depraved, superstitious, dirty, lousy, thieving vagabonds”.

There would not be a Second Coming, Twain insisted: Christ had been in Jerusalem once; he would not deign to come again.

But long before Twain, Jerusalem had no shortage of detractors. As far back as the 10th century the great Arab geographer Muhammad Ibn Ahmad Muhammad once characterised it as “a golden basin filled with scorpions”.

Certainly, during the years that I got to know the city well during the height of the Palestinian uprisings or intifadas in the 1980s, 1990s and early noughties, Jerusalem was never short of a sting in its tail. Riots would flare, stones would be thrown, bullets and tear gas fired, and suicide bombers would detonate their deadly cargo, but still Jerusalem’s endless stream of tourists would shuffle devoutly along the Via Dolorosa from church to synagogue to mosque, never quite sure when to cover their heads or take off their shoes.

A divided city

MANY of these tourists are more than familiar with the ancient fights over the city including those through biblical times, the Roman Empire, and the Crusades. Likewise, in terms of more modern history they know of those years during the British Mandate from 1917-48, and then that period when Jerusalem became a divided city again after Israel proclaimed its independence in 1948.

That was the moment when the western half of the city became part of the new state of Israel (and its capital, under an Israeli law passed in 1950), while the eastern half, including Jerusalem’s Old City, was occupied by Jordan.

But no event shaped the modern contest over Jerusalem as much as the Arab-Israeli war of 1967, in which Israel not only defeated invading Arab armies but also seized control of the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt; the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan; and the Golan Heights from Syria.

There would not be a Second Coming, writer Mark Twain once insisted – Christ had been in Jerusalem once and he would not deign to come again

“Jerusalem became the centre of a cult-like devotion that had not really existed previously,” was how Rashid Khalidi, a professor of modern Arab Studies at the University of Columbia, explained what happened back in 1967 speaking to The New York Times more recently in 2017.

It was on December 6 of that same year – 2017, of course – when the then-US president Donald Trump chose to announce Washington’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital: a controversial move made despite years of reluctance on behalf of an international community which was both wary of how contentious such a decision would be, and the message Palestinians and the wider Arab and Muslim world would take from it.

Over the years, until Trump’s decision, foreign governments had largely opened embassies in Tel Aviv, avoiding Jerusalem in recognition of the United Nations resolution over the divided city which it regards as remaining disputed and should only be resolved by negotiations.

But if 1967 was the year when Jerusalem was supposedly given “cult-like devotion,” by Israelis, then as Professor Khalidi also says it was the beginning of what he describes as an “extraordinary degree” of fetishisation of the city “as hardline religious nationalism” came to “predominate in Israeli politics”.

The full extent to which this Israeli ultranationalism is now a presence in the country was again evident these past few days as hundreds of supporters of far-right organisations, including the Lehava group, marched through central Jerusalem towards the city’s Damascus Gate in the east of the city.

Road to Damascus

DAMASCUS Gate has long been a flashpoint, sitting as it does along the so-called “green line” or 1949 Armistice Line between East and West Jerusalem, making for an uneasy coexistence there between Jews and Arabs who live on either side. These past few days Damascus Gate proved again to be a trigger point after clashes erupted between ultranationalist Israelis and Palestinians.

Tensions have been growing since the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan on April 13. Palestinians say Israeli police have tried to prevent them from holding their usual Ramadan evening gatherings outside Damascus Gate, an historic landmark on the north side of the Old City and adjacent to several Palestinian neighbourhoods.

“Palestinians love to relax in this area after evening prayers at Al-Aqsa Mosque, but the occupation (Israel) doesn’t like it. It’s a matter of sovereignty,” Jerusalem resident Mohammad Abu Al-Homus told Reuters news agency.

But brewing, too, in the background has been a series of videos circulating on Israeli social media purporting to show young Palestinians slapping or otherwise