Jerusalem is crucial to what is happening in the Middle East in a way that is rarely recognised. It is at the heart of what is happening there, and no matter how many agreements concerning different aspects of Israeli - Palestinian relationships are fashioned, none of them will bring anything to a conclusion until the status of Jerusalem is settled. Unfortunately the subject was far too vast for me to do more than touch on in a two minute script, and the same goes for this gloss in the margin.

In the Psalms we are reminded that Jerusalem can never be a city of peace, shalom, unless it is also a city of tseddeq, justice, a truth to be remembered when Mr. Barak and Mr. Arafat meet with Madeleine Albright today.

From the outside, it may seem as though the Jews and the Muslims both want Jerusalem in the same way, but in fact, there is an essential difference between their attitudes to what is holy.

Jews celebrate the sanctity of things by separating them from one another, milk from meat, Sabbath from weekday, and Jew from Gentile. The Temple they yearn for was a series of courts, progressively more exclusive on the way to the Holy of Holies, which was forbidden to all except the High Priest.

The Byzantine Christians also had an exclusive vision of Jerusalem’s holiness, and banned all Jews from living in the city. Even more extreme, the Crusaders conquered Jerusalem, and slaughtered the entire 30,000 strong Muslim and Jewish population, an approach to non-Christians that can be seen in more recent times reflected in the Holocaust.

But Muslims always had a very different, more open approach to what is sacred. When Caliph Umar took control of Jerusalem 1400 years ago, not only did he pronounce the inviolability of the Christian sanctuaries, but he also invited Jews to return to the city from which they had been excluded for over 500 years.

Personal ownership of the land was not seen as praiseworthy, and eventually most of the city was held in charitable trusts with rentals donated to the poor and needy.

In the precincts of the Al-Aqsa mosque, Muslims preserved reminders of David and Solomon, as well as Jesus and Mary. Prophets are not seen as belonging to any one race or championing one form of religion, but are examples of an ideal behaviour pattern for all humanity to follow.

So as American backed Israeli tanks and helicopter gunships face those young men throwing stones, I wonder if Mrs. Albright will consider whose behaviour exemplifies David and whose Goliath, and will she ponder upon the previous outcome. For military might will never bring a lasting peace – as the Psalms say, that can only come with justice.