2006-03-14-jerusalem

By Ira Sharkansky

JERUSALEM—I have lived in Jerusalem for more than 30 years. My wife and two of my children were born here. So I allow myself to claim roots in the city. Along with this, I will take the liberty of commenting on what others write about it.

What prompts this column? A dull spot in national politics. The Israeli parties are trying to clobber one another with an eye to the election two weeks away, but have not managed to express anything new since the campaign began. Our neighbors are wrestling with the results of their election. Hamas winners and Fatah losers are wondering how to position themselves after this most recent major event in Palestinian history. If they choose wrong, they may find themselves written out of history. They seem to recognize this, so not much is happening on their front while they talk and ponder.

In the midst of this political hiatus I received from a friend yet another collection of writings about Jerusalem. The writers and those quoted are world class intellectuals, among the people who seem required to express themselves about Jerusalem. No doubt the city has a presence in the world. If there was a measure of words written per thousand residents Jerusalem would come out in first place. Googling the names of Jerusalem along with other national capitals shows Jerusalem with more citations, or not too many fewer citations than other capitals with many times its own modest population, and at the centers of countries with many times the size and power of Israel.

One reads about awe, and glory, the weight of faith, expectation, politics, competition between large worlds of Christianity and Islam, and the small world of Judaism; and violence associated with that competition. For some, it is all a reason to come and experience the city. I can sit at home and entertain friends from my childhood and professional experiences in several countries. The stream of visitors is impressive and enjoyable, and likely to be greater than if I had settled elsewhere.

Some cannot tolerate the pressures they perceive in Jerusalem. The packet of writings recently received included a line from the poet Yehuda Amichai, "the air over Jerusalem is saturated with prayers and dreams....It's hard to breathe." The Jerusalem-born writer A.B. Yehoshua confesses: "I feel really relieved every time I leave the place." Walter Laqueur wrote a piece that he called "Dying for Jerusalem" in which he emphasized a city torn between Jews of ancient and modern, ultra-Orthodox and secular, and even more painfully between the Arab East and Jewish West. Several of my friends have moved out of Jerusalem claiming the oppression of the ultra-Orthodox. They find themselves still working in Jerusalem, and having to commute from their suburb 5 or so miles away, amidst the morning and evening creep of many others who work here but live outside the city, either on account of lower prices for housing, or a lesser feeling of being oppressed by the problems of Jerusalem.

Often the centrality of Jerusalem is painfully inconvenient. Traffic jams are world class when the heads of major countries come to express themselves on the Middle East and make their visits at holy sites and the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial. Less awesome are the problems caused by leaders of middle- and small-scale powers like the Czech Republic, Lithuania, Georgia, and one or another Central American country. Some visits make no greater impression than causing speculation about what are those national flags being put on the lamp posts by municipal workers.

Yet another feature of Jerusalem's status, not entirely positive, is the pressure from religious and other communities throughout the world to develop their own space in the city. The late 19th century witnessed a major wave of church and hospice building by European and American Christians. The Jews have been building since 1948. The Hebrew University is one sign of this, with facilities indicated as the contribution of families and communities from Uruguay in the southwest to Melbourne in the southeast, and lots of Americans and Europeans between those points. In most fields, it is Israel's best university. Competing fund raising for Hadassah and Shaare Zedek hospitals assure Jerusalemites access to better medical care than residents of most other Israeli cities. Financial realities are that donors help, but Israeli taxpayers provide more than 80 percent of the outlays at the university and hospitals.

Yad Vashem continues to grow and develop, partly against the specter of competing Holocaust memorials in Los Angeles, Washington, and elsewhere. Yet another site that will mention the Holocaust eventually is the Museum of Tolerance, being developed by the Simon Wiesenthal industry in the center of town. So far this has done nothing more than close what had been the major parking lot in town. The place is fenced off, and involved in legal challenges focused on a Muslim cemetery that the museum developers would like to move elsewhere. It is likely that the site will remain in a limbo for years while the battles continue, all the while there will remain lost a couple of hundred parking spots for those wanting to drive into the center of town.

The possibility or threat of peace is likely to produce yet another wave of religious communities wanting to establish a presence in the city of peace. The Mormons are waiting to reactivate their student center on the Mount of Olives. Korean Christians have accumulated money to purchase land for their own center. Already some 25 to 30 thousand religious pilgrims come to the city annually from that country. I doubt that North American Evangelists are far behind in their concern for real estate.

Most impressive is the backlog of religious tourism from one billion Muslims who have stayed away from a Jerusalem ruled by the Jews. Palestinians and Jordanians have been competing to refurbish the Noble Sanctuary/Temple Mount, and have raised the prospect of 5 million Muslim tourists annually once peace comes to Al Quds.

All of the above reflects the world status and historical residues found in the air and on the ground of Jerusalem. For most of those who live here, however, the city is like any other. It is where we have our work and our families, do our shopping, argue with neighbors who disturb us, leave town for a weekend in the countryside, and do everything else that residents of Toledo, Frankfurt, York, Adelaide, or Sudbury do in and around their cities.

Our neighborhood is not unusual in having four synagogues, financed partly by overseas patrons. They all boast enough attendance to support daily prayers, but I suspect that a majority of neighborhood residents do not visit any of them on a regular basis. I have no doubt that most Jerusalem residents are aware of the implications of their city, but prefer to minimize their concern for the great issues. Israelis generally do not want to struggle. They fight when they have to, but want normalcy. They are tired of more than five years of intafada, and hope that a majority of Palestinians are also tired of it.

There may be a lesson here in the poll results associated with the coming election. Labor and Likud have retreated to their ideological extremes, and seem to be suffering as a result. The leader in the polls is the new centrist party, Kadima, which proposes pragmatic adjustments to reality instead of historic postures about social justice or land. Two weeks before the election, polls are showing 20 percent undecided. So far a lack of excitement suggests that there will not be a rush to the left or right. Religious nationalists are upset about the disengagement from Gaza, but are having trouble gaining traction with the broad center of the electorate.

To be sure, the city is, as ever, delicate. For Jerusalem someone coined the word "crusade." Security forces claim to have foiled several attempts at terrorist bombings in recent days. If a bus or cafe blows up, especially with Hamas fingerprints on the weapon, the results can be significant. So far, however, the atmosphere in Palestine as well as Israel seems to express a fatigue with great efforts, and an acceptance of calm. The intafada may be over. Here and there will be individuals or groups enraged enough to do something violent, but they will have trouble gaining support in the locales of greater power. Seven hundred thousand Jerusalemites, west and east, Jewish and Muslim (and the few Christians who remain), will find enough to keep themselves busy with work, family, and all the personal problems and aspirations of city dwellers in less dramatic settings. Most of us recognize that there will be no great and last victories in Jerusalem. We prefer life without emotion or heroics. Better parking places than another museum concerned with the Holocaust.

Sharkansky is an emeritus member of the political science department at Hebrew University in Jerusalem