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The Different Options for Administering Israel’s Holiest Sites
Italian operatic tenor Andrea Bocelli at the Western Wall in Jerusalem on June 9, 2022. Photo: Screenshot/TheKotel.org.
The Temple Mount, the Western Wall, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher — these are places of utmost importance to multiple religious groups, and they often give rise to bitter disputes and even acts of violence.
The question of how to effectively govern and manage such sites is of paramount practical significance. Until recently, no systematic models of governance for contested sacred sites have been proposed. This article describes a typology of five governance models in terms of their attributes, advantages, and disadvantages, so that decision-makers, scholars, religious figures, and other stakeholders can apply them as needed to different sacred sites.
Sacred sites are defined as “thick sites” — which means a site, typically but not necessarily religious, that is imbued with different and incompatible meanings by different agents. From these agents’ point of view, these meanings are highly significant and the sites are therefore irreplaceable.
Thick sites are not mere locations. They exist in specific public spaces and cannot be moved or replaced. This means that members of different religious groups all insist on conducting their activities in the same location, often simultaneously.
Unlike the Lockean-Madisonian solution, according to which religious practice is kept a private affair, thick sites contain different religious communities that each maintain their own place of worship within the site. These sites are thus focal points for intense inter-religious competition over ownership, governance, access, religious rights, and other aspects of control.
This raises the question of how to govern such sites effectively. What models of governance can promote social order and a measure of religious liberty at these sites?
The following is a brief, induction-based description of five main models for the effective governance and management of contested holy, or “thick,” sites:
The “Non-Intervention” Model: In this model, the state withdraws from religious or substantive management of the holy site, and does not finance the salaries of clerics, clergy, or religious personnel. The state focuses on providing services like security and cleaning. An example of this model is the management of “Devil’s Tower” in Wyoming, US, which is sacred to about 20 Native American tribes.
The “Divide and Separate” Model: Here, the government divides the thick site and separates competing groups, either spatially or temporally. This bureaucratic separation minimizes contact between rival groups, potentially cooling tensions, as contact between the groups is either minimized or banned completely. An example was the proposal (not ultimately accepted) to manage the Babri Masjid/Ram Janmabhoomi site in Ayodhya, India, which is embroiled in a dispute between Hindus and Muslims. This model also applies to the Cave of the Patriarchs.
The “Preference” Model: In this model, one group is given priority or advantages in certain aspects of site management over other groups. These advantages can include ownership rights, religious usage rights, and entry. The Western Wall illustrates this model, with Orthodox Judaism enjoying privileged status. Thus (to mention a few examples), the Rabbi of the Wall (a governmental position) is always Orthodox, space is allocated unequally between men and women with the advantage given to the men, and access to Torah scrolls is denied to women in their section of the Wall.
The “Status Quo” Model: This model “freezes” an existing situation — an allocation of ownership, usage, and entry rights to competing religious groups at a given thick site — at a specific point in time. That is, it locks in the status quo. While this ensures stability, it may not guarantee fairness, as the fairness of the allocation framework being maintained in perpetuity is not discussed at all. The Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, which is crucially important to multiple Christian groups, is an example of this model. At this church, the status quo from the days of Ottoman rule has been meticulously preserved throughout British, Jordanian and Israeli rule.
The “Closure” Model: This model involves a ban on entering or practicing religion at the site, either selectively or absolutely. The ban can apply to entrance, religious practice, or a combination and can be selective by group or by period. It is a strict tool that infringes on the religious freedom of observers of the restricted religion but can be justified in cases where there is a significant risk to public order, as is the case on the Temple Mount. At that site, Jews may enter but are not allowed to pray.
The suggested novel typology is rooted in field cases, and is a tool that can benefit both policymakers and academics. Researchers can use it to understand and analyze conflicts surrounding thick sites worldwide. Politicians can employ it to resolve these conflicts by considering various governance models, their pros and cons, and their suitability for specific cases.
This short paper is grounded in the joint research conducted by Nahshon Perez and Yuval Jobani, which was fully developed in the book Governing the Sacred: Political Toleration in Five Contested Sacred Sites (Oxford University Press, 2020). This research project was funded by an Israel Science Foundation grant (688/18).
Nahshon Perez, PhD, serves as a professor in the Department of Political Studies at Bar Ilan University. His academic interests encompass contemporary political theory, contested sacred sites, past injustices and reparations, and the intersection of religion and politics. His latest book is: Worldly Politics and Divine Institutions: Contemporary Entanglements of Faith and Government, which was published by Oxford University Press in 2023. A version of this article was originally published by The BESA Center.
