Jerusalem Still Ground Zero in Middle East Tensions

PASADENA, CA, Jul 23 (MARKET WIRE) --
According to Mid-East scholar David Hulme, merely looking at Jerusalem
today or even back to the 1967 war when Israel took control of Jerusalem
does not provide a long enough view to settle the Jerusalem question.

In the Vision.org article "Triumph and Tragedy in the Middle East," Dr.
Hulme discusses the 60-year history of the State of Israel and the deep
compassions that impede the development of the long-sought "cohesive and
coherent" agreements between peoples claiming the same homeland.

In a June speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, US
Presidential candidate Barack Obama said he would work for peace with a
Palestinian state alongside Israel and that, "Jerusalem will remain the
capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided."

Israel's first Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion died in 1973. But if
anything could bring him back to life it would have been Barack Obama's
statement concerning Jerusalem.

While music to Zionist ears, the notion of Jerusalem as Israeli capital
implies the expulsion of the Palestinians who also claim the territory as
their own. Mr. Obama, currently visiting the Middle East, later clarified
what he called "poor phrasing" by explaining that "we don't want barbed
wire running through Jerusalem, similar to the way it was prior to the '67
war, that it is possible for us to create a Jerusalem that is cohesive and
coherent."

Hulme notes that the optimism of 1948 has given way to 60 years that "have
proven more challenging and more tragic for both Israelis and Palestinians
than Ben-Gurion could ever have imagined in those first heady days of
statehood. And always at the heart of the seemingly endless conflict has
been the holy city, Jerusalem."

In the companion Vision.org article, "David Ben-Gurion: For the Love of
Zion," Hulme takes a longer look at the background of the man who
established Jerusalem as Israel's benchmark possession. "A people that
for two thousand five hundred years has steadfastly observed the oath
which the first exiles swore on the rivers of Babylon not to forget
Jerusalem," Ben-Gurion stated in a 1949 United Nations speech, "will
never acquiesce in separation from Jerusalem."

Hulme offers a surprising solution to the problem that reaches beyond the
geopolitical crosstalk that has failed to solve the Jerusalem question
over the ensuing decades. That solution involves understanding how both
historical and ideological factors create national identity and how the
conflict between Israeli and Palestinian can be successfully mediated.

"Over the past century, not only Palestinians and Zionists but also Turks,
Britons, and Jordanians have fought on Palestine's terrain of battle,"
Hulme writes in his text, "Identity, Ideology, and the Future of
Jerusalem." "[E]ach people has expressed aspects of its own identity and
ideology vis-a-vis Palestine" (David Hulme, page 3).

About Vision:

Vision.org is an online magazine with quarterly print issues that feature
in-depth coverage of current social issues, religion and the Bible,
history, family relationship topics and insights into philosophical,
moral and ethical issues in society today. For a free subscription to the
Vision quarterly magazine, visit their web site at
http://www.vision.org/visionmedia/default.aspx.

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Contact:
Edwin Stepp
www.vision.org
Vision Media Productions
476 S. Marengo Avenue
Pasadena, CA 91101
Phone (24 hrs): 626 535-0444 ext 105

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