Date: Mon, 4 Mar 2002 02:51:14 -0500 (EST)
From: "Kamran D. Rastegar" <kdr7-AT-columbia.edu>
Subject: Re: holy cities



charles,

the primary fallacy of your argument concerning the possible hypocrisy in
the saudi plan (which i do not personally support as it does not give
necessay attention to the issue of palestinian refugees) is in your claim
that jews were prohibited from visiting the wailing wall during the
jordanian period simply becuase they were jews. in fact, the policy was to
prohibit *israelis* from entering any area of east jerusalem - non-israeli
jews who obtained visas to jordan were not prohibited from going to any
jewish - or for that matter christian or muslim - site under jordanian
control. given the fact that a state of war existed between jordan and
israel during that period, it seems hardly surprising that israelis were
prohibited from entering jordanian areas. i'm sure the reverse was true -
and continues to be true in the sense that the millions of palestinian
refugees were and are still prohibited from entering jerusalem to pray
in muslim holy sites. btw, presently millions of palestinians under direct
or partial israeli control are NOT allowed to travel to jerusalem to pray,
so the issue of religious freedom may best be first directed to israel,
before beginning to fret about the possible implications of palestinian
control of east jerusalem.

the important second error of your argument concerns the nature of
palestinian ideals for the palestinian state - it would not be an
ethnically or religiously defined state. not even islamist groups in
palestine have ever said that they would be against jews having access to
holy sites after a settlement to the conflict is acheived. so i don't see
how the fact that saudi arabia - ideologically a totally different
species from the palestinian nationalist movements - prohibits non-muslims
from mecca and medina has any bearing on a just final settlement in
palestine on the basis of UN resolutions and international law? the
conflict, you forget, is not for the control of holy sites... it's for
ending the military occupation and settler colonial project in palestinian
areas.

there is a different framework to see this - you have conflated saudi and
palestinian (in your words, muslim - ignoring the significant palestianian
christian minorities) aims here. i would argue that israel has much more
in common with saudi arabia than the palestinians do. israel defines
itself as a state FOR a specific religious group - so does saudi arabia.
this definition allows and promotes the discrimination each state
practices. of course, in the case of israel this is a major problem as
nearly %50 of the population it controls (1948 boundaries as well as 1967
territories) is non-jewish. %20 are defined as "citizens" despite being
told that the state is not "for" them. for me this is really the cruz of
the issue - the general acceptence of the idea of a state defined solely
on the basis of religious identity. were saudi arabia to have a population
of non-muslims that were half as large as that of the  non-jews ruled by
israel, i'm sure we'd be seeing an intifada in jedda as well.

kr



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