Oh! Jerusalem – An attempt at understanding the genesis of the struggle between Israelites and Hamas

To understand the current war between Israel and Hamas, one has to go back in history, not fifty or hundred years, but thousands. The anger and the heightened retaliation that Israel has inflicted on the Gaza strip over the last few days, literally obliterating that area, is not just in response to Hamas’s clandestine operation that hoodwinked Israeli’s intelligence network and caused damage and embarrassment, but the anger goes deeper, much deeper than that – all the way back to the origins of western religion. Before we begin to understand this war, we have to ask ourselves: Why Israelites and Arabs cannot live side by side in peace despite the division of Palestine in 1948? Why did Israel fight the six-day war in 1967 and end up taking over East Jerusalem, the Old and holy city where diverse religious sentiments were concentrated? What caused Prime Minister Balfour to proclaim in 1918 that it was time to give the Jews a homeland in Palestine? Why did Ben Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister and the architect of Israel’s destiny boldly declare Jerusalem as the capital of his country, even when there was no international consensus, and there were other cities to choose from? Why do Jews, Muslims, and Christians tenaciously claim Jerusalem as their holy city? Answers to these questions can only derived and understood if we take cognizance of that little piece of land called Jerusalem, about 50 square miles in size located in the Judaean hills and nestled between Israel and the West Bank.

For thousands of years, Jerusalem has governed the imagination of millions of people. Its very name invoked an intense reverence as the birthplace of not one but three major religions. A conservative estimate informs us that the city has since antiquity been attacked at least 50 times, and captured and recaptured on 40 occasions. The Holy Land – where Jesus preached during his adult life and was crucified, the land that Prophet Muhammad visited as his last destination before he ascended to the heavens and talked to God, and the sacred ground where Abraham sacrificed Isaac – has never experienced peace for any reasonable length of time. Jerusalem has been the bone of contention for all three major monotheistic religions. The Bible alone mentions Jerusalem about eight hundred times. Psalm 132:13-14 of the Bible states, “The Lord has chosen Jerusalem and will dwell there forever”. There were eight officially Pope-sanctioned crusades between 1095 and 1270 CE and many more unofficial raids. The sole purpose of these papal aggressions was to wrest Jerusalem from the hands of the Infidels – namely Muslims, under whose dominion Jerusalem was governed for centuries. Until the twentieth century, Jews did not have a homeland to call their own. But they harbored no doubt in their minds that Jerusalem was theirs, and one day the lord would call them back to claim the land of the holy temple where they kept the Torah during the time of the Old Testament. Since their exodus from Egypt, the Jews have yearned and prayed and fervently hoped to return to Palestine someday. It finally happened in the twentieth century, through a man who loved the Bible as much as he loved Jerusalem as the land of the Bible. And the man happened to occupy an important position in the affairs of the Western world.

In 1918, Balfour, the British Prime Minister created hopes ( in fact, he made a pledge) of carving out a separate Jewish state in Palestine, which eventually became a reality in 1948 when a UN resolution divided Palestine into two parts – a Jewish and Muslim state respectively. A year later, Israel declared independence under Ben Gurion and they audaciously and unilaterally adopted Jerusalem as their capital, a move that was silently endorsed by the international community. This move, not surprisingly at all, didn’t resonate well with the Muslims in the Palestinian area. After all, Jerusalem was holy to the Muslims as well. The only consolation for the Muslims was that Jerusalem was still, officially under the UN mandate, governed by Egypt at that time. But that changed In 1967 after the six-day war between Israel and Egypt when Israel took over East Jerusalem, an act that Israelis justified as divinely ordained. In fact, the very purpose of the war, according to many, was to gain back Jerusalem. In a sense, the Israelis believed that their destiny was fulfilled, and the Lord had given the holy land back to them. The international community silently acquiesced. The Arabs weren’t going to keep quiet, and over the years, the Gaza Strip, the border between Israel and Arabic areas, has seen so much bloodshed and violence because each one believes that they have entitlement to this part of the land over the other. While international pressure has helped to keep a tenuous peace between the two regions, It was only a matter of time before the walls were irreparably torn down.

With the above background, now it is time to look at the history of Jerusalem in greater detail. It is important to understand the story of Jerusalem through the ages to understand the relevance and context of the Israel-Hamas conflict. Read on, if you are interested.

In the annals of history, no piece of land has been subject to so much dispute, possessiveness – and imbued with so much religious connotation and interpretation as that of Jerusalem – the city of Shalom. For thousands of years, this land has been the bone of contention for a variety of reasons. Its grounds have been trodden by Jews, Christians, and Muslims with equal honor and equal ferocity During its long history, it was burnt and destroyed without a trace at least twice and rebuilt, ransacked, and besieged more than fifty times, each time recaptured and restored by a distant friend or known foe. The resilient city simply refused to disappear from collective human memory. So Where exactly is Jerusalem? If you care to look at the world map, you would be hard-pressed to locate it. Turn the map gently towards the Middle East, slowly run your eyes along the Mediterranean Sea, and if you are alert enough, your eyes will fall upon a little mountain Judea situated between the Mediterranean and the Dead Sea; and Jerusalem smugly ensconced on a tiny little plateau upon it. In reality, the whole of historical Jerusalem is less than a square kilometer in area, with no striking beauty, and with no natural resources to boast of; yet within its narrow perimeters, history runs as deep and wide as the blood that has flowed upon it. Men and women across the globe, across civilizations and nationalities, across religions have coveted that little piece of land with a ferocity and zeal that baffles the modern mind. Even today, in this age of so-called intellectual emancipation, that tiny territory continues to invoke the most virulent passions in the breast of man. Deserted, wasted, and devoid of any semblance of a normal city, it remains a disputed territory, with modern armies on either side gunning down even an innocent transgression. On this emotionally charged land, the human mind has lavished its greatest infatuation – the love of God, and in his honorable name – the love of territory.