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Israel Complied with UN Resolutions; Peace Never Came
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres speaks at the UN headquarters in New York City, US, before a meeting about the conflict in Gaza, Nov. 6, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Caitlin Ochs
With demands that Israel leave Gaza’s Philadelphi Corridor and limit its operations in the West Bank, UN Secretary-General António Guterres has called on the Jewish State “to comply with its relevant obligations,” adding that “only an end to the occupation… will bring an end to the violence.”
Yet since 1993, Israel has complied with all its obligations.
Israel repeatedly conceded territory, but the only result was more terrorism and more attacks on its citizens — a fact that seems to have escaped the UN chief.
A decade after withdrawing from the Sinai Peninsula and dismantling settlements — which bought Israel durable peace with Egypt — the Jewish State tried, in 1993, to repeat the exercise with Yasser Arafat and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).
Throughout the 1990s, however, Arafat upheld the Oslo Agreement only to force further concessions on Israel — all the while, plotting terrorism against it, and trying to destroy modern-day Israel.
Whenever Jerusalem balked, Arafat let Hamas’ violence obstruct peace, until he wrecked the whole process in 2000 by launching the Second Intifada.
Because negotiating peace with Arafat, Syria and Lebanon all failed, Israel opted to unilaterally concede territory, even without prior agreement.
In May 2000, Israel left Lebanon. In June of that year, the UN certified that Israel had met the requirements of Resolution 425, and expressed hope that this implementation “would be seen by all people of the region, especially Syrians, Palestinians and Israelis, as well as Lebanese, as an encouragement to quickly move ahead in negotiating peace treaties.”
But not so fast. Hezbollah thrashed the UN.
“We [liberated the land] not because of the UN that failed, over 22 years, in implementing Resolution 425,” said Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, in May 2000. Nasrallah called on the Palestinians to forget about the UN and its resolutions, and instead emulate his model.
“You can reclaim your land … and force the Zionist invaders to return from where they came from,” Nasrallah said. “The choice is yours and the model is before your eyes — serious resistance.”
Quiet on the Lebanese border with Israel did not last long. In July 2006, Hezbollah launched a major cross-border attack. A 33-day war ensued, and ended with Resolution 1701, which forced the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) and the 1978 UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) to do what Israel had requested in 2000 but never did: Deploy south of the River Litani to enforce UNSC 1701, including disbanding Hezbollah.
Yet with the LAF’s complicity and UNIFIL’s toothlessness, Hezbollah redeployed and rearmed all the way to the Lebanese border with Israel. Like Resolution 425 and Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon, Resolution1701 did not make northern Israel safe.
Starting in 2022, Hezbollah intensified its harassment, this time demanding that Israel agree to allow Lebanon to explore the maritime border’s seabed for gas. In October, the Biden administration gave itself a pat on the back for helping reach “a historic” maritime border demarcation that would “advance security, stability, and prosperity for the region,” and that demonstrated “the transformative power of American diplomacy.”
A year later, on October 8, 2023, Hezbollah launched its war on Israel in support of Hamas, which had just murdered 1,200 people in southern Israel the day before. American diplomacy was not so transformative after all.
“Today, hope is greater than ever before that the liberation of Palestine, from the sea to the river,” will happen, Nasrallah said months before his October 8 war on Israel.
This time Nasrallah did not present his “armed resistance” as a model to the Palestinians, but declared his militia as a partner in the Iran-led “Axis of Resistance” that was fighting to “liberate Palestine,” a clear violation of Resolution 1701 and the Lebanese constitution.
In 2000, Israel did not foresee Nasrallah transforming his militia from defensive to offensive. Perhaps that was why, in 2005, Israel replicated its unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon by conceding Palestinian territories, even without prior agreement with the Palestinian Authority (PA) under Mahmud Abbas.
Israel dismantled settlements, pulled out 10,000 Israelis, and withdrew its forces from the Gaza Strip entirely and the northern part of the West Bank, around Jenin and Tulkarem.
Withdrawal was expected to boost the popularity of the PA, but its corruption and incompetence cost it the legislative election that Hamas won in 2006. By June 2007, Hamas had violently ejected the PA from Gaza. Palestinians now had two governments.
In the West Bank, under PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, the economy grew and security improved. Fayyad’s competence, however, deprived Abbas and his cronies of their public money spoils.
