Seeing and Unseeing the Dome of the Rock: Conflict, Memory and Belonging in Jerusalem

Abstract

The summer and autumn of 2014 were Jerusalem’s most conflict- and violence-ridden period in recent years.¹ After the 1 July funeral of Naftali Fraenkel, Gilad Shaer and Eyal Yifrach, three teenage yeshiva students who were kidnapped and killed by Palestinian militants in the West Bank, groups of Jewish Jerusalemites took to the streets looking for revenge, shouting ‘Death to Arabs’ and attacking those they could find. Later that night, extremist Israelis abducted 16-year-old Mohammad Abu-Khdeir from outside his home in Shu’afat, a neighbourhood in East Jerusalem. The next day, it became known that he had been burned alive. As a reaction to the murder and the rise in overt racism against Arabs, violent protests erupted all over Jerusalem’s Palestinian areas. The clashes with the police did not subside until October and violence claimed the life of 16-year-old Muhammad Sunuqrut from Wadi Joz,² while hundreds of East Jerusalemites, including minors, were arrested. But even when the large-scale protests decreased, attacks and deaths on both sides continued, as fear, anger, hatred and loss of hope became pervasive among all inhabitants of the city.