The central fact about Jerusalem, around which much of its drama hinges, is that it is home to three major monotheistic religions Judaism, Christianity, and Islam – each of them as fanatical about their God as the other can hope to be. Chronologically, Judaism found its birthplace there at the dawn of Human History, about 3000 years ago. When King David and his famed son Solomon consecrated Jerusalem as the land of Hebrews and built its first glorious temple, the fate of the little land was sealed forever. The first entitlement to Jerusalem was given to the sons of Yahweh. It was also believed that the sacred ark Noah used to save the world from primordial deluge was hosted there. It was in Jerusalem the covenant that God made with Humanity and jews in particular resided in all its holy authority. However, after Solomon’s Death, the Jews scattered into different tribes, relentlessly roaming and incessantly persecuted. Their search for a Homeland continues even after 2000 years.

After Judaism, it was Christianity’s turn to lay siege to the land. Jesus, Christ was born in Bethlehem, six miles from Jerusalem, and it was just outside Jerusalem, in Golgotha he was crucified – thus transforming this little hand into the birthplace of Christianity. Under Romans, Christians lived a charmed and precarious life depending upon which emperor was ruling. Still, after the Roman emperor Constantine officially declared Christianity to be its official religion, there was no looking back. Christianity now claimed absolute claim to this holy land.

The Islamization of Jerusalem began around the late sixth century AD, by which time Muslims had already occupied the Eastern Byzantine Empire. It directed its followers to pray to face Jerusalem. According to tradition, Mohammad ascended to heaven in Jerusalem to converse with God. For thirteen years, this profound act of daily prayer facing the Holy Land made an indelible mark on Muslims. They came to believe with intense faith that Jerusalem was indeed the true birthplace of Islam. Ironically, after thirteen years, Muslims were redirected by ordinance to change the direction of prayers towards Mecca. That is how they do it today. But, that had little effect on how Jerusalem was perceived in the minds of Muslims. For those first-generation followers, Jerusalem was the original Holy Land and will continue to be so for generations to come.

Thus, it came to be that Jerusalem in the first ten centuries became the center of three major religions and was caught in the middle of their fanatic loyalties. But that was not the end of its woes. In 1095, Pope Urban II, on a momentous cold wintery day in Italy, announced to a group of disgruntled Knights they could gain heaven and be absolved from sins on earth if they could march to Jerusalem and reclaim the holy land from the infidels (Muslims had by that time control of the holy land). In the dark middle ages of Europe when superstition ruled, and men for a few crucial centuries lost the ability to reason, this clarion call from the Crowned Papal Master of Christian Europe was nothing short of the voice of God, and the kind of encouragement they needed to go on a rampage. The knights who gladly took up arms came from all parts of Europe – France, Italy, England- and they marched to Jerusalem in their silvery steel armors, caparisoned horses, and cross-engraved lances to launch what we have come to know as the “Crusades”. Waves and waves of Men and Women in the name of Crusades, went on expeditions to Jerusalem to attain spiritual relief, and once there, they killed and looted with a smile on their faces and blessings of the Church. Barbara Tuchman, in one of her first books, “The Bible and the Sword” captures in arresting detail the march of ordinary and extraordinary men to Jerusalem in God’s name, and in the course of their travels created, documented, and passed on cultural and social history of the time they lived in. It was a curious world, the years between the 11th and 15th centuries, and Jerusalem played an important role in the lives of people as a place to aspire, live and die for.

In the modern era, by which I mean the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the West has played a crucial role in meddling with the position and role of Jerusalem. It was England, as usual, who meddled with it. Caught between protecting their colonial interests, the increasing demand for Jerusalem to be considered a Christian territory, and pressure from well-meaning clergymen to return Jerusalem to the Jews – swung the ever-vacillating English Government to consider supporting one group or the other. The climax of this effort resulted in the creation of the Balfour Declaration (Prime Minister Balfour was instrumental in carving this out), in which the creation of Israel as a separate state for the Jews was officially placed on the table for the first time. After two thousand years of dispersion, Jews saw their first glimpse of the original promise of Abraham materializing. The diaspora was to become one people again. It was an ancient prophecy unfolding in modern times. But little did they realize that even with Israel recognized as a Jewish state, Jerusalem could never be only theirs because the Arabs who lived in equal or more numbers in nearby Palestine also had a claim to it. The current war is a continuation of the battle for the holy land.

Numerous books have been written on Jerusalem and its tortuous history, but for the general reader, I recommend Simon Sebag Montefiore’s “Jerusalem” for non-fictional reading covering the history of Jerusalem since the time it appeared for the first time in historical documents, or Dominique Lapierre’s brilliant narrative in novel form “Oh Jerusalem” ( the title of this essay as well) of the modern state of Israel. Both are heavy tomes but worth reading. Such reading and understanding are urgently required if one were to make sense of the current war and bloodshed. Once more the land of Judea is under the lens.

We hope and pray the bloodshed stops soon.