Negative Aspects of Jerusalem as an International City

In recent years, attempts to reconcile the Arab-Israeli conflict in the Middle East have floundered for a variety of reasons. One issue of central importance to both Israelis and Arabs has been the status of governance and character of Jerusalem, chiefly because of the significance of the city in both Arab and Jewish culture. But the difficulties of settling this issue have been quite pronounced, because of the "baggage" of cultural investment in the city and because of its history in the modern period. The religious culture in the Old City of Jerusalem has resonance for Christians, Jews, and Muslims: "to Christians as the site of Jesus Christ's last days on earth . . . to Jews as the historical symbol of the Jewish homeland and capital of the first Jewish kingdom . . . to Muslims as the site of the ascent into heaven of their prophet Muhammad" (Phillips, 1975, p. 189). Arabs (who are Muslim or Christian) and Jews have cultural claims on modern Jerusalem that intersect with

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erusalem's status, together with an "if-only" suggestion; that is, the proposed solution will work if only everyone would accept it and get on with their lives. But negative aspects can be associated with virtually any preconceived solution that requires acceptance by another party. Indeed, this has been a controlling factor of conflict over Jerusalem since the time of the first armistice between Jews and Arabs in 1949, after two years of fighting over UN resolution 181. At that time, the new state of Israel proposed international administration of the Old City, then under Jordanian control. Jordan refused unless the whole of Jerusalem were internationalized; this, Israel refused (Phillips, 1975, p. 191). What appears to have dominated the thinking in the late 1940s is the view that no sovereign state would allow another state to dictate the terms under which internationalist jurisdiction could be conceptualized. Some fifty years later, it appears that there is even less interest in international administration of Jerusalem than there was in 1949, although the reasons are different. Whereas in 1949 parties advocated international administration of Jerusalem as long as their version of it could be implemented, in the 1990s no party
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Some common words found in the essay are:
East Jerusalem, City Jordanian, American Jews, United Nations, Palestine Mandate, CC Staff, Middle East, Amorites Canaanites, , Arab Jewish, status jerusalem, east jerusalem, middle east, jerusalem international, yehoshua 1995, administration jerusalem, international administration, de jure, modern period, jerusalem international city, phillips 1975, cc staff 1995, middle east policy, arab east jerusalem, staff 1995 42,
Approximate Word count = 2905
Approximate Pages = 12 (250 words per page)