By Eli E. Hertz
1st part of 2
One Nation's Capital throughout History
Jerusalem and the Jewish people are so intertwined that telling the history of one is
telling the history of the other. For more than 3,000 years, Jerusalem has played a
central role in the history of the Jews, culturally, politically, and spiritually, a role first
documented in the Scriptures. All through the 2,000 years of the diaspora, Jews have
called Jerusalem their ancestral home. This sharply contrasts the relationship between
Jerusalem and the new Islamists who artificially inflate Islam's links to Jerusalem.
The Arab rulers who controlled Jerusalem through the 1950s and 1960s demonstrated
no religious tolerance in a city that gave birth to two major Western religions. That
changed after the Six-Day War in 1967, when Israel regained control of the whole city.
Symbolically, one of Israel's first steps was to officially recognize and respect all religious interests in Jerusalem. But the war for control of Jerusalem and its religious sites is not over.
Palestinian terrorism has targeted Jerusalem particularly in an attempt to regain control
of the city from Israel. The result is that they have turned Jerusalem , literally the City of
Peace , into a bloody battleground and have thus forfeited their claim to share in the
city's destiny.
Jerusalem's Jewish Link: Historic, Religious, Political
Jerusalem, wrote historian Sir Martin Gilbert, is not a 'mere' city. "It holds the central
spiritual and physical place in the history of the Jews as a people." (1)
For more than 3,000 years, the Jewish people have looked to Jerusalem as their
spiritual, political, and historical capital, even when they did not physically rule over the
city. Throughout its long history, Jerusalem has served, and still serves, as the political
capital of only one nation – the one belonging to the Jews. Its prominence in Jewish
history began in 1004 BCE, when King David declared the city the capital of the first
Jewish kingdom.(2) David's successor and son, King Solomon, built the First Temple there, according to the Bible, as a holy place to worship the Almighty. Unfortunately, history would not be kind to the Jewish people. Four hundred ten years after King Solomon completed construction of Jerusalem, the Babylonians (early ancestors to today's Iraqis) seized and destroyed the city, forcing the Jews into exile. Fifty years later, the Jews, or Israelites as they were called, were permitted to return after Persia (present-day Iran) conquered Babylon. The Jews' first order of business was to reclaim Jerusalem as their capital and rebuild the Holy Temple, recorded in history as the Second Temple.
Jerusalem was more than the Jewish kingdom's political capital. It was a spiritual beacon.
During the First and Second Temple periods, Jews throughout the kingdom would travel to Jerusalem three times yearly for the pilgrimages of the Jewish holy days of Sukkot, Passover, and Shavuot, until the Roman Empire destroyed the Second Temple in 70 CE and ended Jewish sovereignty over Jerusalem for the next 2,000 years. Despite that fate, Jews never relinquished their bond to Jerusalem or, for that matter, to Eretz Yisrael, the Land of Israel.
No matter where Jews lived throughout the world for those two millennia, their thoughts
and prayers were directed toward Jerusalem. Even today, whether in Israel, the United
States or anywhere else, Jewish ritual practice, holiday celebration and lifecycle events
include recognition of Jerusalem as a core element of the Jewish experience. Consider
that:
• Jews in prayer always turn toward Jerusalem.
• Arks (the sacred chests) that hold Torah scrolls in synagogues throughout the
world face Jerusalem.(3)
• Jews end Passover Seders each year with the words: "Next year in Jerusalem";
the same words are pronounced at the end of Yom Kippur, the most solemn day
of the Jewish year.
• A three-week moratorium on weddings in the summer recalls the breaching of
the walls of Jerusalem by the Babylonian army in 586 BCE. That period
culminates in a special day of mourning – Tisha B'Av (the 9th day of the Hebrew
month Av) – commemorating the destruction of both the First and Second
Temples.
• Jewish wedding ceremonies – joyous occasions, are marked by sorrow over the
loss of Jerusalem. The groom recites a biblical verse from the Babylonian Exile:
"If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning,"(4) and breaks
a glass in commemoration of the destruction of the Temples.
Even body language, often said to tell volumes about a person, reflects the importance of
Jerusalem to Jews as a people and, arguably, the lower priority the city holds for
Muslims:
• When Jews pray they face Jerusalem; in Jerusalem Israelis pray facing the
Temple Mount.
• When Muslims pray, they face Mecca; in Jerusalem Muslims pray with their
backs to the city.
• Even at burial, a Muslim face, is turned toward Mecca.
