If the issue of sovereignty over the Temple Mount/Noble Sanctuary is ever peacefully resolved in a final status agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians, such an outcome will most likely be the lucky product of a messy and chaotic process of “dialogue.” In such a process, the answers given by scholarship are not really answers. They can only be hints, suggestions, tools.
Even so, I shall still be happy to offer my own modest observations on the situation. We won’t necessarily be that much closer to a resolution, but meaningful participation in the discussion is a start. I suppose it’s the very least I can do.
P. Patty Li ’02, a religion and history concentrator in Eliot House, is arts chair of The Crimson. Her research in Jerusalem was funded by a grant from Harvard’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies.