A city divided.

CITY OF COLLISION: JERUSALEM AND THE PRINCIPLES OF CONFLICT URBANISM

Edited by Philipp Misselwitz and Tim Rieniets. Basel: Birkhauser. 2006. [euro]39.90

There are only two definite facts about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The first is that the problem arose in the first place because European racism and European nationalism created a refugee settlement armed with European ideas about politics and society. The second is that local Arab leadership was historically incompetent, short-sighted, and personally corrupt; and its every attempt at armed resistance to Jewish and then Israeli occupation unfailingly resulted in a worse situation for its own people than the one before. Since neither of these historical facts is reversible, there is no point in being judgmental about the protagonists; the only way anything will ever improve will be through the very long process that is required for the two sides eventually to lose their horror of each other.

City of Collision is a collection of essays, maps and photographs contributed by Israelis, Palestinians and Europeans, mainly academics, to a recent programme of talks and workshops. On the positive side, these events and the publication of this book provide exactly the type of thoughtful sharing of experiences and research that may one day influence politicians; the collaboration here between the warring peoples makes a mockery of the recent demand by anti-Israeli hysterics for an academic boycott of Israel. On the other hand, the choice of participants has ensured that there is no representation of the larger political and regional opposition to peaceful coexistence; since there is for example no one to make the case for Israeli control of Arab East Jerusalem, you might well wonder what exactly the obstructions to solving the conflict actually are.

That said, there are some valuable contributions here about what it is like to live in a city divided by perpetual conflict; generally, the more concrete the subject matter, the better the results. An excellent piece by Michael Romann accurately describes the split nature of daily life in the city; and Yaakov Garb's chapter, 'The softer side of collision', is the only part of the whole book that has any quality as a piece of literature. There are, inevitably, contributions by ambitious young academics writing in the overblown language that only those people are capable of: as local cynics like to point out, anyone specialising in the Israeli occupation is assured of a well-funded international career. By contrast Salim Tamari (optimistic) and Meron Benvenisti (pessimistic) both make the point that the city would be the better if people stopped trying to mess about with it or to 'solve' it. I think they may be right.