|
||||
|
|
||||
|
|
|
Jerusalem quarterly tackles ways of 'claiming the city' By Hada Sarhan THE WINTER issue of Jerusalem Quarterly File (JQF), published by the Institute of Jerusalem Studies (IJS), was recently released, with articles and analyses 
examining the role of religion, culture and the media in the struggle
to claim the city. It covers issues such as zoning and land appropriation, the establishment and expansion of settlements, regulations affecting the status of Arab residency in Jerusalem, demographic trends, and formal and informal Palestinian negotiating strategies on the final status of Jerusalem. The journal is dedicated to providing scholarly articles on Jerusalem's history and on the dynamics and trends currently shaping the city. Titled “A new direction for Palestinian nationalism”, the issue's editorial says that every decade or so since the 1948 war, it seems that the Palestinian national movement goes through periods of historical rethinking. “Almost all those episodes are focused on inherent tension and dynamics between the remaining of the Palestinian society still on the land (in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza) and those forces that led the movement in the dispersed communities in Arab host countries (Jordan, Syria and Lebanon).” But the challenges, the editorial continues, also come from an ideological source: an Islamic vision of salvation that is not tied to the territorial principle. The volume comprises three features, all related to Palestinian issues. “In their image”, by Issam Nassar, discusses the Jerusalem history in nineteenth century in European travel writings. Nassar writes that European travellers to Palestine in the 19th century arrived with certain attitudes about the land, its history, people and sites that were essentially a product of European knowledge and imagination regarding Palestine and the East in general. “Such knowledge was not only a result of Europe's historical encounters with Palestine, but was continuously shaped and reshaped by what the visitors themselves were writing,” said Nassar. “The vagabond cafÈ and Jerusalem's prince of idleness”, by Salem Tamari, is about the life and works of the late Palestinian researcher and writer Khalil Sakakini. Tamari writes that Sakakini's return from his American sojourn, in the autumn of 1908, was an occasion for contemplating the creation of a new kind of cultural space: the literary cafÈ, a public meeting place to accommodate his newly formed circle of literati, the “Party of the Vagabonds”. The issue includes other topics: some regarding local community and the national cause, written by Issah Kassissieh; the “Digital Temple Mount”, by Yousef Said Al Natsheh, in addition to various reviews. The IJS, an affiliate of the Institute for Palestinian Studies, was established in 1995; it is located in Ramallah and aims to publish research on final-status issues, with a particular focus on Jerusalem and refugees. Moreover, IJS is active in setting up networks with both local and international research communities around common areas of interest, and in computerising data on Palestine. Monday, November 17, 2003 |