In 2013, Abbas ejected Fayyad, causing a backslide in the economy and security. Hamas started recruiting in Jenin, from where the terrorist group organized attacks — such as shootings, ramming cars, and knifings — against Israelis. The Israeli military was forced to operate in the West Bank, thus compounding Palestinian misery. When Abbas visited Jenin in July 2023, Palestinians chased him away.
Since October 2023, Israel has had to go into most of Gaza and intensified its incursions into the West Bank. Israel has also had to fight against Hezbollah to restore normalcy to its north.
Thirty-one years after Israel started experimenting with coordinated withdrawals with Palestinian leaders, 24 years after Israel unilaterally withdrew from Lebanon, 19 years after it left Gaza and Jenin, and only one year after Jerusalem signed on to a US-sponsored maritime border demarcation deal with Beirut, none of the deals or unilateral withdrawals brought Israel peace.
For its concessions, Israel got a Hamas massacre of 1,200 of its citizens on October 7, the biggest loss of Jewish life since the Holocaust. Then, on October 8, Israel found itself facing Hezbollah attacks that have depopulated its north.
And despite all of this, UN Secretary-General Guterres believes the end of Palestinian and Lebanese violence against Israel will only result from more Israeli withdrawals, as if three decades of Israeli concessions have not proven the futility of compromising — and that Jews, Israelis, and foreign citizens will die as a result.
Hussain Abdul-Hussain is a research fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy (FDD). Follow him on X @hahussain.
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Palestinian Athletes Promote Destruction of Israel: ‘From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will Be Free’
Palestinian Olympic Committee President Jibril Rajoub, who also heads the Palestinian Football Association, holds a news conference to update the media about challenges facing Palestinian sports ahead of the Olympics in Paris, in Ramallah, in the West Bank, June 12, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Ammar Awad
The Palestinian Authority (PA) is relentless in announcing its goal to eliminate the State of Israel, and create a state of Palestine that stretches from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River.
While training in Malaysia, the Palestinian national soccer team, which is a member of FIFA, posed for photos wearing scarves featuring the PA map of “Palestine” that presents all of Israel as “Palestine” in the colors of the Palestinian flag.
To spell out the PA message, the text in English on the scarves was explicit:
From the [Jordan] River to the [Mediterranean] Sea Palestine will be free
Posted text: “The [Palestinian] ‘Fida’i’ [self-sacrificing fighter] national team reached Malaysia for training camp”
[Palestinian Football Association, Facebook page, Aug. 26, 2024]
The term “Fida’i,” literally self-sacrificing fighter, is the PA’s term for its terrorists.
The PA has promoted the goal of “river-to-sea-Palestine” for decades, and the slogan has been adopted by anti-Israel protesters around the world during Israel’s current war against Hamas.
The slogan is rightly criticized for what it is: A call for the destruction of Israel.
To combat this criticism, the PA recently tried to present the slogan as “a call for peace” — but Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) and others have demonstrated that this call has a long history of referring to the total elimination of the State of Israel.
The Palestinian Football Association is headed by top PA official Jibril Rajoub, who is known for his support of terror against Israel and denial of Israel’s right to exist, as documented by PMW.
During the current war with Hamas, Rajoub has whitewashed Hamas’ massacre and murder of 1,200 people on October 7, 2023, as a Palestinian “defense war,” and referred to Oct. 7 as an “epic” event that included “acts of heroism.”
In 2018, PMW complained to FIFA about Rajoub, and he was suspended by FIFA from all activities for a year. In response, Rajoub lashed out at PMW, calling its director “Goebbels of the 21st century.”
Rajoub also heads the PLO Supreme Council for Youth and Sports, which organizes summer camps for hundreds of Palestinian kids every year. Among the activities are always map drawing, where kids are taught that “Palestine” really does stretch “from the river to the sea”:
[PLO Supreme Council of Youth and Sports, Facebook page, July 22, 2024]
Rajoub’s PLO Supreme Council for Youth and Sports also distributes numerous plaques featuring the PA map of “Palestine” that includes the entire State of Israel.
The author is a senior analyst at Palestinian Media Watch, where a version of this article was originally published.
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At the University of North Carolina, Teachers Attack Israel with the Lie of ‘Genocide’ and Students Threaten Violence
In May, Students for Justice in Palestine poured red paint which resembles spilled blood on the steps of the South Building, an office for administrative staff and the chancellor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Photo: UNCSJP/Screenshot
The 2024-25 school year has recently begun at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), where faculty members and students are continuing their anti-Israel activism and indoctrination.
