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Preface
to a new printing of the
original 1930 report of the Commission appointed by the
British Government and the League of Nations to determine the
rights and claims of Moslems and Jews in connection with the
Al-Buraq ('Wailing') Wall in Jerusalem.
According
to Muslim tradition, the Ka’aba in Makkah was the first
Temple built for exclusively monotheistic worship, rebuilt by
Abraham and Ishmael in the place first used by Adam, a sacred
space dedicated to the One God, the All-Merciful Creator.
But
Abraham also built another Temple in another sacred spot. In
the Qur’an, God speaks of this region as holy, in a way that
is not applied to the lands around Makkah, and in the early
years of Muhammad’s message Jerusalem was the Qibla which
Muslims faced in their prayers. Abu Dharr said: ‘I asked
God’s Messenger about the first mosque on earth. “The
Sacred Mosque”, he answered. “And then what?” I asked.
“Al-Aqsa Mosque” he said. “And how long was it between
them?” I asked. “Forty years” the Prophet replied.
“Then it was renovated - the first time by the Prophet
Jacob, and the second time by the Prophet David. Then the
building was completed by the Prophet Solomon.”’
Two
Temples, one in a place which few would want, one of the most
hostile spots imaginable, protected from humanity by its
terrain. A forbidding land, but the holiest spot on earth. The
Ka’abah. The other Temple in a rich and fertile land,
between the Mediterranean and the Jordan river, a key meeting
point between the monumental civilisations of Egypt and
Babylon, Rome and Greece, a land over which numerous armies
have fought, and amidst the peoples of which many prophets
walked. The land around the Temple in Al-Quds, the Holy City,
in the Holy Land.
But
the Holy Land was there before Abraham. A thousand years
before he built his Temple there were the Phoenicians and the
Yabusiyun, and then the Canaanites with whom the Filistines
later intermarried. After being led out of Egypt by Moses, the
Jewish tribes managed to occupy Jericho, but not until David
did they manage to conquer the Holy City, and the combined
rule of David and his successor Solomon lasted a mere eighty
years. Apart from this brief period, there never was an
ancient Jewish state in the history of the region.
After
Solomon the Jewish state split briefly into Israel and Judea,
before Israel was razed to the ground by the Ashurite King
Sirjun, then Egypt subdued both Judea and Israel, and then
Nebuchadnezzar captured the whole area, destroying the Temple
in 587 BC. Persia defeated Babylon and allowed the Jews to
return, some of whom rebuilt the Temple, which remained in
existence under Alexander the Great and during the early years
of Roman rule. In 70 CE, however, Titus destroyed the Temple
and left it in ruins, though it took Hadrian to remove all
trace of the Temple, and replace it with one in honour of
Jupiter, fulfilling the words of Jesus “I tell you the
truth, not one stone here will be left on another; every one
will be thrown down.”
This
latter Roman construction was itself destroyed by Constantine,
after which the site remained empty and was used as a public
midden until the Islamic era, heralded by the entry of Umar
into the city after the Muslims defeated the Romans at the
battle of Yarmuk in 636 CE. From then on, apart from the 90
years in which it was occupied by the Crusaders, Al-Quds, the
Holy City, and Masjid Al-Aqsa, the Noble Sanctuary, remained
continuously under Muslim control for nearly 1300 years until
conquered by the British in 1917.
When
the first Caliph, Abu Bakr, sent a military expedition to
Jerusalem, his parting words were “I recommend that you fear
God and obey Him. When you engage enemies and win over them,
do not loot, do not mutilate the dead, do not commit
treachery, do not behave cowardly, do not kill children, the
elderly or women, do not burn trees or damage crops, do not
kill an animal unless lawfully acquired for food.” With the
arrival of the second Caliph, Umar, in the city, the new
administration of Islamic law and justice was set in place,
ensuring protection for Jews and Christians, their churches
and synagogues, land and property, all this enshrined in
Umar’s ‘Assurance of Safety’. Under the Muslim
administration, numbers of Jews began to return to the City
for the first time since being banished by Hadrian.
