Unofficial Commentary

HOLY SITES - A HISTORICHAL VIEW

The issue of Holy Sites in Palestine has always been a subject of discord and contention: because Palestine is and has always been a spiritual, but also a physical center of gravity for the three Religions of the Book, whose traditions are so deeply imbricated that they have, over the centuries, generated an unending dispute over what constitutes, in many instances, a common inheritance.

A historical, and therefore multi-confessional, Palestinian view on this crucial issue, however, must try and set aside a legitimate anger at all attempts aimed at confiscation, seizure, appropriation and go back to basic historical facts. It must, and this is no easy endeavor, overcome our own unavoidable biases, which are not only the product of education and tradition, but are also fed by our sense of outrage in the face of prejudice.

One remembers the Crusades: a massive and prolonged onslaught of mediaeval European Christian kingdoms on our area. It was conducted, not only in the name of Religion, but specifically in the name of the "liberation of the Holy Sites". Under this slogan, Moslems and Jews as well as Oriental (Orthodox) Christians were exposed to wholesale massacre, expropriation and subjugation.

From the beginning, more than a century ago, the Zionist movement had placed its ambitions in Palestine within this heavily loaded context. Herzl, in particular, never failed to underline and take advantage of this cultural complicity. Dr Regina Sharif has written, several years ago, an excellent study of this subject under the title: "Non-Jewish Zionism".

In 1929, provocations staged by Jewish extremists at the site of AI Boraq (The Wailing Wall, which Jews call the Western Wall) unleashed a cycle of confessional violence in Jerusalem, which soon spread to Hebron. In the war of 1948, during which nearly one million Palestinians were forcibly expelled from their homes, their villages and their cities, the issue of Jerusalem was projected by the Zionists as a major issue: the UN Partition Plan, indeed, had left the Holy City outside the territory allotted to the Jewish State, making it an international enclave ( a "Corpus Separatum" ) in the Arab State of Palestine. The will to foil this Plan inspired the assassination, by the Jewish Underground of the Swedish UN Mediator, Count Folke Bernadotte, and served to justify the immediate expansion of the newborn Israeli State beyond the borders of the Partition Plan on all fronts.

With the war of June 1967, and the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, the issue of Holy Sites was blown up to unprecedented dimensions. The Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, and Abraham's Sanctuary in Hebron, became major alibis for settlement colonization, annexation and expulsion of the Palestinian population. In 1969, a "deranged" Australian Protestant fanatic set fire to the AI Aqsa Mosque, in an overt attempt to make room for the Reconstruction of the Jewish Temple instead and place of the two Muslim Mosques, a permanent scheme and a recurrent demand of extremist Religious Jewish groups.

Still under the cloak of the Holiness of the Wall, and in order to create the huge Esplanade now facing it, the Israeli government confiscated and destroyed the totality of a very ancient neighborhood of the Old City, (" Harat AI Magharba ", Moroccans Court) adjacent to the El Boraq area, while initiating a series of archeological digs below the Wall which UNESCO and the whole world condemned in 1975: not only did they threaten physically the stability of the Mosques above, but they also involved plain destruction of findings, as the latter did not support any of the archeological claims waved by the new masters of the City. Formally and illegally annexed to the State of Israel in the wake of the 1967 war, together with the surrounding villages, so-called "Unified Jerusalem" was solemnly proclaimed "Eternal Capital" by the Israeli Knesseth in the early eighties. In the September 13th, 1993, Israeli-Palestinian Declaration of Principles, generally referred to as the "'Oslo Accords, the issue of Jerusalem was postponed to the stage of , "final status" talks. In the meantime, all sides were supposed to abstain from any unilateral steps "that may preempt or prejudice the outcome of future negotiations on a permanent settlement ". But successive Israeli governments have consistently violated this commitment in Jerusalem, confident that the world had endorsed their claim to a special, and essentially religious, link to the City. In this context, the discussion on Holy Sites has become an integral part of the overall battle for Peace, and one of the favorite playground of present-day Israeli decision makers, whether at government or at "'municipality" levels.

In the September 28th, 1995, Interim Agreement on the West Bank and Gaza Strip ( "Oslo 11"), Hebron, a city which follows Jerusalem closely in holiness for all Believers, stood as an exception, as the only big city in the West Bank from which Israeli occupation forces would not totally "redeploy". But even this partial redeployment in Hebron did not occur until January 1997, more than a year after the evacuation of other West Bank cities.

