Shock and recovery: Jerusalem, sanctuary for all

This article was first published in the Huffington Post on 14 November, 2014.

What is to be done about Jerusalem? Twenty-five years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, this region is witnessing new walls being constructed in vain attempts to contain problems between people. When will we realize that walls separating cultures and people exacerbate sectarianism and accelerate fragmentation? How long will walls, figurative and physical, continue to poison our humanity?

The escalating tensions in the Old City of Jerusalem, ostensibly unified but actually never more divided, compound the debris left by the military campaigns of the past decades. These events typify this conflict as one, not being played out in the courtrooms of a state, the international community, or even the ethical courtrooms in our minds. This is a conflict that uses instruments of aggression aimed at polarising an already fragmented population.

Competing claims to Jerusalem as the capital for both Israel and a future Palestine reflect the need for a new architecture of waging comprehensive peace, where the cultural universal domain rises above the geo-politics to become a template of hope.

A walk through Jerusalem is a tour of world religion, architectural ascendancy and the winners and losers of war.

The first stop is the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the site of Jesus’ crucifixion, burial and resurrection, and the holiest place for Catholic and Orthodox Christians. It holds a legacy of demolition; its construction required the destruction of the Roman temple of Venus; the Persians destroyed the Church in 614, in 638 the basilica entrance was converted into a mosque, then in 966, it was again destroyed during anti-Christian riots.

Next is the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism, the first qiblah in prayer for Islam and third most holy site in Islam. According to the Bible, the first (King Solomon’s) temple was destroyed by Babylonian forces in 586 BC. It was rebuilt, but destroyed again by the Romans in 70 AD. After the Muslim conquest of Jerusalem in 637, the Dome of Rock and the Al Aqsa Mosque were built at the site as Muslim shrines. The stone in the Haram al-Sharif, enclosing over 144,000 square meters of fountains, Mihrabs , chambers, schools, gardens, buildings and domes is believed to mark the place where the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) ascended, where Abraham offered Isaac, and the location of the Holy of Holies in the Jewish Temple. Today, while the site is under Muslim control, entry is periodically restricted, and for Jews, the only accessible point of the second temple is the Western Wall.

There is not time to stop at the Via Dolorosa, the Mount of Olives and Mount Zion, but each of these tell their own story of disenfranchisement and the scourges of war.

The sightseer might ponder what cultural conditions facilitated such a geographically contained flourishing of religious spirit. That same observer might draw inspiration from hearing the Muslim call to prayer punctuated by church bells, two groups praying at one wall to a different God, and watching how a triple entente of religious architecture catches the afternoon light. In a momentary lapse of consciousness, he might confuse Jerusalem with a place that epitomises tolerance and plurality. But of course we know that this metaphor is an illusion. The reality is that Muslim worshippers pray under the protection of their occupiers, Jews cannot participate in the management of their holiest shrine and Arab Christians of the region are all but the forgotten as a stakeholder in this battle for religious preeminence.

The controversy over the management of the holy spaces is deep, but ironically has little to do with religion. While the site remains within the security control of Israel since its occupation of East Jerusalem in 1967, administration has been vested in an Islamic Waqf since 1187.

Obviously this is not about laws on the books. If it were we would see Israel withdraw from the occupied territories, as required under UNSC 242, an end to settlements and laws facilitating access to the sites by all religious groups. Jerusalem’s long history demonstrates that occupation is futile. Israel and its neighbors are legally bound to recognize the status quo ante of 1947.

Instead management of the holy sites has triggered violence for decades and continues to destabilise neighboring states. The centrality of this tension to the everyday lives of Muslims, Jews and Christians is a clear and present danger.

To move beyond this situation, we must recognise that these clashes are not about religion. They are about politics. Both sides should declare this perverse and unify under the argument that the politicisation of holy spaces crosses an ethical and moral line. Holy places must be governed by our inter-faith, and if this is not possible, then they must be governed by law.

Jews, Christians and Muslims of Arab culture must adapt the situation to the general principles that regulate the international order.  An association during a period of the last 1,800 years, marked by the Jewish yearning to return to Jerusalem, is not an historical or territorial association alone. Nor does it afford a persuasive title to territorial sovereignty under contemporary international law.

Moreover, the three Abrahamic religions must work together to craft a solution that takes our shared humanity as the basis for plurality. Such a peace must be waged through ethical consensus and be built around commonalities, not points of division. Ironically, nothing holds more symbolic value for extremists on all sides than changing the religious status quo at the Noble Sanctuary. A knowledge base already exists. Scholars have published more than 5,000 books on the history and archaeology of the Holy Land, and thus a historical template for a culture of peace and coexistence between Jews, Christians, and Muslims.

Jerusalem consciousness is a universal human imperative to which we are all stakeholders. Christians, Muslims and Jews make up 57% of the world population; the rest have an historical interest in forging a just and ethical peace. As my good friend Kenneth Cragg reflects, in our joint stewardship of the holy domain we share a sacred trust; our responsibility to faith is a relatively simple task for a believer, but if our fidelity does not want to be a mere “faith in faith”, we have to take responsibility for faith. Until we take this seriously, promoting peace, liberty and social justice in the Holy Land will remain an aspiration.