1/15/2024 0 Comments No notion meaningA key question for the fate of Jerusalem is whether this anchoring is necessary or if an understanding can be reached in which the city’s stones serve as symbolic stepping stones, not as the ultimate end of faith. However, the metaphysical beliefs of Jerusalem’s inhabitants are quite physically anchored in a way that is highly exclusionary. There is a striking similarity in language, in deep religious conviction, in a belief in the above and beyond. Those who are the most alike in Jerusalem seem to fight each other the most. The great tragedy lies in the similarity between those who are fighting against each other. Jerusalem is a city in which people are trying to live, a city where some are preventing others from living, and a city in which people are trying to die while causing maximal pain to the perceived “other side”. It is unconscionable that some Palestinians are discounting the Jewish connection to the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif and just as abstruse for others to disavow the Muslim meaning of the holy site.Īs someone who has worked in Jerusalem, I am fascinated with the concurrent uniqueness and banality of the experience, of the routine of ecstasy and suffering amidst the rush-hour traffic. The idea that a symbol can have only one meaning is a key source of the city’s tragic violence. The use of archaeological research with all but predetermined findings to ideationally solidify particular territorial claims plays into this logic. In a zerosum understanding of Jerusalem, when a place is holy for one side, so it must be for the other in order to contest claims of ownership. Religious significance has become linked to territorial hegemony. Nothing is left uncontested in this prime real estate of salvation.Ĭontestation and projection of history reach a pinnacle in Jerusalem. Many Israeli companies in this sector are industry leaders, born out of a need for legitimate protection but also in order to fortify control of the eastern part of the city (and the Occupied Territories) in contravention of international law - using hyper-advanced tools for the realization of an idea thousands of years old. When clashes take place in Palestinian neighborhoods, one can see surveillance blimps flying above the city. Those who visit the Old City of Jerusalem as pilgrims or tourists may be too preoccupied with the sights to notice the ubiquity of surveillance mechanisms. Likewise, generic office buildings, malls and apartment blocks are not just unimaginative investments, but rather claims to monopolized possession of truth. This instrument of modern transportation cements a fundamentalism of ownership, of creating facts on the ground in contravention of international law. A gleaming light rail train connects West Jerusalem to the Old City and the northwestern settlements. Today, we are seeing Jerusalem develop as a strange concoction of ossified faith and cutting-edge technology, instrumentalized for a return to the past. 1 Jerusalem leaves no one untouched, despite the banalities of its overzealous souvenir hawkers, crawling traffic, overwhelming noise and overpriced hotels. Even with the distant gaze of a secular humanist, I cannot help but feel connected to the connection, as it were, connected with the human search for meaning so spatially tied to the city. It is fascinating, not just for its religious symbolism but also for the intense emotions people feel in encountering it. Few who have visited it could escape its pull. The name is synonymous with salvation and destruction, the beginning and the end of time. Views of his current or previous employerįew cities evoke feelings as immediate, visceral and primal as Jerusalem. In this article are his own and do not necessarily reflect the He wishes to thank Susan Rockwell, Ingrid Ross and Officer for the Palestinian Territories and Israel at the Germanįederal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development Stiftung (FES) in East Jerusalem and was previously Desk Jakob Rieken is Program Manager at the Friedrich-Ebert.
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