Jerusalem: The Biography

* In Israel’s dysfunctional democracy, with weak coalition governments, national-religious organizations have become ever more powerful in questions of Jerusalem’s planning and archaeology. In 2003, Israeli building started in the vital East One (E1) section, east of the Old City, which would have effectively cut off east Jerusalem from the West Bank, underminingthe creation of a Palestinian state. Israeli liberals and America persuaded Israel to stop this, but plans to build Jewish settlements in the Arab neighbourhoods of Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan continue. The latter stands next to the much-excavated ancient City of David where a Jewish nationalist-religious foundation, Elad, funds the invaluable archaeological excavations and runs a visitors’ centre telling the story of Jewish Jerusalem. It also plans to move Palestinian residents to nearby housingto make way for more Jewish settlers and a King David park called the King’s Gardens. Such situations can challenge archaeological professionalism. Archaeologists, writes Dr Raphael Greenberg, a historian who has campaigned against this project, represent ‘a secular academic approach’, yet their backers hope for ‘results that legitimise their concepts of the history of Jerusalem’. So far his fears have not materialized. The integrity of the archaeologists is high and as we saw earlier, the present dighas uncovered Canaanite not Jewish walls. Nonetheless these sites have become flashpoints for protests by Palestinians and Israeli liberals.

* The Russian reverence for Jerusalem has been modernized to suit the authoritarian nationalism fostered by Vladimir Putin who in 2007 oversaw the reunion of the ex-Soviet Moscow Patriarchate and the White Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia. Thousands of singing Russian pilgrims again fill the streets. The Holy Fire is flown back to Moscow on a plane, chartered by an organization called the Centre for National Glory and the Apostle Andrei Foundation, headed by a Kremlin potentate. A kitsch life-sized golden statue of ‘Tsar David’ has appeared outside David’s Tomb. An ex-prime minister, Stephan Stepashin, is the chief of the restored Palestine Society: ‘a Russian flagin the centre of Jerusalem,’ he says, ‘is priceless.’

* The Families remain important in Jerusalem. After the death of Faisal Husseini, Arafat appointed the philosopher Sari Nusseibeh (cousin of Weejah), as Palestinian representative in Jerusalem, but sacked him after he rejected suicide bombings. The founder of al-Quds University, Nusseibeh remains the city’s intellectual maverick, admired by both sides. At the time of writing, the Palestinian representative for Jerusalem is Adnan al-Husseini; another cousin, Dr Rafiq al-Husseini, advises President Abbas. As for the Khalidis, Rashid Khalidi, the Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University in New York, advises Barack Obama.

* On a last visit to Jerusalem in 1992 before his death, Edward Said called the Church ‘an alien, run-down, unattractive place full of frumpy middle-aged tourists milling about in a decrepit and ill-lit area where Copts, Greeks, Armenians and other Christian sects nurtured their unattractive ecclesiastical gardens in sometimes open combat with each other’. The most famous sign of that open combat is a little ladder belonging to the Armenians on the balcony outside the right-hand window in the façade of the Church which tour guides claim can never be moved without other sects seizingit. In fact, the ladder leads to a balcony where the Armenian superior used to drink coffee with his friends and tend his flower garden: it is there so that the balcony can be cleaned.

Copyright

An Orion ebook

First published in Great Britain in 2011 by Orion Books

This ebook first published in 2011 by Orion Books

© Simon Sebag Montefiore 2011

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