In an email promoting a Sept. 6 event titled “Teach Palestine,” Nadia Yaqub — Professor in the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies –wrote to her fellow UNC academics: “As the genocide against the people of Gaza continues, many of us feel we cannot proceed with our teaching as if nothing is going on.”
The event flier asks, “Are you concerned by the ongoing genocide in Gaza? Are you looking for ways to bring Gaza or Palestine/Palestinians in general into your courses?”
In her email about the event, Yaqub added, “The workshop is open to faculty, staff, and graduate students from across the university, and we hope to present ideas and strategies that are applicable in any field.”
According to Yaqub’s email, all fields at UNC — such as mathematics, computer sciences, and speech-language pathology, just to name a few — should or can be used to focus on events in Gaza.
Community members I have spoken with expressed concern that Yaqub is clearly trying to stop students from getting a proper education in their respective fields in order to promote her political agenda.
Multiple sources report that donors and community members are outraged, and are contacting UNC with concerns about institutional bias and classroom activism. Many wonder if this planned workshop will fall outside of North Carolina state law on institutional neutrality, which clearly specifies, “The constituent institution shall remain neutral, as an institution, on the political controversies of the day.”
On Sept. 1, 2024, the UNC Campus Y promoted the “Teach Palestine” workshop on social media. They posted the flier the very same day the world learned the devastating news that six Israeli civilians had been executed by Hamas in Gaza. The Campus Y post did not mention those murders, and seems to be a clear signal that the Campus Y does not care about or consider Jewish life and suffering.
In Nov. of 2023, the Campus Y published a “A Solidarity Statement with Palestine.” The statement begins:
We, as the executive board of the Campus Y, stand in solidarity with Palestine and the Palestinian diaspora in their struggle for land and freedom from settler colonialism. We reject the idea that recent eruptions of violence are indicative of a ‘conflict,’ and uphold that they are indicative of pushback to the Israeli government’s oppression and genocidal erasure of Palestinian people and land, an ongoing process since the 1948 Palestine War and the Nakba.
The statement added: “We would like to emphasize that the Y remains a safe space for all students to decompress; particularly our Arab, Muslim, and especially Palestinian communities.”
The solidarity statement also promised that the Campus Y would continue collaborating with the campus chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (UNC-SJP) which is pro-Hamas. Referring to this now suspended chapter as pro-Hamas is not hyperbole; it is factual.
On Oct. 7 — when Hamas committed the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust — UNC-SJP proclaimed on social media: “It is our moral obligation to be in solidarity with the dispossessed, no matter the pathway to liberation they choose to take. This includes violence.”
On Oct. 12, UNC-SJP held a “Day of Resistance Protest for Palestine” on campus. The event flier celebrated terrorism by featuring a Hamas paraglider en route to kill Israelis and commit other atrocities. In a widely circulated video, a protester screamed, “All of us Hamas.”
I interviewed two Jewish students who silently counter-protested that day. They told me that they were approached by activists who allegedly brandished knives.
In 2020, the Campus Y supported a boycott of an upcoming Hillel trip. The Executive Board of the Campus Y stated that they “voted to sign onto the petition started by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) to boycott the Hillel Perspectives trip, which sends student leaders from UNC’s campus on a fully funded spring break trip to multiple cities in Israel and Occupied Palestine.”
Towards the end of last school year, the Campus Y was briefly closed by the university due to safety concerns. Sources tell me that campus officials were concerned that the Campus Y was being kept open late, past closing hours, to support the anti-Israel protesters in ways such as providing bathrooms to those in the encampment.
Over the summer, UNC-SJP made national news when they announced their support of “armed rebellion” and “revolutionary violence.”
In a manifesto from late July, UNC-SJP proclaimed, “We emphasize our support for the right to resistance, not only in Palestine, but also here in the imperial core. We condone all forms of principled action, including armed rebellion.”
UNC-SJP also made an ominous social media post that some community members and faculty feel is a threat. The suspended chapter wrote, “The time has run out for peace policing … In this hour we urge all people of conscience to heed Palestinians’ calls to escalate autonomously and without reservation.”
Sources tell me that the State Bureau of Investigation has been asked to investigate the potential threats from these UNC-SJP statements.
In addition, on Aug. 24, the Chapel Hill Courthouse near campus was vandalized with graffiti saying “Kill Cops,” “Jihad Now,” and “Death to Cops.”
Peter Reitzes writes about issues related to antisemitism and Israel.
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