While the Temple Mount/al-Aqsa Mosque constitutes a national and religious focal point for both Israelis and Palestinians, there have been profound differences in the attitudes of the competing national movements to this site. The Zionist movement attempted to create alternative, secular holy places (such as the Jezreel Valley and the Hebrew University) in order to detach itself from blunt messianism, while the Palestinians, from the Mandate period onward, have emphasized their attachment to the holy site in Jerusalem. The revival of suppressed messianic sentiments in Israeli society, however, exposes the religious dimension of the conflict and accentuates the role of the holy sites in Israeli-Palestinian relations.

Zionism has always displayed a complicated relationship with the Temple Mount. While secular socialist Zionism wanted little to do with the site for pragmatic reasons, right-wing and guerilla Zionist groups considered it, before the founding of the state, as the embodiment of Jewish sovereignty over the Holy Land. And although Religious Zion-ism, until very recently, shied away from the site, over the past decade tremendous changes in this public's attitude have taken place, leading to intense interest and activity concerning it. This article surveys past and present attitudes toward the Temple Mount, studying its recent rise as a focal point for ethnonational yearnings, and analyzing these developments vis-à-vis the secularization process.

Chronos: Revue d'histoire de l'Universite de Balamand, 2007

In this article I present a reading of Christian and Muslim Palestinian uses of two West Bank Christian holy places. The first is the Greek Orthodox monastery of Mar Elyas (the Prophet Elijah) located on the Hebron Road between Bethlehem and Jerusalem; the second is the municipal shrine of B��r es-Sayideh ('The Well of the Lady') in Beit Sahour, a mile to the east of Bethlehem. I elucidate how Palestinians of different sectarian affiliations engage the complicated processes of interpreting the significance of a holy place and defining their ...

This essay examines the Christian and Muslim Palestinian uses of two West Bank Christian holy places - the Greek Orthodox Monastery of Mar Elyas (The Prophet Elijah) located on the Hebron Road between Bethlehem and Jerusalem, and the municipal shrine of Bîr es-Sayideh (The Well of the Lady) in Beit Sahour, a mile to the east of Bethlehem. It showshow Palestinians of different religious affiliations interpret the significance of a holy place and define their relationship to it. The investigation of the activities taking place around theshrine of Mar Elyas on the prophet's feast day in 1984 shows that the place had verydifferent meanings to the various groups of people who attended the feast. My analysis willshow how the members of these groups interpreted the site and their engagement with it.This multivocality of place raises the issue of the politics involved in "fixing" its meaning.

Middle Eastern Studies, 2023

Over the past seven decades, dozens of Muslim holy places in Israel have undergone a process of Judaization, becoming an integral part of the Israeli-Jewish sacred landscape. The current paper compares three waves of Judaization that followed the 1948 and 1967 wars, emphasizing the institutional and popular character of this process. The appropriation of Muslim holy places and their conversion is tied to the political, social, and religious changes that Israeli society underwent during its seventy years of existence. During these decades, Jewish holy spaces gained social, cultural, and religious importance; visiting them became a popular pastime. As the demand for holy places grew, former Muslim sites were converted and became part of Jewish sacred space. The process of transformation took place in parallel on two planes – the institutional and the popular – as both Israeli governmental bodies and worshipers converted Muslim holy places into Jewish sacred sites. The outcome of the process was the expansion of sacred space in the State of Israel and the inclusion of the periphery, which in many cases contained former Muslim holy places, as an integral part of the Jewish map of holy places.

The current wave of violence did not spring up ex nihilo; it should be situated in a broader context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in general, and is related to the tensions involving the sacred sites to Jews and Muslims, specifically the sites in Jerusalem.

Journal in Humanities

The presented article deals with the issue which is defined as the key role of holy sites and their importance in handling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.The conflict between Israel and Palestine has been a hot spot on the world map for several decades and still maintains front page news of the mainpolitical events, which is still important due to its wide scale and lack of prospects and ways to resolve this conflict.In scientific circles, a number of monographs and scientific articles have been devoted to a still unresolved dispute between these two peoples andthere is still a great deal of interest among scientists regarding this issue, to which a number of opinions on possible ways to end up the conflict havebeen expressed. Many leading organizations and institutions of the world have intervened in resolving this issue, but, for some reason or more, theattempt to end it up peacefully still seems a distant prospect and is still very obscure.Numerous studies related to this probl...

