Israel-Palestine: The Wailing Wall
The Wailing Wall, Western Wall or Kotel, as it is known in Hebrew, and the Temple Mount that it partially bounds are probably the most contentious places in the Middle East. The three monotheistic religions of the Book are tied together in this place through Abraham, their common ancestor, who was asked to “take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering upon one of the mountains of which I shall tell you” Genesis22. And so began the history of Mount Moriah and the long struggles that men have waged to claim it as their own, to stand closer than others to their God.
Today the Kotel is the most holy place that Jews can visit and they believe that God will be close by listening to their prayers, but even for non religious Israelis it is a place of national importance; the only remains of the Temple destroyed first by the Babylonians and then the Romans, causing the Diaspora. It is a symbol of continuity that bonds them to their ancient homeland without recourse to more painful justifications of the state.
There is a temptation to think of the juxtaposition of the Kotel and Temple Mount alongside the Dome of the Rock and Al Aqsa Mosques in terms of pure symbolism, to reduce it to irony that they share the same origins just as they share the same space. The reality is that this is a place that has been fought over street by street and fuels such emotion, spiritual and national, that when it is treated without the proper respect it deserves war can follow. This was the case when Sharon paid an ill judged visit to the Temple Mount in September 2000 escorted by several hundred riot police, an act that directly triggered, or some say deliberately provoked, the Second Intifada, bloodier by far than the first and appropriately known as the Al Aqsa Intifada.
As a place of spirituality for religious Jews, and a symbol of nationalism for non religious Israelis, the wall can evoke tremendous feeling; standing among tens of thousands of Jews praying, raised to a state of meditative trance, you realise that the Wailing Wall is no misnomer. For a great many Jews it is the link to their past and the answer to their future.