This morning we took a trip to a point overlooking the the city of Jerusalem. As we walked down cracked stone steps, we heard the muzzein’s call to prayer, the valley filling with a deep bass humming. There we met our tour guide Yuval, who was actually a soldier under the command of our very own Madrich Amnon Ophir. We were quickly taken to a quaint area covered in pine cones and cool shade, where Yuval began to tell us about the history of the area. Yuval gets “excited,” he says, “about people coming here and getting excited”.
The 800 holy sites contained within the single square kilometer of Jerusalem connects the three central religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. In a situation that seems like it should be called co-existence, the religious area teeters on a powder keg, that could be easily ignited by any extremist group. The area has remained generally peaceful for the past couple of years, but it hasn’t always been that way. The central conflict began on November 29, 1947 when the UN divided “Palestine” into an international zone and a religious zone. Upset with the division, the Arab forces invaded on May 15, 1948, and the war wasn’t ended until November 30 of that year.
What followed was a series of smaller wars, formations of demilitarized zones, and the annexation of the present day West Bank by Jordan.After Israel fought the Six Day War in 1967, the Green Line was established. Since then, attempts at compromise and attempts to form a long-lasting peace between Israelis and the Palestinians have yet to bear fruit.
All this history was visible to us as we sat on the various mountain topse just east of the Old City of Jerusalem.