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Israel & Christians Today
Biblical understanding about Israel
“Jerusalem has always sat on an inter-civilizational fault line between the East and West. It is where civilizations can collide or learn to coexist. In this sense, Jerusalem is more than the center of spirituality for millions of believers; it is also one of the keys to world peace”
The Peace of Jerusalem
By Dore Gold
If there is no realistic negotiated solution for Jerusalem and internationalization is not an option either, then what is the likely fate of the Holy City? Frankly, we can expect continuing Israeli sovereignty over a united city which, given the history of Jerusalem, is the best possible outcome. The historical record has shown that only a free and democratic Israel can truly protect the freedom of Jerusalem for all faiths.
What about Palestinian and broader opinion? It needs to be made clear that no one else is asking the Palestinian Authority to formally sign on to such an arrangement at another Camp David Summit. Not all conflicts are resolved by formal agreements negotiated at great summit meetings, sometimes the parties reach a modus vivendi that is not imposed from above, but rather built up from the ground. While not ideal, it nonetheless addresses many – though not all – of each side’s principal concerns.
In the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, sometimes reaching an imperfect arrangement has been easier than the completion of formal negotiations. In the late 1920s, British high commissioner Sir John Chancellor presented Jerusalem mufti Hajj Amin Al-Husseini two alternatives – a political settlement with the Jews over the Western Wall or a much worse international solution. By refusing to compromise at Camp David and at all the negotiations that followed, Arafat and the Palestinian leadership around him appeared to be driven by the same set of considerations.
A number of measures need to be taken in the period ahead. First, there is already an Islamic authority representing the interests of the Muslim world with whom it is possible to work. For example, there is a Jordanian administrative role on the Temple Mount that was reinstated after the 1967 Six-Day War, leaving Israel clearly responsible for security. Thus despite the harsh memories on the Israeli side of Jordan’s invasion of Jerusalem in 1948, the two sides have come a long way in building up mutual confidence, even with respect to religious administration in Jerusalem. This cooperation was formalized in a 1994 Israeli-Jordanian agreement known as the Washington Declaration that was incorporated into the treaty of peace between both countries. It stated, “Israel respects the present special role of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in the Muslim holy shrines in Jerusalem. When negotiations on the permanent status will take place, Israel will give high priority to the Jordanian historic role in these shrines.”
In 1988, King Hussein declared that he was cutting his kingdom’s administrative ties with the West Bank, although he retained his religious ties to Jerusalem. Indeed, the Jordanian Ministry of Awgaf (Religious Endowments) Affairs has paid the salaries of Waqf officials to this very day. During the years of Oslo, Jordan lost much of its influence over the administration of Islamic affairs on the Temple Mount to the Palestinian Authority, but it has been seeking to recover it as of late. Today, there is no Palestinian Authority Minister of Awqaf sitting in Jerusalem, as in the times of Arafat.
The latest evidence of this increased Jordanian interest was disclosed in mid-October 2006, when it was revealed that King Abdullah II had expressed interest in building a fifth minaret on the Temple Mount’s eastern wall, near the Golden Gate. The Jordanians also signaled their continuing religious role in the area, when they undertook renovations in the Dome of the Rock, especially the replacement of its carpets in October 2006. Before any further construction projects of significance on the Temple Mount are implemented, however, a broader change in the overall situation there should take place.
Right now, what goes on in the temple Mount area is highly secretive; Israel opened up the Temple Mount to limited visits by members of all faiths. The entire area now needs to be fully accessible, including for pursuits of archeological oversight, in order to prevent the further destruction of ancient antiquities by irresponsible Islamic groups. This would be facilitated by giving international media full access to the area at times that do not conflict with Muslim prayer.
Second, Arab states like Saudi Arabia should quietly support the moderate role of Jordan in these administrative issues. No state should have an interest in radical sermons in the al-Aqsa Mosque calling for the overthrow of current Arab regimes. It is not at all clear if the Saudi establishment is fully aware of what different groups associated with the Muslim Brotherhood have been planning. For example, the proposal of the Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel to bring Zamzam water from Mecca to the Temple Mount is intended to elevate Jerusalem’s Islamic credentials by adopting ceremonies normally reserved for Mecca.
Audi Arabia may be opposed to Israel, but do the Saudis actually support such initiatives? Do they want to fund them? Centuries ago Ibn Taymiyya opposed religious innovations like the performance of rituals in Jerusalem that are reserved for Mecca. Moreover, these ideas today are advanced in many cases by those supportive of jihadist tendencies, especially those seeking an immediate reestablishment of the caliphate to replace Arab governments. Since 2003, with the escalation of al-Qaeda attacks inside Saudi Arabia, there is a growing awareness in the Saudi leadership that these radicalizing trends can come back to haunt the kingdom and undermine its stability.
Third, it must be remembered that Jerusalem is not just a diplomatic question. It involves the relationships of three great monotheistic faiths. For Jerusalem sits on an inter-civilizational seam and what happens in the Holy City can have implications – both negative and positive – for how these religions will relate to one another in the future. The visit of Pope John Paul II to the Western Wall closed a historical circle in the relationship between Christianity and Judaism, breaking with the older theological patterns of thought in the Church that needed the ruins of a defeated Jerusalem as proof of Christianity’s emergence as a replacement for the earlier Israelite faith.
