The Holy Basin

Wendy Pullan and Max Gwiazda

This strand of research focuses on the idea of the ‘Holy Basin’ from a critical urban perspective. This area (also known as the ‘historic’ or ‘visual’ basin) is a geographic zone around the Old City of Jerusalem that contains the majority of sites holy to Islam, Judaism and Christianity in the city. Some attribute special aesthetic and heritage value to the landscape surrounding the Old City, loosely defined by the surrounding hills. Tied to this view is the notion that the historic and religious core of the city should be treated in separation from the ‘new city’ around it. Since the failed Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations at Camp David in 2000, the Holy Basin has become increasingly prominent in the discourse surrounding the political future of the city (particularly in relation to alternative governance, legal and security frameworks). In recent years the Holy Basin has come to fore as a primary site of contestation in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (particularly in the Palestinian neighbourhoods of Silwan and Sheikh Jarrah). Despite this prominence there is a general lack of clarity about how the Holy Basin idea developed, what the status of its boundaries are (today and historically) and what its urban function is. Most significantly the implications for the everyday life of Jerusalem with respect to both its relevance for any political agreement and the overall well-being of the city is not well-understood. The research is therefore organised into two related studies. The first is a historical study which explores the obscure origins of the Holy Basin idea and why it has become so prominent today. The second study analyses the urban and social implications of separating the Holy Basin area from the rest of the city, which has been pursued with alarming pace over the past years. The historical study examines the development of the Holy Basin idea in colonial representations of the city in the nineteenth century, through British town planning during the Mandate period (1917-48), to Israeli planning in the years following the 1967 annexation of Jerusalem and adjoining West Bank territory. The second study is more urban in focus and addresses the question of why radical settlers have recently been able to appropriate large parts of the Holy Basin in the context of the ‘Judaisation’ policies of the Israeli state in East Jerusalem.

Further web links of potential interest to readers: www.ir-amim.org.il/eng/?CategoryID=269