After reading Suad’s piece about East Jerusalem, I wondered
to myself how much things change in Jerusalem over a short period of time. I have been to Israel once and it was five
years ago. When I went, I never saw any
Palestinian trouble or any trouble for that matter. Now I understand that five years ago is
different from today and so is Suad’s research.
When reading through the article, I thought to myself how much of Jerusalem
I didn’t see and how it would alter my thoughts. Was I only being shown the Israeli side so I
would not have any fear at the time? I saw no conflicts between anyone and
since then I have wondered what it would be like to go back and explore all of
the parts of Jerusalem.
The interview with Suad about the Festival was very interesting. She said that the main issue of the Festival
not happening was because of finances.
However, after reading through the entire interview, I think it was more
than that. It seems to be that the
intense conflict over who’s Jerusalem it is will never end. Some believe it is theirs and others believe
otherwise. Jerusalem is such a sacred
city and the everyday conflicts between religions, governments, and people
probably wont end anytime soon. The
Festival would have been a good way to get more people educated with the region
but could have caused more problems.
One of the most interesting things that stick out from
Galit’s article on the Festival is how the political leaders and field workers
rarely met. I wonder how everyone wants
to get this done and then they couldn’t even meet in person to make progress on
the Festival. Everyone needed to be on
the same path in order to get this done and it just didn’t happen. There were so many different aspects to this
project and I believe that the more people that were working together then the
more progress would have taken place.
When reading through Professor Horwitz’s article and
journey, it is so cool to read all of the different dimensions of the research
in Jerusalem. The hardest part of the
whole Festival seemed to be the framework that had to be completed in order to
make all sides happy. From reading and
knowing the history between the two sides, it had to be extremely difficult and
some might have said impossible. Both
cultures would not give anything up and it turned out to hurt them for the
Festival.
Your response made me think of our textbook 'Jerusalem: One City, Three Faiths.' I (also) bought the audio version, since I spend a couple of hours a day commuting to and from school. So I am listening and re listening to this most confusing chronological history of Jerusalem, wondering who these many peoples are and how much Jerusalem must have felt like a rubber-band of a coveted city! And I can not help but think no wonder there is such controversy over Jerusalem. Her history is so tightly interwoven and tangled with complexities of peoples, intentions, beliefs, and expectations, that how could we begin to wonder why it seems so hard to achieve a peaceful coexistence. Your thought of 'needing to be on the same path' takes us back into Jerusalem's past: so many frantically intense paths from so many different peoples with different agendas...can it ever happen? I think you are so correct, we need to be on the same path...the question is ever arriving together to begin the journey down that path.
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