The Promised Land

(See Cover)

One of Asia's suffering cities, by virtue of its peculiar sanctity, destiny and tragedy, was a focus of world drama last week. Jerusalem, the thrice holy, a Christian, Jewish and Moslem shrine, dominated the bitter struggle over Palestine. The struggle involved the British Empire, world Judaism, Pan-Islam, Russia and inevitably, as a result of its new world eminence, the U.S.

The Holy City's sun-baked walls and domes had dominated the ages. Doomed to repeated conquest, it had heard the clatter of Egyptian cavalry, the rattle of Persian scythe-wheeled chariots, had known Assyrian and Babylonian, the Macedonian phalanx and the Roman legion, Seleucid and Seljuk, Crusader, Saracen and Ottoman Turk. One conqueror supplanted the other, or declined to impotent passivity. But Jerusalem still remained, permanent in the perspective of history, as the city sometimes appears in a sudden lifting of the haze, crowning Zion.

Jerusalem's Dome of the Rock, a mosaic-walled mosque in a corner of the Old City, is Islam's third holiest shrine. From the Rock, Mohamed, led by the Angel Gabriel, ascended on el-Buraq, his eagle-winged mare with the human face, to visit the seven heavens of Islam. (Mohamed's footprint, judged by Mark Twain to be about size 18, is still pointed out to true believers; in the 12th Century it was shown as the footprint of Christ.) Here the muezzin's wail is still heard from the upper air, calling the faithful to prayer (La Illaha Illa-Allah—There is no God but one God).

On the black Rock, according to one legend, Abraham prepared to sacrifice Isaac. Over this Rock stood Solomon's Temple. The Wailing Wall, part of the mosque area, is all of the Jewish Temple that remains. On this rock the Emperor Hadrian built a temple to Jupiter; the Crusaders built a church.

Nearby stands the Holy Sepulcher, erected as most Christians believe on the site of Golgotha (the Place of the Skull). There Christ suffered on the Cross and uttered, in extremis, the words of the Psalmist which echo over the centuries the cry of many a Palestinian Jew today: "Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?—My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"

White & Black Threads. Last week, for Jerusalem's Moslems, it was Ramadan, the Mohammedan month of fasting: for which the Koran commands the Faithful: "Eat and drink until ye can discern a white thread from a black by the daylight, and then fast strictly till night."

During the daylight hours of fast, less pious Moslems still sold dripping sheep carcasses, eggs, fruit and vegetables in the stewing narrow streets of the Old City. Arab merchants, sitting cross-legged on bolts of cloth, still tried to entice customers in the bazaars of King David's Street. But the vendors were wary and sharp-eyed. Any sudden movement of police or soldiers was likely to bring the clang of rung-down iron shutters, a scurrying for cover. For in Jerusalem (or Haifa or Tel-Aviv or Jaffa) sudden action might mean an exchange of shots. "It is our worst year," said one Arab. "There is no spirit for Ramadan."