There are two distinct issues in attempting to arrive at a settlement concerning the status of Jerusalem: Holy Places and territorial jurisdiction. As regards Holy Places, both Israel and the PLO, apparently, are willing to accept special arrangements for international religious bodies in the holy sites. The Palestinians demand that East Jerusalem be the capital of a Palestinian State. In accordance with international law, an international organisation cannot be sovereign of territory, but it can administer it. All the parties concerned, Israel, Jordan and the Palestinians object to internationalization. Any attempt to resolve this issue has to consider whether the City should be divided and should the division be a physical barrier. If there is no physical barrier then should there be another physical barrier between Israel and a Palestinian State or entity. As to possible solutions, there appears to be no international call for physically dividing the city again. There have been many proposals for solutions. Proposals include functional division and suspending the issue of sovereignty, treating the Old City within the walls as a separate issue, or dividing the city according to the demography of the different suburbs. Each proposal raises difficulties. It appears that international law may help buttress solutions but, unfortunately, international law holds no magic answer or golden key.

This book explores three contemporary women’s movements in and around Jerusalem’s Sacred Esplanade: Women for the Temple, a messianic Jewish Orthodox women’s movement campaigning for access to Temple Mount/al-Haram al-Sharif; Murabitat, pious Muslim women activists mobilizing for the defense of al-Aqsa Mosque from Jewish claims; and Women of the Wall (WOW), a Jewish feminist organization working against restrictive gender regulations at the Western Wall. Using these cases, the book demonstrates how attention to gender and to women’s engagement in conflict over central sacred places is essential for understanding the intra-communal processes that make contested sacred sites appear increasingly “indivisible” for parties in the inter-communal context. More broadly, the book argues that a gender analysis of contested sacred places enriches and sharpens both our description of the “choreographies” of such sites and our analytical understanding of the contemporary dynamics of conflict in these sites; in particular the processes that give rise to the problem of “indivisibility.”

Since 2000 the organization Women for the Temple has worked to paint the struggle with the Palestinians over Temple Mount in softer and less threatening colors. Instead of the fanatics of the Jewish Underground, who wanted to blow up the Dome of the Rock, these women say they want to ascend to the Mount ostensibly in the name of religious freedom, openness, and closeness to the divine. They say that they do not wish to provoke Muslims or the Israeli police but simply to mark their wedding day, their daughter’s bat mitzvah, or for personal prayer. They present their ascent as a negotiation between the unique experience of the holy and the mundane routine of life and weekly visits. The women speak of closeness, intimacy, and desire toward the holy that women are uniquely positioned to feel. In this way, they strive to domesticate the space as well as the debate around it, packaging it as less intimidating and explosive to the general Israeli public. In the course of this process, they also reconfigure the space from one that is divided and separate in the Israeli imagination to one that is united and ultimately indivisible.