Zionists and Palestinian nationalists have both fought for Jerusalem as a symbol and sovereign site of their respective nations. Fashioning those nations has led them not just to bloody battles with each other, but into ferocious culture wars with their fellow Jews and Arabs who have understood their identities, and hence Jerusalem, in radically different ways. The struggles within the Israeli and Palestinian communities have often been just as intractable and uncompromising as those between them. Nation building has not been easy for either side.

The Israelis and the Palestinians confronted obstacles inside and out as they sought to forge their nations. Internally there were divisive conflicts between those who would follow the law of a sovereign people and those who would cleave to the law of God. Neither people could keep politicians and priests apart, nor could they establish a relationship between nationalism and religion that their citizens could abide.

From the outside, other countries refused to treat Israel or Palestine as they would nations like Brunei, Zimbabwe, or Albania. Both nations were picked out for exquisite scrutiny, either as a particular evil to be contained or as a supreme good for which one felt compelled to fight. In the 1948 war that gave it birth, Israel was unable to capture the Old City of Jerusalem enclosing the sites sacred to the world's three monotheisms. Particularly since 1967, when Israel recaptured this stone warren from the Jordanians, the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians has been subjected to global gaze and judgment. Neither has ever been allowed to understand itself as just another people.