Holy place of Islam, with Mecca and Medina, Jerusalem, and in particular the Esplanade of the Mosques, where the Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa mosque are located, crystallizes passions. And embodies a unifying cause in the Muslim world, for Sunnis and Shiites alike. At the dawn of the 2000s, the Franco-Syrian publisher Farouk Mardam-Bey and his long-time friend, the Palestinian writer Elias Sanbar, both close to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, brought together in a collection of texts on the history of Jerusalem, and outlined avenues for resolving the status of the city. The book will appear in the Sindbad collection of Actes Sud, which Farouk Mardam-Bey has directed since 1994. At the time, they both also edited the Journal of Palestinian Studies, which was published by Editions de Minuit from 1981 to 2008, telling a whole section of history as experienced by the Palestinians. Farouk Mardam-Bey is one of the greatest disseminators of Arabic culture in France, carefully choosing the authors he translates. The latest work in his collection, published in October, The Star of the Sea, by the Lebanese writer Elias Khoury, has as its theme the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. For L’Express, the intellectual returns to the place of Jerusalem in the Palestinian and Arab-Muslim psyche.
L’Express: “As chance would have it, the book appears at a pivotal moment in the Israeli-Arab conflict which, depending on whether or not the Jerusalem issue is treated fairly, may calm down, for the greater good. of the peoples of the Middle East, or become even worse”: that’s what you wrote at the dawn of the 2000s. Do you remember your feeling at the time?
Farouk Mardam-Bey: It was after the second Intifada [NDLR : déclenchée en septembre 2000 à la suite de la visite d’Ariel Sharon sur l’esplanade des Mosquées]. Since the Oslo Accords in 1993 [signés à Washington entre Yasser Arafat et Yitzhak Rabin], the most important points had not been resolved: the question of Jerusalem, the right of return of Palestinian refugees, the settlements, the borders… This was to be dealt with later, when the negotiations had progressed, and they did not were not moving forward. This is why Elias Sanbar and I took the initiative of publishing two books, one on Jerusalem and the other on the right of return. Elias had been part of the team of Washington negotiators following the Madrid conference in 1991. Our objective was both to bring together the materials likely to make the centrality of these questions understood and to show that they are not insoluble. There are practical, rational solutions, and, with regard to Jerusalem, we must first make a distinction: the religious and the sacred on the one hand, the political on the other.
You wrote, with Elias Sanbar, in the introduction: “The occupying power takes the risk of doubling the political conflict with a war of civilizations.” We have the feeling, especially today, that in Jerusalem more than elsewhere the multiple dimensions of the conflict are expressed.
In the Israeli-Palestinian, Israeli-Arab conflict, sacred elements confront each other which are by definition absolutes, that is to say, no sacred element can be considered superior to the others. For Jews, theirs is the most important, the only one to take into consideration, which Muslims and Christians can legitimately contest. It is not at this level, that of religious faith, that we can resolve the problem, but by recourse to international law, that is to say by agreeing on the practical modalities of implementing in accordance with UN resolutions. At the end of our book, the Palestinian historian Walid Khalidi proposes an approach that would make Jerusalem the capital of three religions, but above all of two peoples. The solution is based on the demystification of the concept of “reunification”, proclaimed at the 27th Zionist Congress in violation of UN Security Council Resolution 242, and on the equality of the two parties on the political and religious levels. Which implies that West Jerusalem could be the capital of Israel, and East Jerusalem the capital of an independent Palestine, with arrangements notably concerning the management of the holy sites.
“We cannot decide for others what is sacred or not, and this applies to both parties in conflict”
But the city has changed a lot: does this sharing still seem possible?
Since the conquest of East Jerusalem in June 1967, successive Israeli governments have used every means possible to Judaize it so that “reunited” Jerusalem would be the “eternal” capital of Israel and the “national, religious, historical center, of the Jewish people. But in the name of what should the Palestinians, Arabs, Muslims, and more generally the international community, legitimize the fait accompli? We must face the facts: no peace in the Middle East without the restitution by Israel of the territories occupied since 1967, and East Jerusalem is one of them.
You repeatedly assert that it is nonsense to try to make Jerusalem a city centered on a single ethnicity, that it is inherently cosmopolitan.
It is a small town, but overloaded with history, and where populations of different origins, religions and sects rub shoulders and are often hostile, or at least suspicious, of each other. According to the partition plan for Palestine, voted in November 1947 by the United Nations General Assembly, Jerusalem and its surroundings were to be a corpus separatum administered by the UN, therefore not part of either the Jewish state or the Arab state provided for by the resolution. This did not particularly please the Arabs or the Jews, but it was a fairly wise decision, intended to calm the religious ardor of both. Let me repeat: there is no lasting solution, and as just as possible, if we persist in making the question of Jerusalem sacred, and even less if we claim Jewish religious preeminence. , Christian or Muslim.
Do you feel that Israelis tend to downplay the importance of Jerusalem for Muslims?
Yes, this temptation exists. On the Israeli side, we hear that in the Koran, when it speaks of “the distant mosque”, it cannot be Al-Aqsa because it did not yet exist, and that it would therefore be the Jewish temple. . But this did not exist either, having been destroyed by the Romans in the year 70. Anyway, what is the point of the debates and polemics on this? Muslims unanimously consider Jerusalem to be the third holy city, with Mecca and Medina. They are convinced that the prophet Mohammed went there on a miraculous “night journey”, in the company of the archangel Gabriel, and that it was from there that he ascended to heaven until reaching the “Jujube Tree of the Confines”. The city has also, since its conquest by the Caliph Omar in 636, been linked to major events in Arab history. The Dome of the Rock is the first and one of the most splendid masterpieces of Islamic architecture, and it is he who represents it in the eyes of the world more than any other monument. The Crusaders certainly occupied it in 1099, perpetrating a terrible massacre against the Muslims and the Jews, but it was reconquered in 1187 by Saladin, crowned with glory since then, and not only by the Muslims. In short, we cannot decide for others what is sacred or not, and this applies to both parties in conflict.
So this city has until now played a central role not only for the Palestinians, but also for the entire Arab-Muslim world?
Yes, and it’s a mobilizing theme. For example, we regularly hear Hamas leaders mention above all the Muslim holy places in Palestine, and first of all in Jerusalem. “We will not allow them to be desecrated,” they say from Gaza. This unleashes passions even in Bangladesh and attracts them strong sympathy. And don’t forget that the elite unit of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is called sepah-e Quds (Jerusalem Strength)!
Is Jerusalem definitely the most intractable problem in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?
There are always solutions if we want to find them, but who really wants them among the powerful in our world? In addition, we are currently on an extremely dangerous slope. Everything that happens in the Middle East benefits the most extremist, most reactionary forces. Trump can become president again. Putin is able to prevail in Ukraine. China is gaining power and popularity. The European Union is being eaten away both by its ultraliberal economic policy and by the meteoric rise of far-right populism within it. And we are witnessing the marginalization of the Arab world for the benefit of Israel on the one hand, and Iran on the other, and, in all Arab countries without exception, the general tendency is to maintain despotic and predatory regimes. , shaken for a moment by the uprising of 2011, then by that of 2019.
Israel’s devastation of Gaza under the pretext of eradicating Hamas, this merciless war which has continued for more than two months with the unconditional support of the American administration, is obviously not going to resolve anything but, on the contrary, will further exacerbate the hatred between Arabs and Israelis, between Muslims and Jews. We are further than ever from any even remotely equitable solution to the Palestinian question. So, Jerusalem?
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