Finally, consider the number of times 'Jerusalem' is mentioned in the two religions' holy
books:
• The Old Testament mentions 'Jerusalem' 349 times. Zion, another name for
'Jerusalem,' is mentioned 108 times..(5)
• The Quran never mentions Jerusalem – not even once.
Even when others controlled Jerusalem, Jews maintained a physical presence in the city,
despite being persecuted and impoverished. Before the advent of modern Zionism in the
1880s, Jews were moved by a form of religious Zionism to live in the Holy Land, settling
particularly in four holy cities: Safed, Tiberias, Hebron, and most importantly –
Jerusalem. Consequently, Jews constituted a majority of the city's population for
generations. In 1898, "In this City of the Jews, where the Jewish population outnumbers
all others three to one …" Jews constituted 75 percent (6) of the Old City population in what Secretary-General Kofi Annan called 'East Jerusalem.' In 1914, when the Ottoman Turks ruled the city, 45,000 Jews made up a majority of the 65,000 residents. And at the time of Israeli statehood in 1948, 100,000 Jews lived in the city, compared to only 65,000
Arabs.(7) Prior to unification, Jordanian-controlled 'East Jerusalem' was a mere 6 square
kilometers, compared to 38 square kilometers on the 'Jewish side.'
Islam's Tenuous Connection to Jerusalem
Despite 1,300 years of Muslim Arab rule, Jerusalem was never the capital of an Arab
entity, nor was it ever mentioned in the Palestine Liberation Organization's covenant
until Israel regained control of 'East Jerusalem' in the Six-Day War of 1967.
Overall, the role of Jerusalem in Islam is best understood as the outcome of political
exigencies impacting on religious belief.
Mohammed, who founded Islam in 622 CE, was born in 570 CE and raised in presentday
Saudi Arabia; he never set foot in Jerusalem. His connection to the city came years
after his death in 632 CE, when the Dome of the Rock shrine and the al-Aqsa mosque
were built in 688 and 691, respectively, their construction spurred by political and
religious rivalries. In 638 CE, the Caliph (or successor to Mohammed) Omar and his
invading armies captured Jerusalem from the Byzantine Empire. One reason they wanted to erect a holy structure in Jerusalem was to proclaim Islam's supremacy (8) over Christianity and its most important shrine, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.
More important was the power struggle within Islam itself. The Damascus-based
Umayyad Caliphs who controlled Jerusalem wanted to establish an alternative holy site
if their rivals blocked access to Mecca. That was important because the Hajj or
pilgrimage to Mecca was (and remains today) one of the Five Pillars of Islam. As a result,
they built what became known as the Dome of the Rock shrine and the adjacent
mosque. (9)
To enhance the prestige of the 'substitute Mecca,' the Jerusalem mosque was named al-
Aqsa. It means 'the furthest mosque' in Arabic, but has far broader implications, since it
is the same phrase used in a key passage of the Quran called "The Night Journey." In that
passage, Mohammed arrives at 'al-Aqsa' on a winged steed accompanied by the
Archangel Gabriel; from there they ascend into heaven for a divine meeting with Allah,
after which Mohammed returns to Mecca. Naming the Jerusalem mosque al-Aqsa was
an attempt to say the Dome of the Rock was the very spot from which Mohammed
ascended to heaven, thus tying Jerusalem to divine revelation in Islamic belief.
Jerusalem never replaced the importance of Mecca in the Islamic world. When the
Umayyad dynasty fell in 750, Jerusalem also fell into near obscurity for 350 years, until
the Crusades. During those centuries, many Islamic sites in Jerusalem fell into disrepair
and in 1016 the Dome of the Rock collapsed. (10)
Still, for 1,300 years, various Islamic dynasties (Syrian, Egyptian, and Turkish)
continued to govern Jerusalem as part of their overall control of the Land of Israel,
disrupted only by the Crusaders. What is amazing is that over that period, not one
Islamic dynasty ever made Jerusalem its capital.(11) By the 19th century, Jerusalem had
been so neglected by Islamic rulers that several prominent Western writers who visited
Jerusalem were moved to write about it. French writer Gustav Flaubert, for example,
found "ruins everywhere" during his visit in 1850 when it was part of the Turkish Empire
(1516-1917). Seventeen years later Mark Twain wrote that Jerusalem had "become a
pauper village." (12)
Indeed, Jerusalem's importance in the Islamic world only appears evident when non-
Muslims (including the Crusaders, the British, and the Jews) control or capture the
city.(13) Only at those points in history did Islamic leaders claim Jerusalem as their third
most holy city after Mecca and Medina.(14) That was again the case in 1967, when Israel
captured Jordanian-controlled 'East Jerusalem' (and the Old City) during the 1967 Six-
Day War. Oddly, the PLO's National Covenant, written in 1964, never mentioned
Jerusalem. Only after Israel regained control of the entire city did the PLO updated its
Covenant to include Jerusalem.
