A side of the Israel-Palestine conflict never seen...

Old City, Jerusalem --

I wonder if the political architects of the Berlin Wall studied the Old City in Jerusalem to discover exactly how to separate a small piece of land into multiple "countries." To give you an idea, West Berlin was really an "island" inside of an expanse controlled by the former Soviet Union. In order for this island to maintain it's political sovereignty, it was to be treated like a separate country -- hence the Wall serving as a hard border. I can just imagine the folks in Rhode Island having a tough time envisioning being locked into their state and being harassed at the borders with their neighboring states.

The Old City in Jerusalem is in similar form. Although the Armenian, Christian, Jewish, and Arab quarters are not separated by any border, the so-called "Temple Mount" is. The Temple Mount is really the former site of the two Jewish temples which were destroyed (the second, built by Herod, was visited by Jesus shortly before it was destroyed). When Muslims controlled Palestine last, they slapped up the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa mosque on the site of the Second Temple. These are now the 3^rd and 4^th holiest sites in Islam and assured that the space be converted to exclusive Muslim use. To give you an idea, the expanse of the Temple Mount is about the size of 4 football fields, and is probably a 3^rd the size of the entire Old City. If you add the area of the Arab Quarter to the area of the Temple Mount together, we can safely conclude that the Arabs control around ¹/₂ or more of the old city (see here: Old City map). Jews praying at the Western Wall are literally praying at the foot of the Muslim-controlled Temple Mount.

These days, to reach the Temple Mount means lining up at some window of time during the day and passing through a type of "border control," perhaps similar to what the Berlin Wallers experienced. Once on the Temple Mount, you realize just how big and at a high elevation the area is. Beautiful wide views of the Mount of Olives (Juda betrays Jesus here) and French Hill, and wide quiet boulevards. At every turn, I had semi-uniformed guards telling me not to enter here or not to enter there. FYI, the Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa mosque are off limits to whities, although an 8-year-old kid who looked Lebanese (fairly pale Arabic skin tone) wearing jean shorts and a WWF Wrestling t-shirt got in to the Dome no problem). The question of "who" exactly controls the land is tricky. No doubt the Palestinian Authority controls the Arab Quarter, but who should control the Temple Mount? Jordan did at one time, and the Royal Family was very pleased with their holding. The Palestinians more or less control the area now, although they receive significant help from the international Islamic community for upkeep. Even then, some issues have cropped up. A change the Palestinians made in the Old City water system almost caused the southeast corner of the Temple Mount (and the Old City castle walls) to topple, but they caught the mistake in time.

After the 6-day War, had the Jews acted as folks did 1,000 years ago, they probably would have razed the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa and started rebuilding the Temple. Probably due to a relatively new phenomenon called "international pressure," the Jews not only left the area alone, but them and the Christians + Armenians settled for only a third of the Old City. When it comes to the entire chunk of Land that is Israel + West Bank, it's tricky to talk about who has "religious right" to be where... but when it comes to the Old City, I think it's fair to say that the "religious right" to the land rule be applied -- it is, after all, a super-extra religious site. I'm only bitter about this because, while the Christian/Armenian/Jewish (CAJ) religious area is squashed into a small piece of the Old City, the Arab Quarter is made up of stretches of homogeneous alleyways, in which the stores repeat themselves every 100 meters. I only ask that the Arabs make more interesting use of possibly the most lusted after real estate on the planet.

Some questions: What kind of rules can be applied to micro-states, such as the Old City, Liechtenstein, old West Berlin, Tibet, the Panama Canal, Gibraltar, etc? How should religion play a role in the Old City (hint: the only remaining issue is what to do given the Jewish importance of the Temple Mount?)