Understanding the Situation in Jerusalem

The story of Abraham  has been set in about 2000-2200 BC, and in chapter 14 of the book of Genesis we read of a positive meeting between him and Melchizedek, king of Salem [Jerusalem] and priest of God Most High [El Elyon]. This shows that even then Jerusalem was regarded as a site sacred to God. Later on, maybe about 1050 BC, David captured the city by exploiting a weakness in the defences, though the Jebusites who dwelt there were not massacred and survived to dwell in the city. David's son Solomon then made a radical change in the Hebrew faith by building a temple and enacting that sacrifice could only be offered at the temple on Temple Mount in Jerusalem.In this way he consolidated his father David's policy of controlling and centralizing the religious cult of God. Yahweh God of Israel was being identified with El Elyon.In fact, an ancient name for God was El Shaddai, the God of the heights or mountains,  quite apt for this mountain city. Certain ancient names for God were centralized in the one especially sacred location.

The temple lasted until 587 BC when the invading Babyloniians from modern Iraq destroyed it and deported the inhabitants of the city into seventy years of exile, from which they were freed in 527 by the Persians, whose king Cyrus conquered Babylon and  bought popularity by freeing captive peoples and allowing them to return home. A minority of the Hebrews returned and began to rebuild.They erected a smaller version of the temple on the site of the old one. Later in the first century BC Herod the Great [37-4 BC] began a process of renovation to develop the temple and make it magnificent. This was the Herod who is blamed for the massacre of the children in Matthew's Gospel [See my article Meet the Herods.] However, in 69-70 AD Israel  rebelled against Rome and in 70 AD the temple was destroyed again, never to be rebuilt. Its sacred treasures were deported to Rome [not the ark of the covenant, which had already vanished.] They have never been seen since. 

Christianity respected the site, so never tried a major building project there, so  the site of the temple remained empty for many years, though there may have been a small Christian chapel there, until the Muslim conquests in 638. The Muslims valued the site  as highly as the other faiths did, for they believe that their prophet made a night journey to heaven from Temple Mount. For this reason they constructed the Al Aqsah mosque there on the site of Solomon's temple.  This is the third most important mosque in Islam. However,over the centuries Christians and Jews have visited Jerusalem to pray at their sacred sites.

The city is therefore sacred to the three Abrahamic faiths, those that follow the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, these being Judaism,Christianity and Islam.I do not at this moment want to enter the argument about whether Christians and Muslims worship the same God. I think that they do, though they differ in their understanding of him. 

For many years the Jews were a diaspora among the nations, and while some lived in Israel, not many did. But during the nineteenth century nationalism began to arise in Europe, and with it came the belief that every nation has its rightful homeland, and for the Jews this was Israel. Hence we get the political movement of Zionism, which went for restitution of the land from which the Jews had beeen expelled by the Romans. The trouble is that there were Palestinians in the land already. Who  were they? A mixture of Muslims and Christians, they descend from a mixture of Samaritan and Jewish converts to Christianity, Arabs and others, including European crusaders. They have been there for centuries. 

In 1917 the British foreign secretary Lord Balfour agreed in a letter to one of the Rothschild family that the Jews were entitled to a homeland, a statement known as the Balfour declaration, and the Rothschilds ran with this declaration. The horrific treatment of Jews in the Holocaust gave energy to the drive for a Jewish homeland, and by 1948, after some Jewish settlers in Israel had launched a militant campaign of violence to force their will, the state of Israel was born.

But Jerualem was split between the state of Israel, which held the West, and the Jordanians holding the East. However, during the Six Day war of 1967 the victorious Israelis took control of East Jerusalem and also the Jordanian territory west of the river Jordan, known as the West Bank, which was Palestinian territory and which the conquered Palestinians saw as the nucleus of their new state. The Palestinians want East Jerusalem as  their own capital, but in 1980 Israel annexed East Jerusalem, though the United Nations opposed the annnexation, as it always opposes territorial land grabs. In 1993 Israeli- Palestinian negotiations in Oslo decided that  a decision on the final status of Jerusalem was to be deferred.

The United States decided that despite its support of Israel the wisest option was to oppose the  transfer of Israel's capital to Jersualem, so successive presidents kept the US embassy in Tel Aviv, so as to avoid annoying the Arabs in what is a  political hotspot. Then along comes Donald Trump who authorizes the moving of the US embassy,  with a de facto acceptance of the annexation.  The rest of the world, even including the clueless crowd who run Britain, think this is a bad idea, because if there is any rule for dealing with the Middle East it is "Don't  make matters worse;" and this move is likely to provoke animosity without solving any problems. Let's be clear, I am not an enemy of President Trump, for I thank him for his support of religious liberty, but I am concerned that he has erred in this decision. 

Problems can only be truly solved when justice is done to all participants in the issue. For Jerusalem to be the possession of one side or the other in this case is not justice, for both sides have claims, and there is no justice in territorial grabs or victory for one side or the other. The issue of Jerusalem can only be resolved as part of a just solution which respects the rights of Israelis and Palestinians, with all rights being fully respected. 

St Luke in his writings, Luke's Gospel and Acts of the Apostles, centres Christ's mission on Jerusalem, which for him is the omphalos, the world centre. Christ journeys to his destiny in Jerusalem, and the Church spreads its post-resurrection message from there. Thus Jerusalem's destiny is to be a place from which the will of God spreads across the world, bringing peace, instead it is a sign of division.  

In 1948 the United Nations floated the idea that Jerusalem should be an international city outside the jurisdiction of nation states, and in 1949 Pope Pius the Twelfth supported this view in his enyclical Redemptoris Nostris Cruciatis.In subsequent years popes John the Twenty Third, Paul the Sixth, John Paul the Second and Benedict the Sixteenth have renewed their support for this proposal, but no one has taken it up. 

The Catholic Church, through Pope Francis  has expressed its disapproval of President Trump's  decision on Jerusalem, for it believes that this decision can only worsen the conflict and that in such a war-prone  area as the Middle East blood will therefore be shed because of it. The church's vision is for Jerusalem to be an international city free from any state and sacred to the three great Abrahamic religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Only then  will Jerusalem be what it should be, a place of peace.