[Transsystemic Law]
The Contested City: Jerusalem 1917-2017

(This event is organised by MEI’s Transsystemic Research Cluster, as part of its annual conference series.)

About the Workshop

This workshop is devoted to the historical, legal, and political aspects of the Jerusalem Question from the Ottoman period to the present. The years 1917-2017 have been chosen as the timeframe as these span two controversial moments in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict: The year of the famous Balfour Declaration promising the Jewish people a national home in Palestine, and President Donald Trump’s decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Jerusalem is not only a symbol of the long-running Israel-Palestine conflict; it is also a living city, where peoples of all faiths have lived, prayed, and worked. In this workshop, historians, political scientists, and legal scholars from all sides of the dispute will gather to discuss the different stages of Jerusalem’s history, with panels devoted to Ottoman Jerusalem, Jerusalem in 1948, modern Jerusalem, the Holy Places, and the city’s cultural heritage.

The key points of the Workshop are:

Ottoman Jerusalem
Jerusalem in 1948
Modern Jerusalem
The Holy Places and Cultural Heritage

For a draft conference programme, please click here .

The Conference Programme as follows:

8.30 am	Registration
9.00 am	Introductory Remarks

9.20 am	Keynote Lecture
	*Jerusalem: A Many-Bordered City* Michael Dumper, Professor in Middle East Politics, University of Exeter, UK
10.00am	Break
10.30am	Panel Discussion One: Ottoman Jerusalem
	*Holy Land or Palestine? The Establishment of the Italian Consulate in Jerusalem* Roberto Mazza, Lecturer, Department of History, University of Limerick, Ireland
	*The De-Municipalization of Urban Governance and of the Post-Ottoman Political Sphere in Jerusalem* Falistin Naïlii, Institut français du Proche-Orient (Ifpo), Amman, Jordan
12.00pm	Panel Discussion Two: Jerusalem in 1948
	*“Corpus separandum”: The United Nations Plan for the Internationalization of Jerusalem* Elad Ben Dror, Head of the Department of Middle Eastern Studies, Bar-Ilan University, Israel
	*Dividing Jerusalem: The Fate of the Jerusalemites in 1948* Issam Nassar, Professor, Department of History, Illinois State University, USA
2.30 pm	Panel Discussion Three: Modern Jerusalem
	*Social Changes in Jerusalem 1949 – 1967* Menachem Klein, Department of Political Science, Bar-Ilan University, Israel
	Which Jerusalem? Israel’s Little-Known Master Plans and Their Impact on Palestinian Lives in Jerusalem. Nur Arafeh, Rhodes Scholar, Oxford University, UK
4.00 pm	Break
4.30pm	Panel Discussion Four: The Holy Places and Cultural Heritage
	Russian Jerusalem: Construction, Deconstruction, Reconstruction Elena Astafieva, Senior Researcher at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CERCEC, CNRS-EHESS -PSL, Paris)
	The Vatican and Jerusalem: Another Turning Point? Silvio Ferrari, Professor of Law and Religion, University of Milan
	Jordan’s Custodianship of the Muslim Holy Shrines in Jerusalem Victor Kattan, Middle East Institute, National University of Singapore
	France and Jerusalem: A Special Relationship Dominique Trimbur, Associate Researcher, Centre de Recherche Français à Jérusalem, Paris
6.30pm	End of Conference