![Sample our Global Development journals, sign in here to start your access, latest two full volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5929/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Global-Development.jpg"})
Abstract
Violence is a regular occurrence at many of Jerusalem's holy sites. Ongoing civilian clashes play a role, but official modes of control through the Israeli army (IDF) and Border Police, as well as more informal private security operations are often involved. Such militarisation may keep violent upheavals in check, but it is carried out within the framework of a long and harsh occupation. The two sites considered here—the Western Wall in the Old City and Rachel's Tomb on the border of Jerusalem and Bethlehem—each have a history of war and are fixtures of the occupation. This study explores the mechanisms that embed religious and militaristic meanings at each site. In so doing, certain questions are addressed. Firstly, how are the sites being constructed and used as popular and dramatic settings for certain constituents to promote religious militarism/militarised religion in Jerusalem? In which ways do these characteristics act to intertwine with the religious and militaristic aspects of the sites, making them more extreme but also, in some circles, more attractive? And finally, how do these sites contribute to the character of Jerusalem, both in their own construction and image but also in the roles they play within the wider urban topography?
Notes
1. The period of negotiations between Israel and the PLO in the first half of the 1990s is often referred to as ‘Oslo’.
2. Kimmerling (Citation1999, p. 342) explains religious nationalism as ‘arriving at Zionism from a religious starting point’.
3. Kimmerling (Citation1993, p. 208) believes that the place of the IDF and Israel's security always had a sacred status in a secular sense, but this has changed to a clearly religious conviction.
4. The research for this article forms part of the ESRC Large Grant project, ‘Conflict in Cities and the Contested State’, undertaken 2007-13 (RES-060-25-0015) and the ESRC-funded ‘Conflict in Cities: Architecture and Urban Order in Divided Jerusalem’, 2005-7 (RES-228-25-0056). Historical research on the Western Wall and Rachel's Tomb was begun in the early 1990s. I am grateful to Lefkos Kyriacou for drawing the maps for this article and for comments by the anonymous reviewers.
5. In this article, my references to site visits note only my most recent encounters with these holy places.
6. Out of a total population in Israel of 7,400,000, regular armed forces personnel are 176,500, reserves: 445,000, border police: 7,650 (Institute of National Security Studies, 2011).
7. Most Arabs do not serve in the IDF; many haredim are regularly discharged from service; youth from a national religious background serve and often lead.
8. The website of the Western Wall Heritage Foundation reported a recent increase from 15 ceremonies in 2008 to 30 in 2012.
9. It is well accepted that there is a strong religious dimension to the IDF. National sites for swearing-in ceremonies include the locations of major battles in 1967 such as Latroun and Ammunition Hill, and Masada, an ancient fortified mountaintop south of Jerusalem, the site of a mass suicide of Jewish rebels against the Roman army in CE73 (Ben-Yehuda, Citation1995, ch.7).
10. The ceremonies vary somewhat according to the traditions of the particular unit of the IDF. My observations of the families and anonymous interviews with them are taken from the dress rehearsal and swearing-in ceremony of the anti-aircraft training base of the IDF Air Force, (Conflict in Cities, interviews, 2011).
11. ‘So Rachel died and was buried on the way to Ephrath (that is, Bethlehem), and Jacob set up a pillar upon her grave; it is the pillar of Rachel's tomb, which is there to this day (Genesis 35.19-20).
12. The wall, built by Israel on Palestinian land to enclose its own settlements and segregate much of the Palestinian population from Israel. For the sake of clarity, I capitalise the Western Wall and not the separation barrier or wall.
13. Most recently visited 6.1.13.
14. Biblical and rabbinical passages are painted at the site on the mural of the Ottoman tomb: ‘Restrain your voice from weeping and your eyes from tears, for there is reward for you accomplishment … your children will return home‘ (Jeremiah 31.14-16); And G-D said: Rachel, for you I will return your children to their homeland’ (Midrash Eicha Rabba).
15. Observed Christmas Eve, 6.1.13.
16. This act was widely reported in the Jewish press after the 2003 suicide bombing and still resonates today (see for example: Ginsburg, Citation2013).
17. Dates according to the Jewish calendar do not exactly correspond to the Gregorian calendar.
18. The assassin came from the national religious movements.
19. In Islamic tradition a similar story is related, however Abraham's (Arabic: Ibrahim) son is not Isaac but Ismail, from whom Muslims are believed to have descended.
20. Rubinger claims to have arrived 15 minutes after the Wall was taken. He laid down on the pavement to catch the shot, hence the upward stare of the soldiers (Rubinger with Corman, 2007, p.123).
21. Originally a settler organisation now managed directly by the Prime Minister's office (Greenberg, Citation2009, p.274).
22. Visited 30.5.11, 17.1.13. Admission is possible only on an organised tour.