Jordan's Shameful Record
As recently as the mid-20th century, when Arabs last controlled parts of Jerusalem, they
exhibited no respect for the Holy City.
In 1948, when Jordan took control of the eastern part of Jerusalem, including the Old
City, it divided the city for the first time in its 3,000-year history. Under the 1949
armistice agreement with Israel, Jordan pledged to allow free access to all holy places
but failed to honor that commitment. From 1948 until the Six-Day War in 1967, the part
of Jerusalem controlled by the Jordanians again became an isolated and underdeveloped
provincial town, and its religious sites the target of religious intolerance.
The Old City was rendered void of Jews. Jewish sites such as the Mount of Olives were
desecrated. Jordan destroyed more than 50 synagogues (15), and erased all evidence of a
Jewish presence. In addition, all Jews were forced out of the Jewish Quarter of the Old
City adjacent to the Western Wall, an area where Jews had lived for generations.
For 19 years, Jews and Christians residing in Israel (and even Israeli Muslims) were
barred from their holy places, despite Jordan's pledge to allow free access. Jews, for
example, were unable to pray at the Western Wall; Christian Arabs living in Israel were
denied access to churches and other religious sites in the Old City and nearby Bethlehem,
also under Jordanian control.(16) During Jordan's reign over eastern Jerusalem, its
restrictive laws on Christian institutions led to a dramatic decline in the holy city's
Christian population by more than half – from 25,000 to 11,000, (17) a pattern that
characterized Christian Arabs in other Arab countries throughout the Middle East where
religious freedom is not honored.
It was only after the Six-Day War that the Jewish Quarter was rebuilt and free access to
holy places was reestablished. It is worth noting that after Jordan annexed the West
Bank in the 1950s, it too failed to make Jerusalem – a city that Arabs now claim as 'the
third most holy site of Islam' – its capital.
When Israel reunited Jerusalem after the 1967 Six-Day
War, one of its first acts was to grant unprecedented
freedom to all religions
Israel reunited Jerusalem as one city in 1967, after Jordan joined the Egyptian and
Syrian war offensive and shelled the Jewish part of Jerusalem. Israeli leaders vowed the
city would never again be divided.
Despite the disgraceful treatment of the Jewish Quarter and the Mount of Olives under
the Jordanians and despite the Arabs' violation of their pledges to make all holy sites
accessible to Jews and Christians, one of the first acts Israel undertook after reuniting
the city was to guarantee and safeguard the rights of all citizens of Jerusalem. This
included not only free access to holy sites for all faiths but also represented an
unprecedented act of religious tolerance. Israel granted Muslim and Christian religious
authorities responsibility for managing their respective holy sites (18) – including Muslim
administration of Judaism's holiest site, the Temple Mount. Eventually, however, the
Waqf, which holds administrative responsibility over the Temple Mount, violated the
trust with which it was invested to respect and protect the holiness of the Temple Mount
for both Muslims and Jews.
Jerusalem was Never an Arab City
Arab leaders continue to insist that Jerusalem is an Arab city. That myth is used to
implement a strategy to wrest partial control of Jerusalem from Israel and to make
Jerusalem the capital of a Palestinian state. It is also part of a long-range strategy to
destroy the Jewish state. This is one reason PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat rejected the
unprecedented now-or-never Israeli proposal at peace talks in 2000 at Camp David. The
proposal sought to solve the impasse over the status of Jerusalem by offering Arabs a
share in the administration of parts of the city. Afterwards, Arafat revealed his real
position in a post-summit statement that declared the PLO's demand for sovereignty
over Jerusalem included the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, the Temple Mount mosques,
the Armenian Quarter, "and Jerusalem in its entirety, entirety, entirety." (19)
The 'Two Jerusalems' Myth
Palestinians have nurtured a myth that historically there were two Jerusalems – an Arab
'East Jerusalem' and a Jewish 'West Jerusalem.'
Jerusalem was never an Arab city; Jews have held a majority in Jerusalem since 1870 (20), and 'east-west' is a geographic, not political designation. It is no different than claiming Annapolis the capital of Maryland should be a separate political entity from the rest of that state.
