And They Call It Holy Land

Abraham has been an important figure for theologians, philosophers, chroniclers and religious poets and lyricists among Jews, Christians and Muslims. All three monotheistic religions honor him and claim him as a patriarch or in Islam's case as a prophet of the one God. All tell the story of his willingness to sacrifice his son for God. Jews and Arabs see him as an ancestor, Jews claiming descent through his implausibly aged first wife Sarah and Arabs through his second wife (held in some Jewish and Muslim traditions to have been a Pharaonic princess), Hagar. They hold him to be buried in the Cave of the Patriarchs in al-Khalil in the Palestinian West Bank, which the Israelis call "Hebron," where Muslims erected the Mosque of the Abraham, which is split, with part of it used by Jews and the other part by Muslims.

  Juan Cole

Okay, stop the presses. Hold it right there. If Israelis can share the same mosque – one built by the Muslims, in fact – then they can damn well share the same land.

But last week the Israeli government designated the Cave of the Patriarchs an Israeli heritage site.

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Palestinians are afraid that Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's action is a prelude to an Israeli claim on the annexation of al-Khalil to Israel.

I think they can safely bet on it.

The move provoked protests in al-Khalil, with youths throwing stones at Israeli soldiers and threatening a third popular uprising or Intifada. As a result of this atmosphere of tension, the Israeli military locked down the Palestinian West Bank on Sunday as Israeli colonists there celebrated the festival of Purim.

That has got to stick in their craw…a determined enemy of their way of life, inside their territory, holding them hostage to the ways of the colonizers. It's as though, during the cold war, the pocket of Russian immigrants in San Francisco should have brought with them KGB officers to police The City. I don't think that would have gone over well.

When Muslims first conquered Palestine in the seventh century, sources say that Jews showed them the Cave of the Patriarchs, and that Jews and Muslims both worshiped there and made pilgrimage to it.

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The Jews of the Roman province of Palestine were not for the most part expelled in the second century CE, as popular history sometimes has it, but went on farming there and gradually converted to Christianity. The majority then later gradually converted to Islam and became what we now call the Palestinians. Most Palestinian and Jewish men share the same distinctive haplotypes or genetic patterns in their Y chromosomes, showing common descent. If promises were made to Abraham's putative descendants, then they share in the promise. The promise could not possibly be to adherents of Judaism, since that religion did not exist until many centuries later.

And just try to reason with a religious believer of any sect. And don't read this next paragraph if you're a believer. It will just piss you off.

It is worth noting that the figure of Abraham as described in the Bible is in any case not historical. The Bible has him come to Palestine from Ur in southern Iraq (in what is now Dhi Qar province) with camels. But the biblical chronology suggests that this happened in the 1900s BC, whereas camels were not domesticated until around 1000 BC. Abraham is said to have been the forebear of the twelve tribes of Israel, including that of Benjamin or Bin Yamin. But the Banu Yamin are mentioned in clay tablets in the area dated to 2000 BC, so they precede Abraham's alleged advent. The kings he is said to have met don't correspond to any known historical figures. He is said to have bought the Caves which allegedly became his tomb from a Hittite, but the Hittites did not then exist and they didn't come to Palestine until the 1400s BC. He is said to have been a monotheist, but there is no evidence in the archeology of anything but polytheists in Palestine for many centuries after he supposedly lived.

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Abraham is no more historical than Gilgamesh and Utnapishtim, other ancient Middle Eastern mythical figures. The jumbled stories about him were written down in the Babylonian exile, when scribes made an attempt to establish a historical timeline into which he could be asserted.

Cole thinks that one day (decades, he says) the Jews and the Muslims will once again share the "holy land" amicably. I am not hopeful. Unless, that is, that day is after a nuclear holocaust and there is only one person left from each faith. And even then, peace won't last more than a month.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.