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6 The Fetish of Jerusalem: A Hegemonic Analysis Ian S. Luslick If Israel is unique, or unique in ways that other countries are not, then surely this kind of uniqueness should be evident in that most unusual of all cities-Jerusalem. If Israel is not unique, or is at least not unique in a way that any other country is not also unique, then it should be possible to apply general propositions about political processes even to that part of Israel, or the Land of Israel, with the strongest claim to singularity-Jerusalem. My purpose is therefore threefold: to make an argument about the dynamic character of the "problem of Jerusalem;" to suggest that in that dynamism lies a great opportunity for moving toward compromise for the future of the city and its environs; and to demonstrate the "normality" of Israel as an object of social scientific inquiry by treating the problem of Jerusalem as typical in its exemplification of the politics of hegemonic construction and deconstruction. I begin with the psychoanalytic notion of "fetish." A sexual fetish is a displacement of physical desire from its "natural" target that serves ulterior psychological motives. Similarly, a political fetish is a displacement of political desire from a "natural" target to a larger or smaller object-a shift of attention and attachment that serves changing political interests. In sex, the unnaturalness of a fetish may be what excites, and gives it significance. In politics the unnaturalness of a fetish is evidence of an uncompleted project. A political fetish is successful when it is transformed, first into a majority opinion, then into a consensual doctrine, and then, finally, into a hegemonic belief-into a sense of the world that is not even felt as a belief, but as a given, as a natural and presumptively unchangeable expression of immutable circumstances.* *"A fetish," writes Achille Mbembe, "is, among other things, an object which aspires to be made sacred." "Provisional Notes on the Postcolony," Africa, 62(1) 1992, p. 10. 143 144 Ian S. Lustick Perhaps no city in the world has attracted as much genuine "political desire" for as long as has Jerusalem. In Israel's relationship to the city since the state's establishment in 1948 one sees the expression of a deeply felt tie between Jews and the capital of their biblical kingdom. But in the changing Israeli definition of what constitutes "Jerusalem," one sees two classic examples of political fetishism. The first was Ben-Gurion's 1949 public sacralization of the new city of "Jerusalem" (devoid of the Old City and the Temple Mount, "Wailing Wall," and Jewish Quarter within its walls) as Israel's long-yearned-for and "eternal capital." The second was the post1967 expansion and re-definition of "Jerusalem" to include not only the Old City, and the urban neighborhoods included within the Jordanian municipality , but a seventy square kilometer swath of the West Bank containing numerous Arab villages and open areas. Consideration of the question of Jerusalem, the demonstrable malleability of Israeli definitions of its contours , and the failure of Israeli politicians to transform a fetish of an expanded ("unified") Jerusalem into a hegemonic belief, suggest that the obstacles to political redivision of the city as part of an Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement are not as large as is commonly believed. A Theory of Boundaries and Hegemonic Beliefs In December 1991 then Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir participated in a rally of the "Shorashim Society" in Tel-Aviv, a rally held in honor of Yisrael (Scheib) Eldad-the ultranationalist ideologue and publicist who was Shamir's comrade in arms before 1948 in the leadership of Lehi. In one remarkable passage of that speech Shamir said the following: This is it; this is the goal: territorial integrity. It should not be bitten into or fragmented. This is an a priori principle; it is beyond argument. You should not ask why; this is the be-all and end-all. Why this land is ours requires no explanation. From as far back as the pre-state days, I have not been able to abide such words. Is there any other nation in the world that argues about its motherland, its size and its dimensions, about territories, territorial compromises, or anything similar? What may be forgiven when it comes from people in the diaspora cannot be forgiven in this land, from the people ruling it.1 In these few emphatic sentences, Shamir accomplishes three important things. First, he affirms the core objective of...

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