Identity and Ideology vis-à-vis Palestine

                                                                                         

Over the past century, not only have Palestinians and Zionists fought on Palestine’s terrain of battle, but so have Turks, British and Jordanians. Each has had reason to invest itself in the region.

Whether it was early-twentieth-century fading Ottoman imperial intent, energetic colonialism in the case of the British Mandate (1922–1948), the de facto division of land between Israel and Jordan under their 1948 armistice agreement, or Israeli retention of the territorial spoils of the 1967 war, each power has expressed aspects of its own identity and ideology vis-à-vis Palestine.

The Palestinians still seek to express their identity by establishing a state where international justice, recognition of their historic property claims and accommodation of some refugees’ right of return can be achieved. But their conflict with the Israelis has now become centered on one essential square kilometer—the Old City of Jerusalem—within which lie the ancient symbols and trophies of these now opposing identities.

Reserved for final-status negotiations, Jerusalem, with its core historical and religious elements, constitutes a potential deal-breaker. Outside the immediate Israeli-Palestinian orbit, the Jerusalem Question is on the lips of, among others, Moroccans, Iraqis, Iranians and Turks, to say nothing of “the Trio”—Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia—and “the Quartet”—the United Nations, the United States, the European Union and Russia.

Medieval Christians placed the city at the center of their spiritual lives because the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches sanctified physical Jerusalem. As a result, and in the absence of geographic knowledge and appropriate technology, their maps showed Jerusalem at the center of the globe. A separate, earlier tradition also named it the omphalos, or navel, of the world, and yet another, the birthplace of the cosmos.

Mirroring these conceptions in some ways, the modern world seems to have returned to such images, and Jerusalem has become once more the center of the world’s attention (to be continued).

About the author:
David Hulme holds a doctorate in International Relations from the University of Southern California with an emphasis on the Middle East. He's the author of "Identity, Ideology and the Jerusalem Question" and the blog, Causes of Conflict. He is president of Vision Media Productions and chairman of Vision.org Foundation. Please email at dhulme@vision.org.

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