Berlin & Jerusalem: Phony divided cities

http://www.philly.com/philly/opinion/20091105_Berlin___Jerusalem__Phony_divided_cities.html
Posted on Thu, Nov. 5, 2009

By JOHN R. COHN
THIS MONTH, Berlin will mark the 20th anniversary of the fall of the city's infamous wall.

Made of stark concrete and barbed wire, and dotted with watchtowers, it divided the heart of Berlin into eastern and western sectors. Hundreds died there trying to cross into freedom. Berlin became a city early in the 14th century, when two feudal villages merged. Unified for hundreds of years, its division into eastern Soviet and western Allied zones grew out of the devastation of World War II.

Berlin was divided for just over 44 years, until the collapse of East Germany (another arbitrary relic of the cold war) in November 1989.

Reunification was greeted with acclaim, and reference to East Berlin and East Germany was relegated to historical allusion.

Archaeological evidence suggests that Jerusalem has existed for as long as 5,000 years. King David is said to have made the city his capital 3,000 years ago. The New Testament describes Jesus in Jerusalem and the existence of the Jewish Temple 2,000 years ago.

Jesus was crucified in Jerusalem by Roman legionnaires early in the first century. Many of his fellow Jews were forcibly expelled, and, over the subsequent two millennia, Jerusalem was continuously ruled by a variety of outside conquerors, including the Ottoman sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, who built the Old City's famous walls.

Divided for just 19 years by Jordanian occupation, which ended in 1967, two decades before Berlin's reunification, the place known as "East Jerusalem" in Mideast peace parlance has no more enduring historical validity than "East Berlin."

I was in Jerusalem in 1960 and looked across the Mandelbaum Gate from Israel into Jerusalem's Jordanian sector. I was unable to cross even to the Jewish Quarter of the Old City because of machine gun-toting Jordanian soldiers and the barbed-wire barriers they'd constructed that ran through Jerusalem.

Today, even with map in hand, it's virtually impossible to envision that unsightly barricade in a city fully restored to its millennial unified state. But for Suleiman's 16th-century walls (which, until 1948 and since 1967, have contained the Old City's Jewish quarter, along with the homes of Christians and Muslims), the 1948 armistice line is practically imperceptible.

Continued use of the term "East Jerusalem" is misleading. It suggests the natural condition of that ancient city is to be cut in two, with an ugly barrier running through its heart.

At a time when people who massacre civilians in buses and mosques, or who fire missiles into towns and cities are called "militants" rather than terrorists to avoid the appearance of any prejudgment, it's difficult to understand anyone's use of the term "East Jerusalem," as if it were a real place.

FOR 5,000 years, there was only one Jerusalem, just as there is only one Berlin - ironically, two cities painfully linked by more than their common history of temporary forced partition.

"East Jerusalem" has no more historical legitimacy than "East Berlin," as both cities have had their short-lived and artificial dividing walls torn down. We should celebrate the reunification of both this month and let "East Jerusalem" join "East Berlin" in history's ash can.

John R. Cohn is a professo