Lecture 19- 6/1/10

Today's lecture began the conversation on modern, or 2oth Century Jerusalem. Beginning with the fall of the Ottoman Empire during World War I and the institution of the British mandate, the Palestinian territory once again became subject to rule from Western Europe, this time in the form of British and French (north of modern Israel, mainly Lebanon/Syria) imperial authorities.
Although promising to respect the holy sites of all faiths, the British occupiers set in motion a series of events that, although culminating in the State of Israel, ensured that peace would remain simply a hopeful whim for generations to come. While secretly agreeing to divide the conquered territory with French authorities in the Sikes-Picot Agreement, the British also signaled a half-hearted desire to establish a Jewish National Homeland in Palestine in response to growing Zionist sentiment among Jewish populations across Europe. Although the support for a Jewish state was tempered with Churchill's White Paper, the British had done enough damage with their initial proclamation to invigorate Zionist movements to move toward a Jewish state while at the same time angering Arab inhabitants into a series of violent riots.
The establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 only worsened the division centered around control of Jerusalem. With the armistice between Israel and Jordan allowing for Jordanian control of the West Bank, the Jewish state was from its inception in opposition to the plans set forth by the UN for Palestinian partition between two state, one Jewish and the other Arab-Palestinian. Although the UN partition had initially been agreed to by the Zionists (and rejected by the Arabs), Israelis have gradually crept east in their settlement movements, especially after the Six-Day War of 1967 gave Israel full control over East Jerusalem and the West Bank. With these settlements, it has become nearly impossible for Israel to accept the boundaries laid forth by the original UN mandate, boundaries that the Arab population has now come to favor.