How
different from the arrival of the Crusaders, killing 70,000 of
the city’s inhabitants in seven days, men women and
children, making no distinction between Muslim and Jew, and
indeed, many of the local Christians who were also
slaughtered. Muslim symbols in the city were obliterated, the
Al-Aqsa mosque was used as a barracks, and its basement as a
stable. A questionable turn of phrase, therefore, when Allenby
harked back to that time, proclaiming the end of the Crusades
when he occupied the Holy City in 1917. Surely he, like they,
mistook a triumph in a battle as the hoped for conclusion of a
war. But also like them, his perceptions of the Muslim were
shaped by centuries of Eurocentric Christian perceptions of an
exclusive understanding of ultimate truth, demonising and
dehumanising non-believers in that truth, as justification for
their persecution or extermination.
So
the peace and justice that had reigned in Jerusalem for
centuries was confronted once more by European colonial
expansionism and the overspill of European wars. Yet perhaps
the most crucial result of European xenophobia from
Jerusalem’s point of view was the birth of Zionism from its
European context of anti-semitism and the treatment of Jews as
disposably non-human. For now the balance of military power
put the British in a position to conquer one people’s
country and then display a grand magnanimity to the world by
giving it to another group of people whom they just happened
to want to get rid of from their own.
Born
out of anti-semitism and European nationalism, and a world
view that led to the holocaust, the new Zionist entity in
Palestine inherited many of the characteristics of its
progenitors, and rapidly turned those ideas against their
former benefactors the British Administration as well as the
millions of local resident Palestinians. The new Israeli
Zionists developed a mode of destabilising the region by
indiscriminate bombing (a style of warfare we now describe as
terrorism), plus the use of terror to clear the land of
non-Jews, following the European example of anti-semitic
pogroms. Just as had been done to them, they categorised
humanity in terms of faith and ethnicity, and created an
apartheid state (it should be remembered that apartheid South
Africa was one of Israel’s closest political and military
allies).
As
the stream of Palestinian refugees fled across the borders of
their newly divided and expropriated land, an attempt was made
to use the power of arms to change the status quo with a
complete disregard for justice. In the early 19th
century Jews numbered only 2% of the population of Palestine.
By the turn of the century this had grown to 10% of Palestine
and 50% of greater Jerusalem. During the spring and summer of
1948, Jewish forces expelled the bulk of the Arab population,
depopulating over 500 villages and towns, and reducing west
Jerusalem’s Arab population from 65,000 to 3,500. Then,
after the war of June 1967, the Israelis were finally in a
position to put their ethnic cleansing into practice in the
Old Town. Three days after taking control of Old Jerusalem,
the Israelis destroyed the whole of the Maghribi quarter, 595
buildings, 104 shops, 5 mosques and 4 schools, confiscated
nearly 5 acres of land and deported the whole population of
6,500 people.
Before
1967, East Jerusalem Municipality had 70,000 Palestinian Arabs
with Jews restricted to a small enclave on French Hill. By
early 1994, Jews outnumbered Palestinians in ‘Arab’ East
Jerusalem, and in recent years the process has continued
apace. From the time of Israel’s annexation of East
Jerusalem in 1967, nearly 90% of new building work has been
specifically for the Jewish population, and Israel has now
extended the borders of Jerusalem to include 25% of the West
Bank. Unfortunately for the Arabs living in those areas,
non-Jewish residents are not regarded as Israeli citizens,
being legally defined as ‘resident aliens’.
Since
its inception, Israel has steadfastly applied itself to the
elimination, wherever possible, of any recognition of the Arab
and Muslim heritage and identity of the Holy Land and the Holy
City. In 1996 the Israeli occupation authority, at the peak of
their celebrations for “three thousand years of David’s
city”, opened a large tunnel under Al-Aqsa mosque. The
tunnel was 488 metres long, and to impress upon visitors that
this was a holy Jewish site, they were requested to wear a
yarmulke before entering. In the tunnel there was an
electronic screen explaining the main elements of the city
according to a Biblical vision, suggesting that the city is an
entirely Jewish city, including all the buildings, the
markets, and of course “the Temple”. In that picture there
was no record of any Islamic holy sites, not even Al-Aqsa
Mosque.