In 1880, Jews constituted 52 percent of the Old City population in 'East Jerusalem' and
were still inhabiting 42 percent of the Old City in 1914. (21) In 1948, there were 100,000
Jews in Jerusalem, with 60,000 Arabs. A joint Jordanian-Israeli census reported that
67.7 percent of the city's population in 1961 was Jewish. A 1967 aerial photo reveals the
truth about the area called 'East Jerusalem': it was no more than an overcrowded walled
city with a few scattered neighborhoods surrounded by villages. Prior to unification,
Jordanian-controlled 'East Jerusalem' was a mere 6 square kilometers, compared to 38
square kilometers on the Jewish side.
Although uniting the city transformed all of Jerusalem into the largest city in Israel and a
bustling metropolis, even moderate Palestinian leaders reject the idea of a united city.
Their minimal demand for 'just East Jerusalem' really means the Jewish holy sites
(including the Jewish Quarter and the Western Wall), which Arabs have failed to protect,
and the return of neighborhoods that house a significant percentage of Jerusalem's
present-day Jewish population. Most of that city is built on rock-strewn empty land
around the city that was in the public domain for the past 40 years. With an overall
population of 730,000 today, separating 'East Jerusalem' and 'West Jerusalem' is as
viable and acceptable as the notion of splitting Berlin into two cities again, or separating
East Harlem from the rest of Manhattan.
Arab claims to Jerusalem, a Jewish city by all definitions, reflect the "what's-mine-ismine, what's-yours-is-mine" mentality underlying Palestinian concepts of how to end the Arab-Israeli conflict. That concept is also expressed in the demand for the 'Right of
Return,' (22) not just in Jerusalem - Israel's capital, but 'inside the Green Line.'
Arab Fantasies, Destroying History
Arabs deny the bond between Jews and Jerusalem; they sabotage and destroy
archaeological evidence, even at the holiest place in Judaism – the Temple Mount.
Arabs continually denied the legitimacy of the Jewish people's connection to Jerusalem.
Arafat and other Arab leaders insisted that there never were Jewish temples on the
Temple Mount. They also claim the Western Wall was really an Islamic holy site to whichMuslims have historical rights.(23) Putting rhetoric into action, Islamic clerics who manage the Temple Mount have demonstrated flagrant disrespect and contempt for the
archaeological evidence of a Jewish presence.
Between 1999 and 2001, the Muslim Waqf removed and dumped more than 13,000 tons
of what it termed rubble from the Mount and its substructure, including archaeological
remains from the First and Second Temple periods, which Israelis found at dumping
sites. During construction of a new underground mosque in a subterranean hall believed
to date back to the time of Herod,(24) and the paving of an 'open air' mosque elsewhere on the Temple Mount, the Waqf barred the Israel Antiquities Authority from supervising, or even observing, work. When archaeological finds from any period – Jewish or otherwise – are uncovered in the course of construction work, the Authority is mandated by law to supervise and observe everywhere in Israel – legislation that dates back to 1922 and documented in the international accord of the League of Nation's - the "Mandate for
Palestine."
Such gross disregard for the pre-Islamic Jewish heritage of Jerusalem – particularly on
Judaism's holiest historic site - is a far more insidious form of the same Islamic
intolerance that motivated the Taliban to demolish two gigantic pre-Islamic statues of
Buddha carved into a cliff in Afghanistan.(25)
The Holy Places and Jerusalem
Jerusalem, it seems, is at the physical center of the Arab-Israeli conflict. In fact, two
distinct issues exist: the issue of Jerusalem and the issue of the Holy Places. Sir Elihu
Lauterpacht, a former judge ad hoc on the bench of the International Court of Justice
and a renowned and respected scholar of international law at Cambridge University, has
said:
"Not only are the two problems separate; they are also quite distinct in nature from one
another. So far as the Holy Places are concerned, the question is for the most part one of
assuring respect for the existing interests of the three religions and of providing the
necessary guarantees of freedom of access, worship, and religious administration.
Questions of this nature are only marginally an issue between Israel and her neighbors
and their solution should not complicate the peace negotiations. As far as the City of
Jerusalem itself is concerned, the question is one of establishing an effective
administration of the City which can protect the rights of the various elements of its
permanent population - Christian, Arab and Jewish - and ensure the governmental
stability and physical security which are essential requirements for the city of the Holy
Places."(26)
Eli E. Hertz
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
