Jerusalem, a problem with ancient roots

UNITED States President Donald Trump announced last December 6 that the US embassy in Israel would move from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Trump affirmed US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Jerusalem is also claimed by the Muslim Palestinians, who lived in the land before Israel came after World War II. They too hope to make Jerusalem their capital once the Palestinian State is established and recognized.

Trump’s move has sparked reactions all over the Muslim world, with official protests from Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and other Muslim countries as far away as Indonesia and Malaysia, but also from Russia and the countries of Europe who see it as upsetting the uneasy peace in the Holy Land. Tens of thousands of people have begun to take to the streets in protest demonstrations.

We in mostly Christian Philippines may find it difficult to understand and appreciate the intensity of these reactions to the US action. It may help if we realize that this is a problem whose roots go back hundreds of thousands of years ago.

When the Hebrews led by Abraham were told by God to go west to the land of Canaan, they traveled across the desert led by Moses for many generations, including years of slavery in Egypt. They left Egypt in the Exodus, finally reaching the banks of the Jordan river. They were led across the river by the new leader Joshua to the land of Canaan. After a series of battles, they won over the Caananites’ 31 city states starting with Jericho, Ai, then Jerusalem.

Many centuries passed and in the 10th century BCE (Before the Christian Era), the name Israel appeared for the first time on historical records as one of the two Jewish kingdoms in Palestine, the other being Judah. These kingdoms were conquered by Assyrians and Babylonians, who were in turn defeated by the Persians of Cyrus the Great and the Macedonian Greeks of Alexander the Great. The Romans conquered Israel in 6 BCE, expelled most of the Jews, and established the Roman Province of Palestina – where Christ was born and the Christian era of Anno Domine (AD) began.

Muslims conquered the land, then the Crusaders, then the British who ruled it from 1917 to 1948 AD when the United Nations proclaimed the State of Israel, so they could return to the land after being scattered by conquering states in history throughout the world in what is now known as the Diaspora.

This is a blurring panorama of battles and conquests and equally blurring claims on who truly has the right to this strip of land on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. The Jewish people claim it as the land promised them by Yahweh, who is God the Father to Christians today. The UN approved the establishment of Israel in 1947, at a time when the world felt as one with the Jews, some 6 million of whom had been slain by the Nazis in the Holocaust genocide of World War II. The Philippines was among the nations that voted for the new state, the only Asian country to do so.

There are legal and diplomatic issues involved in this issue, which explains why many Western nations which normally side with the US have opposed Trump’s decision. But there are other considerations for many other people in this controversy – historical, religious, human considerations. We must hope that this problem, whose roots go back hundreds of thousands of years in the past, will be settled justly, peacefully, with humanity – especially in t-his season of peace and goodwill.