When Islam came out of the Arabian Peninsula in the seventh century, it came into contact with other civilizations and religious groups. Part of that first contact involved direct military confrontation and outright conquest. But part of it was also surprisingly tolerant given the era in which it occurred. Radical Islamists who look back to the first four “rightly guided caliphs” perhaps forget that it was the second caliph, Umar bin al-Khattab, who allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem after five centuries of Roman and then Byzantine rule. Saladin would do the same several hundred years later.
Since there were no existing synagogues under Umar’s administration, the returning Jews has to erect new prayer houses, one of which was under the Temple Mount itself. And it was the very same Umar bin al-Khattab who would not pray at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, according to Islamic tradition, because he was concerned that future generations of Muslims might then turn it into a mosque.
The Islamic world will have to decide its own future course by itself, and outsiders can only hope that its future struggle for ideas will invoke those historical periods in which there was genuine curiosity about the ideas and history of the earlier monotheistic faiths and not an effort to erase them or eradicate what is left of their historical archaeological legacy.
Keeping Jerusalem open for all faiths is a historical responsibility of the State of Israel. Yet, Jerusalem has been at the heart of a great internal debate in Israel and the Jewish world more broadly. Many with a more particularistic orientation understand its reunification in 1967 as part of the national renewal of a people who had faced centuries of exile and even extermination just a few decades earlier. It was where the Jews first restored a clear-cut majority back in 1863 at a time when the world began to recall and recognize their historical rights and title. Jerusalem was the meeting point between the nation’s ancient history and its modern revival.
Others with a more universalistic view make a priority of integrating the modern State of Israel with the world community by using Jerusalem as a bargaining chip in a peace process presently under the auspices of the EU, Russia, the UN, and the U.S. In fact, the elaborate international ceremonies of world leaders orchestrated around the signing of each peace accord in the 1990s were intended to remind Israelis that their international acceptance as well as the normalization of their relations with their Arab neighbors was tied to this very diplomatic process.
The clash between the particularistic instincts inside Israel and its universalistic hopes has lain at the heart of the country’s political debate for forty years. Jerusalem is where these two national instincts converge, for by protecting Jerusalem under Israeli sovereignty, the State of Israel also serves a universal mission of keeping the holy city free and accessible for peoples of all faiths. Particularists will have to understand that there are other religious groups with a stake in the future of the Holy City, while universalists will have to internalize that they have a great national legacy worth protecting for the world and that conceding it would condemn it to total uncertainty at best.
This duality was once understood in ancient times, when protecting the freedom of Jerusalem meant keeping it open as a place of pilgrimage to Jews and Gentiles alike. The Temple service included offerings for the peace of all the nations of the world. These religious principles, reflected in the prophetic traditions of Isaiah and Micah as well, should be a source of current inspiration, even if the ancient services on which they were based are no longer practiced.
Modern Israel has faced a constant security challenge in recent years, forcing it to address tough dilemmas as Jerusalem’s custodian. During times of elevated threat levels, for example, it has had to limit the age groups of Palestinians from the West Bank entering Jerusalem in order to reduce the risk of suicide bombing attacks. Clearly, in a more peaceful environment, such regulations would be completely unnecessary, as was the case before the current wave of militant Palestinian violence began. But circumstances presently require that a delicate balance be maintained between the needs of vigilance and a policy of wide-open entry to Jerusalem’s most sensitive sites. Israel has also had to take action against a tiny internal faction who do not care about the holy cites of others, by employing its security establishment and its criminal justice system.
Israel’s security challenge has required it to extend its security fence around Jerusalem as well, in order to prevent Hamas suicide bombers strolling unobstructed into the heart of the city to attack crowded public areas. Christian institutions near Jerusalem’s municipal borders were concerned about being cut off from the Holy City, despite the many crossing points the fence will have. In response to the request by the main Christian churches, the Israeli defense establishment managed to include nineteen out of twenty-two Christian sites inside the new fence. Of course, had the Palestinian Authority dismantled the terrorist groups in the areas under its jurisdiction, the fence would have been totally unnecessary. But after more than a thousand Israelis died from these attacks since the Oslo Agreement was signed, it has become essential for Israel’s defense. Outside Jerusalem, the fence could make the movement of pilgrims on special holidays more difficult in certain areas, but it will save the lives of all Jerusalem’s civilians, which is both Israel’s paramount responsibility and ultimately the supreme religious value for all faiths.
Keeping Jerusalem united and free under the sovereignty of Israel is not a break from international norms of practice. Historically, there have been international claims that other holy cities be internationalized as well. This was the case with Istanbul, the seat of Eastern Orthodox Christianity after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. Furthermore, some called for Mecca’s internationalization after the Saudis captured the city in the 1920s, when Indian Muslims became concerned by the implications of Wahhabi rules for the practice of other Islamic traditions. But these challenges eventually abated. Ultimately, there is no reason why Israel’s role in Jerusalem cannot come to be adopted as well.
It has now been close to forty years since Israel reunited Jerusalem after the 1967 Six-Day War. Access to the Holy City has grown, new religious seminaries have been built, holy shrines have been restored, and Jerusalem’s ancient heritage has been unveiled as never before. Jerusalem’s multitude of visitors has included peace-loving pilgrims from very continent, including from countries with which Israel has no diplomatic relations. What should now be clear is that no other state or international body can truly protect the peace, freedom, and religious pluralism of the Holy City for all mankind. Rather than fight against the unity of Jerusalem, the world community should come forward and embrace it.