Jerusalem, The Torn City

Today, in Jerusalem, two peoples are struggling over the City of Peace. For the first time in the 40 centuries of the city's history, this battle for Jerusalem is not being waged between a foreign invader and the local inhabitants but rather between two peoples who have lived in the city for thousands of years; two peoples who call Jerusalem "home." Meron Benvenisti, an historian and former Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem, describes the origins of this struggle, its development, and its effect upon the city and its inhabitants. In the first section of the volume, "Jerusalem Divided," he provides the background to the situation at the time of writing, vividly depicting the years during which the city was divided by barbed wire and concrete walls. He portrays the efforts of Jordan and Israel, between 1948 and 1967, to establish their hegemony over Jerusalem, as well as their administration of each half of the city. He recapitulates the repeated attempts at the UN to internationalize Jerusalem, and explains the historical status of the Holy Places. The second section, "Jerusalem United," tells the story of Jerusalem from the 1967 Six Day War to the time of writing. The author details the developments which culminated in the unification of the city, the political, legal and administrative problems of unification, and the attitudes of both Jewish and Arab inhabitants to the attempts to merge the two halves of Jerusalem into one whole. The final chapter of the book describes the various attempts to find a solution to the "Jerusalem Problem" over the past half century, while the Appendix lists all the elements of a settlement, with brief annotations as to their pros and cons. Benvenisti concludes that the Jews and Arabs in the city have "made some small progress on the road to peace," but are "still a long way from the point of no return."