Imagine a new paradigm for Israel/Palestine. Imagine today a new paradygm for Jerusalem. The Holy Places. How many hobstacles would you find?
These are few lines I wrote some months ago, after my recent journey in the Middle East and my visit to Jerusalem. I visited the Haram al Sharif, in November, and I met some of the leading religious Muslim figures. I walked on the same stones that where the tragic stage on the last attack on the Mosques’ Esplanade.
Jerusalem was and is a powder keg. The international community did not want to defuse it.
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The harsh controversy on the October, 2016 UNESCO document deploring the Israeli policy toward the Noble Sanctuary and its surroundings shows how difficult, almost impossible, would be the transfer of political and military control on the Old City from the Israeli authorities as the occupying power to the international community and the religious representatives of all the faiths. The tough reaction of Benyamin Netanyahu, and consequently the embarrassed declarations of many Western governments against the document presented to UNESCO by the agency’s member States adamantly illustrate how arduous would be the holy places’ protection. The Israeli far right, in and outside the government, follows a clear strategy on the Noble Sanctuary’s future: it will try to hebronize the Haram al Sharif, aimed to realize a prayers’ section for Jews, as it is nowadays the partition between the Ibrahimi Mosque and the Patriarchs’ Tomb. The actual situation in the Old City of Jerusalem shows clearly what can be expected on the horizon, as underlined also by the UNESCO World Heritage Committee’s decision of October 2016. Further Israeli escalated violence against Palestinian Muslims’ right to access to al-Aqsa mosque for praying and maintaining the status quo, further provocation by Israeli extremists and settlers in attempting to enter the Noble Sanctuary, and the military closure of the mosque.
The inscription of the Old City of Jerusalem and its Wall in 1981 under the request of the State of Jordan in the World Heritage List is very clear regarding “the value that Jerusalem represents for the three religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam”. Furthermore, the representative of Jordan underlined that “It has been always our understanding that the Old City of Jerusalem constitutes an historic ensemble which should be considered in its totality as a coherent whole”[i]. Jordan requested to protect the Old City of Jerusalem as a complex urban and historical environment, sacred to the three faiths, from the political and military pressure, after the Six-Day-War and the Israeli occupation. It is decisive, then, to detach the Holy Basin from extremist groups’ strategies and aims.
[i] UNITED NATIONS EDUCATIONAL, SCIENTIFIC AND CULTURAL ORGANIZATION, CONVENTION CONCERNING THE PROTECTION OF THE WORLD CULTURAL AND NATURAL HERITAGE, World Heritage Committee, First Extraordinary Session, Paris, 10 and 11 September 1981, REPORT OF THE RAPPORTEUR, at http://whc.unesco.org/archive/repext81.htm#148.