Of
course, this can be dismissed as just one atypical example,
but the attempt to undermine the Islamic identity of the Holy
City is widespread and very real, just like the tunnels, not
one but myriad, that have been dug beneath Al-Aqsa, only
metres from the foundations of the Mosque above. Within months
of the occupation in 1967, the Israeli authorities started
digging in different directions under Al-Aqsa in the hopes of
finding evidence of “the Temple”, and those diggings have
been increased and extended up to the present day, with scant
regard for the disturbance of Muslim graves dating back to the
time of Umar, but one suspects much more attentive regard for
the accompanying structural instability of the buildings of
Al-Aqsa.
Until
now, however, they have discovered nothing related to “the
Temple”, only magnificent Islamic Umayyad palaces.
Unfortunately little pleasure can be drawn from watching their
inevitably fruitless searches, when a side effect of their
digging is the undermining of Al-Aqsa Mosque, rendering it
liable to collapse at the least earth-tremor. And with such a
change in the status quo, how loud would be the voices of the
numerous groups currently dedicated to building a new
“Temple” on the Al-Aqsa site.
With
each day that passes, Israel endeavours to Judaize the Holy
City further, and as yet another deadline for commencement of
negotiations on the status of the city goes by, it would seem
that the Israeli government is relying on every delay lending
more weight to the opinion that the old status quo has been
irrevocably transformed by the time they eventually reach the
conference table. Jerusalem may not be mentioned in the Torah
(strange as it may seem), nor be associated with any of the
events of the Exodus, yet in Israel all Religious and
Political parties hold to the view that Jerusalem is their
exclusive, ‘eternal and unified capital’.
But
1300 years of Muslim history surely cannot be eliminated so
easily. Even the most rigorous of cleansings would be liable
to leave behind traces of the truth. In fact, a 1997 report by
an Israeli legal expert (in a research programme sponsored by
the Jerusalem Centre for Israeli Studies) even rejected the
claim of the Jewish Authorities to ownership of the “Wailing
Wall”. Despite huge areas of Israeli expropriation of
Jerusalem since 1967, Israel never officially declared its
ownership of the Wall, and the report accepts that the
structure (known to Muslims as Al-Buraq Wall) is still, even
under Israeli law, the legitimate property of the Islamic
Endowment which administers the affairs of Muslim holy sites
in Jerusalem.
Nonetheless,
in the face of Zionist unanimity of purpose, the Muslim world
in its post-colonial weakness exhibits a self-evident lack of
vision concerning the future of the Holy City. In the face of
Israeli planning and determination, the Ummah struggles to
agree on a clear stance or course of action. If Israeli
military power is not to be the ultimate deciding factor in
the future history of Jerusalem, it will be necessary for
Muslims to recognise and remember the importance of Jerusalem
to God and the Prophet, and to Muslims around the world for
over 1400 years. To this end, the Islamic Research Academy was
established to become a national and international platform
for the discussion of studies on Islamic Jerusalem, and to
provide a focus for research in Islamic Jerusalem studies with
special reference to the significance and centrality of
Jerusalem to the Islamic faith and the Muslim identity.
As
part of our ongoing programme of establishing a new frame of
reference for modern Islamic Jerusalem studies, the Academy
has decided to publish this original 1930 report of the
Commission appointed by the British Government and the League
of Nations to determine the rights and claims of Moslems and
Jews in connection with the Al-Buraq (‘Wailing’) Wall in
Jerusalem. We hope that this document will serve as a useful
reference point for the basis of future negotiations. As
stated in a 1997 statement of the position of the UK Labour
Party towards the question of Jerusalem “The accommodation
and compromises that in the end will have to be achieved in
determining the final status of Jerusalem, will have to be
based on a respect and acknowledgement of the national rights
and identity of all peoples in the region. It will not be
achieved by attempting to rewrite history and expecting one
nation to deny its past and forgo its future in deference to
another.”
“Glory
be to God, Who carried His Servant by night
from the Sacred Mosque to the Further Mosque
whose precincts We have blessed,
that We might show him some of Our signs.
He is the All-hearing, the All-seeing” (Qur’an 17.1)
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