44
PARTISAN REVIEW
Cyprus, Sri Lanka, Northern Ireland, Quebec, Croatia, Bosnia, or wher–
ever else such an experiment took place. All we know for certain is that
the Palestinian Arabs were not willing
to
accept the binational solution
either: Palestine was Arab and had to remain Arab, just as Jerusalem was
Arab and had to remain Arab. On the basis of these assumptions Mr.
Faraj was right, as was Mr. Said, and the tragedy had to take its course.
Finding a solution for the future of Jerusalem is said to be the most
difficult part of the peace process, though it has never been quite clear
to me why it should be impossible. I have great sympathy with those
who demand that the city should never be divided again as it was from
1948
to
1967,
even though in reality it has been a divided city for years,
despite the absence of walls and barbed wire. As for the ultra-Orthodox
among the Jews, many do not recognize the State of Israel, and state
borders mean nothing to them as long as they can pray at the Wailing
Wall. True, there are the nationalist, quasi-religious fanatics willing to
engage in any provocation to regain the Temple Mount and to dominate
the whole city. But they are not many, and on the other side the great
majority of believing Muslims and Christians would be perfectly satis–
fied if access to their holy sites were guaranteed.
There is the mythical Zion, and the reality of Jerusalem; and the real–
ity, except for a decade or two, has often been sordid. When I first came
to Jerusalem I did not like the city, even though my aesthetic sense was
not overdeveloped at the time. By and large it was a dirty, noisy, and
dilapidated place, essentially the Turkish provincial town it had been for
centuries. The old city was one big bazaar, with hucksters trying to sell
their quasi-religious amulets and holy water from the Jordan. Jaffa
Street, the main street, was a mixture of Eastern Pola nd and deepest
Anatolia. Me'a She'arim, where the ultra-Orthodox lived, reminded one
of a medieval ghetto; and the Oriental Jewish markets and residential
quarters were at best of a fascinating ugliness.
In retrospect, I don't think these were just the prejudices of an arro–
gant young man from Europe, alienated from the sources of his religion
and Jewish traditions. The Zionist leaders, beginning with Herzl,
reacted in a similar way. They were appalled by what they saw, and
while paying lip service to the place of Jerusalem in Jewish tradition and
keeping the political institutions there, they all chose to live in Tel Aviv.
I recently came across letters in a Russian archive written by an
ancestor of mine, Aleksandr Borisovich Lakier, who visited Jerusalem in
1859.
Although Lakier was Russian Orthodox, his father had been a
German Jew; but Lakier carefully hid that fact and established himself
in Russian society, becoming the most prominent literary traveler of his
