Week 2 responce

The “Jerusalem Then and Now” report by Mick Dumper gives a rich brief description about Jerusalem. He first starts in giving an outline about the history of the city since the arrival of its first inhabitants “The Canaanite” or “Jebusites”. Dumper then describes the different stages the city went through and explains the significances of each period. He describes briefly the religious importance of the city for Christianity, Islam and Judaism. The second half of his report, he stops at the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and specifically the role of Jerusalem in this conflict and goes into details in describing the changes occurring in the city since 1930’s-1940’s. I personally see that what is going on today in Jerusalem and has been going on since over 62 years is one of the most dangerous periods the holly and historical city has ever gone through. The occupation has been working on clearing the city from its original residents and replacing them by Zionist settlers from all over the world, removing all of the historical Arabic (Moslems as well as Christian) features of the city and turning it to a pure Israeli city through the process of “Israelization”.

While Reba V Rubin goes into more details about the different stages that Jerusalem went through, she describes the policies of the different conquerors of the city and the relationship between the different sectors and religions in each period. Reba ignored the current situations in Jerusalem and concludes her paper with a misleading claim that “Jerusalem, with all its municipal and political complexities, became a united city where Jews and Moslems, some secular and others religious, could live side by side”. This claim ignores the facts that Palestinian Muslims and Christians are denied access to the city and their property was stolen and given to new Israeli residents illegally. Reba assumes that the story of Jerusalem ended in 1967 and the people of the city are living happily since then united and equal!!

Rashid Khalidi focuses more on the Arab Perspective towards Jerusalem and goes into depth in the History of Jerusalem under the Islamic controlled eras. He points out a very important factor in dealing with Jerusalem’s history “It should be clear that what is really at issue is one narrative of the history, and not the thick accretion of religious beliefs and embellishments of the historical record over which the modem political agendas of Palestine and Israel compete”. I agree with his argument and believe that history should not be directed by religious beliefs and should be based on evidence. Unlike Reba Rubin, Khalidi ends his paper with explaining the current status of Jerusalem under UN resolutions and International Law.

The fourth paper focuses on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict which Jerusalem is in the heart of. The paper goes into depth and explains different aspects of the conflict. I may personally disagree or dislike many of the terminologies and ways Jeremy Pressman viewed the conflict, but in general it explained the basics and most important issues in this ongoing unresolved conflict. From my perspective as a Palestinian, I do not see it as a conflict over disputed land or borders; I see it as a new colonization and apartheid system which has aimed since the appearance of the Zionist movement to ethnically cleanse the land from its Arab inhabitants and create a new country over its ruins. David Ben-Gurion (an Israeli Prime Minister) once said that the elder generations (who were expelled from their land) will die and the new generation will eventually forget. And this is the solution that the Israeli governments have been counting on for the ongoing conflict.