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Sacred Space and the Limits of Law on the Temple Mount (1917-1948)

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Sacred Space and the Limits of Law on the Temple Mount (1917-1948) Syracuse University SURFACE Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public History - Theses Affairs 8-2012 Managing the Divine Jurisdiction: Sacred Space and the Limits of Law on the Temple Mount (1917-1948) Robert W. Nicholson Syracuse University Follow this and additional works at: https://surface.syr.edu/hst_thesis Part of the History Commons Recommended Citation Nicholson, Robert W., "Managing the Divine Jurisdiction: Sacred Space and the Limits of Law on the Temple Mount (1917-1948)" (2012). History - Theses. 1. https://surface.syr.edu/hst_thesis/1 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at SURFACE. It has been accepted for inclusion in History - Theses by an authorized administrator of SURFACE. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ABSTRACT This paper probes the history of the Temple Mount complex during the British Mandate for Palestine. Approaching this sacred space from three different perspectives—British, Arab, and Jewish—this paper examines how people and events surrounding it contributed to the evolution of Palestine after World War I. Ultimately, I argue that Britain’s non-policy on the Temple Mount undermined the Mandate project and ultimately contributed to the rise of the Israeli- Palestinian conflict. Fearful of angering Muslims in Palestine and around the world, the British handed control of the space to an indigenous Arab-Muslim administration. This policy of “affirmative deference” allowed certain Muslim leaders to carve out a sphere of de facto sovereignty inside the site and establish a base for resistance to the British government. For many Jewish settlers in Palestine, sanctioned and unchecked Arab power inside Judaism’s holiest site led them to abandon faith in the Mandate and formulate their own plans for independence. Stated simply, Britain’s mismanagement of the Temple Mount intensified the fragmentation of Palestine from its geographical and ideological center. In addition to telling an important micro- history of the period, I also hope to provide a useful case study for broader analysis of the interaction between secular and traditional authority and the dynamics of sacred space. MANAGING THE DIVINE JURISDICTION: SACRED SPACE AND THE LIMITS OF LAW ON THE TEMPLE MOUNT (1917-1948) by Robert W. Nicholson B.A., SUNY Binghamton, 2009 J.D., Syracuse University, 2012 Thesis Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in History Syracuse University August 2012 Copyright © Robert W. Nicholson 2012 All Rights Reserved iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Only two people truly deserve praise for completing this project: to my wife Lyndsey and daughter Brooke, I will always love you. To everyone else who supported me and offered wise counsel, I am eternally grateful. Special thanks go to William Wiecek, Miriam Elman, Andrew Cohen, Patti Bohrer, Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn, and the entire History Department of Syracuse University. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract i Title Page ii Copyright iii Acknowledgements iv Table of Contents v I. Introduction 1 II. Historiography 5 III. Crusaders of Law and Order 9 A. British Palestine: A Background 13 B. Towards a Holy Places Policy 20 IV. Wall of the Worlds 32 A. The Arab State of Palestine 33 B. Israel’s Last Remaining Relic 44 C. The Sacred and the Violent 52 V. Fear of the Sanctuary 74 A. Cornerstone of Redemption 75 B. Refuge from the Law 84 VI. Conclusion 96 VII. Bibliography 98 VIII. Vita 114 1 MANAGING THE DIVINE JURISDICTION: SACRED SPACE AND THE LIMITS OF LAW ON THE TEMPLE MOUNT (1917-1948) I. INTRODUCTION The Temple Mount complex, known as the Haram ash-Sharif in Arabic, is a sacred space inside Jerusalem that holds profound significance for the Abrahamic faiths.1 In all three traditions it is a place of supernatural power and the gateway to another world.2 Great Britain captured this holy site from the Ottoman Empire in World War I and received an international mandate to manage it and the rest of Palestine on behalf of its inhabitants. Britain’s goal in this overwhelmingly Arab land was to create both a self-governing state and a national home for the Jewish people. The inherent contradictions underlying this regime led to its ultimate collapse in 1948, when the British fled the country “amid bloodshed, chaos, recrimination and ignominy.”3 Chaos and bloodshed still persist in the present day and powerfully influence international affairs. In the early twenty-first century, the Temple Mount stands at the center of this tumult as a perennial wellspring of radicalism and violence. Noting the situation in the present, this paper returns to the early years of the Jewish-Arab conflict to understand the significance of the Temple Mount at the conflict’s very beginning. Although they will be cautious to quantify it, most scholars will acknowledge the Temple Mount as a significant variable in the conflict today. It is well-known to be significant to Jews 1 In this paper I will use the phrase “Temple Mount complex” to describe the Temple Mount platform and its Western Wall. I would argue this phrase is better than other recently-invented phrases such as “the Holy Basin” and “the Sacred Esplanade” because it specifically denotes the ancient Jewish temple and its historical footprint as the central cog around which the rest turns. 