Occupation and Control in the Jewish Quarter

Here is a classic example of what happens when you send someone to report on a part of the world they know little or nothing about. Perhaps not surprisingly it comes from the BBC -Deep Tension Over Jerusalem Holy Site by Matthew Price.

The report is a first person account of the recently inaugurated excavations near the Dung Gate in Jerusalem. After describing the exasperation of an Israeli colleague who declares that, "Its just a ramp", Price proceeds to disagree and writes an article to explain to the obviously dimwitted Israeli that it's really, "all about control."

That control lies at the root of the problem is glaringly self-evident because, as Price is quick to note, the whole of East Jerusalem (and hence the Old City) is territory (illegally?) occupied by Israel.

As far as Palestinians are concerned, and to be fair most of the world, the Old City - which lies in East Jerusalem - is occupied territory.

While the inherent irony of a Brit explaining the "real" intricacies of the Arab-Israeli conflict to an Israeli is totally lost on Price, he would do well to read some history or even just a map of the Old City. The Dung Gate is not only the way leading to the Wailing Wall, it happens to be the only gate leading directly into the Jewish Quarter - a part of the city "with a nearly continual Jewish presence since Roman times".

Why "nearly continual"? Because during the 1948 War, when Jordan illegally occupied the Old City, it proceeded to expel all the Jews. Perhaps this was because throughout the past 2,000 years the Jewish community was the largest community in Jerusalem. Perhaps it was simply ethnic cleansing to ensure that the city be judenrein. In any case, for 19 years, Jews were not allowed to pray at the religious sites and could do nothing as those sites were systematically desecrated. For 19 years there was no Jewish "control" of the Jewish Quarter. For Mr. Price to hearken back to those days demonstrates once again that there is nothing more dangerous than a little knowledge.

Finally, as the article approaches its denouement, Price waxes poetically:

The church bells began to ring out. Then the muezzins started up, calling Muslims to prayer. When I first came here I heard these sounds and felt hopeful.

Surely these were the sounds of co-existence? Now I just hear the sound of centuries of competing claims to this city.

Notice that the sound of church bells does not initially bring forth any negative associations in the writer's mind. Of course the Jewish component of this imagined Nirvana of coexistence is left up to the reader's imagination.