‘You would not think there was a war on,’ I have been told on several occasions; and I have thought it too. The Patriarch, Cardinal Pizzaballa, has, in all his sermons and talks. made reference to the conflict in Gaza, and in particular to the sufferings of the Christian community there. Indeed, how can he not? At all the ceremonies I have attended there have been prayers for peace, as you would expect. However, Jerusalem is outwardly calm and well-ordered, and there is no sense of threat in the streets. At least not outwardly.
Non-Muslims, which includes Jews, can only approach the Temple Mount/Noble Sanctuary by first entering the Western Wall plaza, and then going up a walkway through the Gate of the Moroccans. The guidebook spoke of immense queues and rigorous checks, but there was none of that - we walked straight in. The checks are to keep out, one suspects, radical Jews who may wish to hold prayer services on the ground where the Temple once stood; the Muslim authorities are very sensitive to this. Once in the Temple Mount/Noble Sanctuary, one can admire the architecture and soak up the peace of the place, but you are not allowed inside any of the buildings. I looked through the door of the Al-Aqsa to be told that that was ‘not allowed’ and come 11am we were rapidly shepherded towards one of the exits. While I felt quite relaxed walking round the Mount, I must have stuck out like a sore thumb as someone who was clearly not Muslim.
The Temple Mount/Noble Sancturary, along with all of the Old City and East Jerusalem, is occupied territory that has been annexed to the State of Israel. The Green Line - the ceasefire line after the 1948 war - meant that the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, became part of Jordan. Various plaques around the Old City speak of its ‘liberation’ in the 1967 Six Days war. There are still a few places where you can see bullet and shrapnel damage to the stones, the legacy of the two conflicts, in the first of which the Israelis lost control of the Jewish Quarter, and in the second of which they regained it. So, this is a city that has been fought over twice, and which has been the subject of endless diplomatic negotiations since. The ‘facts on the ground’ drive this home. There are lots of troops and police on duty at various junctions, all heavily armed, overseeing the daily influx of people to the holy places, Muslim and Jewish, and today, Good Friday, cordoning off the Via Dolorosa to allow space for Christian pilgrims doing the Way of the Cross.
As we were doing the Way of the Cross, I was stopped by several television companies and asked for pieces to camera. One just asked: ‘Aren’t you frightened?’ I answered without having to think that I was not, and that as a believer in God, nothing frightens me. But the truth of the matter is that there are others who are badly frightened, for example, of the Muslim crowds streaming out of the Noble Sanctuary, and there are quite a lot of Jewish people who won’t go anywhere near the Old City with its overwhelmingly Arab population, though it has to be said that the Jewish Quarter is full of observant and ultra-Orthodox Jews, and one sees haredi Jews walking through Arab streets without a seeming care in the world, on their way to the Wall. But the closest parallel I can think of is Northern Ireland at the height of the troubles, when one knew that one could not go to the ‘other’ side of town, and where there were flags everywhere to mark who owned what.
The only Palestinian flag I have seen was in Bethlehem, which is fully under the control of the Palestinian Authority. There are none in Jerusalem, where I suspect they are not allowed. But there are Israeli flags everywhere, and in particular hanging from certain buildings in the Old City which have passed from Arab to Jewish ownership. Is this a provocation?
Though Old Jerusalem is on the Arab side of the Green Line, it has been de facto annexed to Israel which means, for example that Israel provides rubbish collection, and the people who live here can have Israeli identity cards. Last night, on my way to Gethsemane, negotiating the crowds coming out the Noble Sanctuary preparing to break their Ramadan fast, I heard two little boys shouting ‘Palestine! Palestine!’ That is the only anti-Israeli activity I have noticed, but this is a divided city in a divided land. One reason, I hazard, that it feels ‘normal’ is because, though the events of October 7th and the invasion of Gaza represent a horrible escalation of the conflict, the conflict has been going on for over a century, and the current situation represents a change of degree in conflict, but not something new in itself.
After the Second World War, Britain abandoned its Mandate in Palestine because it had become too hard to administer and because, in the end, it could walk away. (‘Let them fight it out among themselves’ was always said of Northern Ireland, where Britain did not walk away.) Palestine is the only territory, I think, that Britain left under fire (apart from Yemen, perhaps.) That tells us something. The current Israeli policy is not a two state solution (which seems increasingly impossible) nor to continue with the status quo, but rather, it seems, to continue with the policy of creeping annexation. This is being done in ways that take one by surprise: for example, maps that do not show the Green Line, and hotels that advertise themselves as being in Israel but which are in fact on the other side of the Green Line. It is as if the awkward question of what is to be the eventual destiny of the Palestinian population in the Territories is of no real interest. But the truth of the matter is that the Palestinians have a claim, indeed a claim on all of us.
As we walked the Via Dolorosa earlier today, I had to explain to someone who Saint Veronica was; yes, she is not in the Bible; her name comes from the Greek for ‘true image’. On that terrible Friday which we persist in calling Good, she wiped the face of Jesus and in this simple act of kindness she acknowledged the humanity of the Man condemned to death, who had been made into a non-person by His enemies. We need lots of Saint Veronicas today, here and now, in Jerusalem and in the whole Holy Land.