2 See generally Oleg Grabar & Benjamin Z. Kedar (eds.), Where Heaven and Earth Meet: Jerusalem’s Sacred Esplanade (Jerusalem: Yed Ben-Zvi, 2009); John M. Lundquist, The Temple of Jerusalem: Past, Present, and Future (Westport: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2008). 3 Bernard Wasserstein, Divided Jerusalem: The Struggle for the Holy City (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), 82. 2 and Muslims who live in the region as well as in other parts of the world.4 Both sides regularly call for exclusive possession of the site.5 At the Camp David talks in 2000, Israeli and Palestinian leaders refused to concede sovereignty over it.6 Their deadlock sealed the fate of the Oslo Accords and helped pave the way for the Second Intifada.7 Protests, riots, and police actions have been regular occurrences at the site ever since. Today, the Temple Mount continues to frustrate attempts at political compromise.8 But how significant was the Temple Mount during the British Mandate? Scholars often minimize religious themes during the Mandate period and focus instead on issues of immigration, land, or labor.9 If named at all, the Temple Mount is mentioned only as one minor point of contention among many. This silence is unfortunate. Primary sources reveal that the Temple Mount, like other religious issues, was in fact very relevant to the history of the period. The site’s significance lay not so much in stimulating radicalism as it does today, but in spatially and conceptually linking Palestine’s three competing regimes. All three of these regimes— 4 Rashid Khalidi, Palestinian Identity: The Construction of a Modern National Consciousness (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 18. In his book Jerusalem and Its Role in Islamic Solidarity (New York: Macmillan, 2008), Yitzhak Reiter makes a compelling argument that Jerusalem and its Temple Mount did not attain its present level of significance until after 1967. However, Reiter neglects a substantial examination of the Mandate years and thereby understates the importance of the Temple Mount before the Six Day War. 5 Amnon Ramon, “Delicate Balances at the Temple Mount,” in Marshall Breger & Ora Ahimeir (eds.), Jerusalem: A City and Its Future (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2002), 326. 6 Prime Minister Ehud Barak would not give up Israeli sovereignty over the Temple Mount (though he was ready to give up 93 percent of the West Bank), and Yasser Arafat was just as adamant. Ron E. Hassner, War on Sacred Grounds (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009), 80. 7 Ron E. Hassner, “The Pessimist’s Guide to Religious Coexistence,” in Marshall J. Breger et al (eds.), Holy Places in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Confrontation and Coexistence. (New York: Routledge, 2010), 153. 8 See secret discussions between Israeli and Palestinian leaders recently published by Al-Jazeera. Clayton Swisher. The Palestine Papers: The End of the Road? (Chatham: Hesperus Press, 2011). 9 While it cannot be disputed that these issues were central to the Mandate, they do not tell the full story. Religion, religious hierarchies, and religious spaces played a major role in the history of the period. My focus on religion is not based on the assumption that everyone in Palestine was devout, but on the fact that religion was the main organizing principle of Mandatory society. The British, like the Ottomans before them, maintained a legal system that divided and isolated Palestine’s religious communities. This legal system ensured that conflicts in Palestinian society almost always broke along religious lines. The Temple Mount complex stood at the center of one such conflict. This structural connection between Mandatory law, Palestine’s fragmented religious society, and management of the Temple Mount lies at the heart of this thesis. 3 British, Arab, and Jewish— recognized the Temple Mount as profoundly sacred. However, each approached the site very differently. The British chose to govern it “hands off” for fear of upsetting the worldwide Muslim community.10 The Arab Muslim leaders who controlled it used its autonomous status to create a zone of de facto sovereignty and the center of a would-be independent Arab state in Palestine. The site’s physical impregnability only reinforced its independence.11 Surrounded on all sides by walls, accessible only by a few gates, and honeycombed with subterranean passageways, the Temple Mount provided a natural sanctuary from government authority. Meanwhile, Jews trying to create a national home in Palestine viewed unbridled Arab power inside the Temple Mount—Judaism’s ancient holy place—as an outrage, and began to devise their own plans to throw off British rule.
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