| Over the past century, not only have Palestinians and | | | | with its core historical and religious elements, |
| Zionists fought on Palestine’s terrain of battle, | | | | constitutes a potential deal-breaker. Outside the |
| but so have Turks, British and Jordanians. Each has | | | | immediate Israeli-Palestinian orbit, the Jerusalem |
| had reason to invest itself in the region. | | | | Question is on the lips of, among others, Moroccans, |
| Whether it was early-twentieth-century fading | | | | Iraqis, Iranians and Turks, to say nothing of “the |
| Ottoman imperial intent, energetic colonialism in the | | | | Trio”—Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia—and |
| case of the British Mandate (1922–1948), the de | | | | “the Quartet”—the United Nations, the |
| facto division of land between Israel and Jordan | | | | United States, the European Union and Russia. |
| under their 1948 armistice agreement, or Israeli | | | | Medieval Christians placed the city at the center of |
| retention of the territorial spoils of the 1967 war, | | | | their spiritual lives because the Roman Catholic and |
| each power has expressed aspects of its own | | | | Orthodox churches sanctified physical Jerusalem. As a |
| identity and ideology vis-à-vis Palestine. | | | | result, and in the absence of geographic knowledge |
| The Palestinians still seek to express their identity by | | | | and appropriate technology, their maps showed |
| establishing a state where international justice, | | | | Jerusalem at the center of the globe. A separate, |
| recognition of their historic property claims and | | | | earlier tradition also named it the omphalos, or navel, |
| accommodation of some refugees’ right of | | | | of the world, and yet another, the birthplace of the |
| return can be achieved. But their conflict with the | | | | cosmos. |
| Israelis has now become centered on one essential | | | | Mirroring these conceptions in some ways, the |
| square kilometer—the Old City of | | | | modern world seems to have returned to such |
| Jerusalem—within which lie the ancient symbols | | | | images, and Jerusalem has become once more the |
| and trophies of these now opposing identities. | | | | center of the world’s attention (to be |
| Reserved for final-status negotiations, Jerusalem, | | | | continued). |