Jerusalem is a city of contrasts–especially in opinions
May 12, 2010
By Ira Sharkansky
Ira Sharkansky
JERUSALEM– This is a wonderful city for those who admire the past and live to celebrate it. Three thousand years supplies more than enough heroes to fill every square and street corner with memorial sites. Insofar as both Jewish and Muslim traditions condemn graven images, we are saved the grandiose statuary that marks other capitals. But the verbal and political hyperbole more than compensates.
Visiting enthusiasts clog our streets and take our parking places. The best reason for avoiding peace is to prevent the onslaught of tourists from Muslim countries. Peace is our goal, if we can achieve it without additional traffic.
Jews accompanied by Christian enthusiasts make their modern pilgrimages, in short pants and sun hats, singing songs, waving placards and flags during the religious feasts of Passover and Succoth, as well as Jerusalem Day. There is no Temple, so the city is saved the pollution associated with the quarter million or so sacrifices that Josephus describes for the festivals of his day. Wise Jerusalemites do not leave their neighborhoods on parade days without checking on the traffic bulletins.
Jerusalem Day occurs on the anniversary of Israel’s conquest of the Old City and its Arab environs, according to the Hebrew calendar. So this year it is in the middle of May rather than June as it was in 1967. International al-Quds Day is an invention of the most recent Iranian regime, and occurs during Ramadan to commemorate Muslim and anti-Zionist conceptions of the city’s history.
Accuracy is less important than fervor in the claims made about the city. The capital of a Jewish empire from the time of David onward, which slept as a run-down, neglected corner of Muslim empires until the Jews began arriving in numbers during the 19th century? Or Muslim from the time of Abraham, where Jews never more than a tolerated minority in someone else’s regime?
Jerusalem’s history reflects its location at the intersection of continents and empires, as well as an attractive location in the mountains. It is away from the heat of the coast and has enough rainfall to make it green while in sight of the desert. It has been a target of others from all points of the compass: Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome, various groups of Muslims, British, and most recently the United Nations, the Roman Catholic Church, and the White House.
Which Jerusalem? is an unanswerable question. Why the lines of 1967 when rulers altered the boundaries countless times before and after that date?
It is a great place to live on those days–still a large majority of the total–when it is not someone’s holiday. With a short drive from most parts of the city (after 10 in the morning and before 4 in the afternoon), one can enjoy another place. Jews can enjoy the smells, colors, and tastes of the Old City. Arabs can find what they want in shopping malls like those of Europe and North America.
My icon for this year’s Jerusalem Day is the cartoon on the editorial page of Ha’aretz. It shows a sunbather on the beach in Tel Aviv reading a newspaper that headlines the festivities in Jerusalem.
Wishes are one thing. Reality is something else.
The beach or an Arab coffee house may provide a pleasant escape, but Jerusalem remains a hard kernel of a dispute that will not go away.
Moshe Dayan may have helped or hurt the city’s prospects when he ordered the troops to remove the Israeli flag they had erected on the Temple Mount. Neither Jewish rightists, the most recent shrieking imam, the current occupants of the UN’s Secretariat or the White House are likely to reduce the temper of those concerned with Jerusalem. Peace and quiet are not the themes of this city.
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Sharkansky is professor emeritus of political science at Hebrew University.