The whole of Palestine, indeed, is full of "holy places": the very ancientness of urban life in this country, the remnants and remains of wars, occupations and religious revolutions have made it into a living museum, a monument to a past where celestial messages and Revelation payed a central role. Given this continuity, and the weight of so many generations, "Every stone in Palestine, " as President Arafat once said, "_is holy. " One could also, however, recall the late Professor Yeshayahu Leibovitz, an Israeli-Jewish scholar of great moral stature, who used to deride what he called "stone-worshipping" as alien to the basic assumption of faith, for which only the Almighty (and human life) are holy. Anyway, Hebron and Jerusalem, where the Israeli government tries to support its territorial and political ambitions with property claims over religious sites, are today the most problematic, tense and explosive locations of the conflict. Religious passions, and the manipulation of the holiness of sites, are central elements in this crisis. Hence the urgent need to take a cold look at them.

In Jerusalem, one can clearly see the conflict in claims considering the names given by the various religious traditions to identical locations. Practically every gate of the Old City has three names: a Moslem name in Arabic, a Christian name in the various European languages, and a Jewish name in Hebrew. Thus the "Column Gate" (Bab-El-Amud) of the Muslims is called "Damascus Gate" in Christian European post-crusader literature, while the Jews call it the "Sichem Gate" (Sha'ar Shkhem), as it used to lead the way to Nablus, which the Jews call Shkhem. These motions of the sign and the sense reflect a complex reality, where one must attempt to distinguish between various levels: mainly between the predominantly Islamic, but also significantly Christian, and wholly Arabic, character of the Land throughout the last thirteen centuries of history and the existence of particular spiritual and historical links, of another nature, with Christians and Jews outside Palestine, even before the beginning of zionist colonization at the end of the XIXth century.

The situation prevailing in Hebron's Haram Ibrahimi, the "Cave of the Patriarchs" is typical in this regard. For the Sanctuary is indeed, and without the slightest doubt, a Moslem Shrine, and it has always been an Islamic Waqf property. But the issue of property does not sum up the issue of holiness, as Abraham (Ibrahim, Avraham) is the Patriarch of all, and the father of both Isma'il and Yitzhak. Moslems have never challenged Jewish claims to share in the holiness of the Site, but all Palestinians, and anyone attached to justice, will reject property claims built on holiness alone. Holiness may be shared incommon. It can in no way be a pretext for a transfer of property. Thus the building of a synagogue inside a living Mosque - an abomination also to he found in the Nabi Samwil Sanctuary (Prophet Samuel's Tomb), near Jerusalem can neither legitimate a retroactive claim to property, nor justify expropriation of Muslims.

The same contradiction, between holiness and property, exists in Jerusalem. For AI Boraq, the Wailing Wall, is indeed a Moslem holy site, and an Islamic Waqf property. But one cannot deny that it is a holy place for Jews, where they have come to pray for generations. For if AI Boraq was the departure station of Prophet Muhammad's mystical rise to the seven skies, and if the Caliph Omar Ibn El Khattab, who "opened" Jerusalem to Islam, went to pray over the Rock where Abraham once brought Isaac to sacrifice, it is precisely because these were the very sites of an ancient history and a common tradition. For this had been (or was considered to be) the site upon which the ancient Hebrews had built their First Temple, and upon which the Babylonian Returnees had built the Second Temple. This had also been the site of the restoration of the latter by the Roman-protected post-Hasmonean monarchy (Herod the Great). This was the reason why Jerusalem had been the first Qibla, the first direction of prayer, for early Muslims. But when Caliph Omar entered Jerusalem, there were no Jews in the City: the Christian rulers of Rome had expelled the few who had remained long before, and there were no Jewish sanctuaries operating. There were only ruins, and the very holiness attached, in common, to given locations where sanctuaries had once existed. Muslims erected shrines in places which they considered holy precisely out of respect for earlier Jewish and Christian traditions, and out common beliefs.

Restoration of property rights, free access for all worshippers, free circulation for all: these are the principles on which one may defuse the present tensions and passions surrounding holy sites in Palestine. But this can only he done on the basis of mutual respect. So long as it is not the case, and the Israeli government keeps on fostering intolerance and unilateral claims, the question of holy sites will remain a time-bomb threatening to undo all that has been achieved so far in the direction of a just and durable peace between Israelis and Palestinians, and a sustainable coexistence between Muslims, Christians and Jews.