In the following, I discuss a number of Jewish holy places that concurrently served as pilgrimage sites and as historical-antiquity sites after the state was founded in 1948, and where fierce disputes arose due to this duality. The tension between archaeologists and the religious establishment surrounding these places was not only related to the question of how to define them, but also, consequently, the question of who owns the sites, who will interoperate their meaning and determine the way they will be presented to the public. The competition was also about pow

In this review essay, I will engage with some critical issues raised by Nimrod Luz in his recent book, The Politics of Sacred Places: A View From Israel-Palestine. This is a follow up to earlier articles that I have written for ID: International Dialogue and elsewhere related to holy sites as well as pilgrimage to, from, and within what is commonly known in the Western Christian world for the last one thousand years as the "Holy Land." 1 It is also a companion piece to a recent review I have written of Marshall J. Breger and Leonard M. Hammer's landmark publication The Contest and Control of Jerusalem's Holy Sites: A Historical Guide to Legality, Status, and Ownership. 2 The main focus of this essay is Luz's description of the ethnocratization-specifically, Judaization-of Israel-Palestine and its religious sites since 1948 and an evaluation of where things stand now in this process. By "Israel-Palestine," in this book Luz mostly refers to locations in the present State of Israel as well as in occupied and annexed East Jerusalem (the al-Aqsa compound). The designation is also used in a historical sense, referring to places in the State of Israel and the time before the country existed. He does not, in this publication, specifically address the politics surrounding religious space in cities like Hebron, Nablus, and Bethlehem on the West Bank.

The outcome of Israel's War of Independence was the main catalyst for the creation of a new map of Jewish pilgrimage sites. Places of only secondary importance before the war now turned into central cult centers. Several categories of the sacred sites are discussed herein: sites in the possession of Jews before the 1948 war that were developed during the 1950s as central cult centers; sacred sites owned by Muslims prior to the war, which were "converted" into Jewish sacred sites during the 1950s; and new Jewish pilgrimage sites created only after the establishment of the State of Israel, whose importance relied exclusively on newly created sacred traditions. The research demonstrates how various official, semi-official, and popular powers took part in the shaping of the Jewish sacred space.  Veneration of saints is a universal phenomenon in both monotheistic and polytheistic creeds.³ e saints were perceived as intermediaries between a petitioner and god-and in this sense Judaism was not different. From at least the Crusader period until today, Jewish pilgrims venerated the different sacred sites, most of them tombs of Jewish saints. e graves functioned as cairns, claim stakes to assert Judaism's historical presence in this region. ey were also perceived as tangible evidence that Judaism once flourished in this holy landscape.

AI

Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations (Taylor & Francis), 2015

2000

Religion Compass Volume 7, Issue 3, pages 69–78, March 2013

A long history of intercommunal relations around local holy places in historic Palestine (a history which sadly seems to be coming to a close in the current day) draws attention to what precisely is the character of the attachment felt by local residents to sacred sites. Muslim-Christian ‘sharing’ of holy places (maqam, plural maqamat) can be seen to express a dependency on powers perceived of as resident in a site, and the nominal affiliation of these powers to one religion or another is often not a matter of great concern to those frequenting the shrines. It is, however, a focal concern of the officiants of the respective religions who lay claim to the sites and who seek to expunge heterodox practices and traces of ambiguous affiliation (cf. Hayden 2002 and 2011). I here investigate records of local usages of religious sites, largely rural, in Palestine up through the Mandate Period in order to argue that shared shrines, as opposed to those which appear to be communally homogeneous, foreground issues of agency obscured in those sites under the control of religious authorities.

Israel Studies, 2007

The article describes the internal debate within Religious Zionist circles over

Political Theology, 2025

This paper examines the dual formation of religion in Israel through a comparative analysis of two sacred sites: Maqam Nabi-Daud (King David's shrine) on Mount Zion and Maqam Sayyidna-ʿAli on the Mediterranean coast. Both Islamic endowments were transferred to Israeli supervision after 1948, but underwent contrasting transformations. While Mount Zion was appropriated and developed into a Jewish religious-national pilgrimage site symbolizing Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem, Maqam Sayyidna-ʿAli was depoliticized and its Palestinian connections severed through restricted access and administrative control. These complementary yet opposite processes, managed by the same governmental institution, demonstrate how religion simultaneously serves as a foundation for Jewish-Israeli national consciousness while functioning as a tool for Palestinian denationalization. The spatial analysis reveals how sacred sites became vehicles for manifesting sovereignty, constructing national identity, and controlling collective memory.

The past ten years have witnessed the collapse of Palestinian political authority and leadership in East Jerusalem. Evidence suggests that the Islamic Movement is beginning to fill this vacuum from within Israel. This article examines the growing involvement of the Islamic Movement of Israel in Jerusalem, both in terms of discourse and specific facts on the ground. It explores how the al-Aqsa mosque has been employed, particularly by Shaykh Ra'id Salah, as a symbol for political empowerment, a site for public contestation, and a focus for religious renewal. It debates whether their presence should be perceived as a growing strategic threat, part of an Islamizing trend, or rather as a consequence of weak local leadership, the unintended consequences of the separation wall and the non-recognition of the Hamas government

2016

This Master's thesis for The Religious Roots of Europe programme is an inquiry into the sacredness of places and the central role of violence in the conflict in Jerusalem regarding the Temple Mount. The thesis takes it point of departure in the assumption that violence is a result of a struggle over scarce resource. Through this reasoning, everything produces resources which may be perceived as scarce. The Temple Mount as a sacred place is then a producer of resources which is at the centre of conflict and violence. This thesis is specifically concerned with the nature of these sacred resources. It will achieve a understanding of this by analysing Jewish and Muslim narratives surrounding the Temple Mount. The thesis will operate with two sets of narrative: one based on biblical and quranic traditions, archaeology, and 'factual' history. The other based on narratives expressed through liturgical means in form of Jewish prayers. Using theories within the field of memory studies, this thesis will argue that the nature of the resources of the Temple Mount lie within the construction of cultural memory and identity. Finally this thesis connects different traditions of legitimising violence in Judaism and Islam with the struggle for the resources of the Temple Mount.

Israel Studies Review, 2017

Zionism has always displayed a complicated relationship with the Temple Mount. While secular socialist Zionism wanted little to do with the site for pragmatic reasons, right-wing and guerilla Zionist groups considered it, before the founding of the state, as the embodiment of Jewish sovereignty over the Holy Land. And although Religious Zionism, until very recently, shied away from the site, over the past decade tremendous changes in this public's attitude have taken place, leading to intense interest and activity concerning it. This article surveys past and present attitudes toward the Temple Mount, studying its recent rise as a focal point for ethnonational yearnings, and analyzing these developments vis-à-vis the secularization process.

Providence College​ ​ This collaborative and ecumenical conference provides a common forum f​ or leading international scholars to address the history and archaeology of this extraord​ inary 35-acre platform and its sacred status. The project seeks to be an agent of dialogue by bringing together diverse scholars in the humanities whose research furthers our understanding of the site and its historical context. Marking the Sacred is an opportunity for experts on the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim traditions to engage in unique and fruitful discussions leading to a scholarly publication that will reach a worldwide academic audience in multiple disciplines.​ ​

2007

The article describes the internal debate within Religious Zionist circles over

Contemporary Jewry

This article focuses on the changes that occurred in the significance of Israel's Western Wall after the Six-Day War in 1967, when the site became a prominent Jewish and Israeli symbol. We examine the processes that established the Western Wall as a site combining both Jewish and Israeli components of identitya place of national importance in Israeli consciousness. During these processes, the religious and historic contexts of the site remained intact and were even strengthened, but they were now supplemented by modern Zionist-national values and expressions. The new reality created at the Western Wall accorded it a new and extraordinary status as a national holy place. The site continued to represent the past and Israel's religious and historical heritage, and Jews continued to visit it for religious and traditional reasons. The innovation was that the Western Wall was now infused with new content relevant to the post-Six-Day War period and to the social and cultural characteristics of Israeli society during those years. The site served as a source of connection for the diverse expressions of Israeli identity, and it accommodated a relatively wide range of worldviews, from religious-traditional (and perhaps even ultra-Orthodox) perspectives to civil-national perspectives.

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