Kameel Majdali's Road Ahead

We continue - and conclude - a 7 part series about Jerusalem and the Christian pilgrim. Part 01: We learned that Christians have been visiting the holy city of Jerusalem since the beginning of the church. Christians of all stripes constitute 60% or more of incoming visitors to Israel. Part 02: The effect of worldwide tourism on overall pilgrim numbers. Part 03: After the 1967 Six Day War, number of visitors to Jerusalem increased due to the ‘tradition of pilgrimage’ and the innovation of modern tourism. Part 04: When is a Christian visitor a ‘tourist’ and when is he/she a ‘pilgrim.’ Part 05: A continuation of identifying the Christian visitor as ‘tourist’ or ‘pilgrim.’ Part 06: T he nature of today’s Christian visits to Jerusalem. Now, in this 7th and final part, we will finalise the identity and nature of Christian visits. First, when you contrast modern tourism with traditional pilgrimage, a Christian visitor, coming on a tourist visa, can stil...

We are all familiar with the 1967 Six Day War in Jerusalem and what transpired. Jerusalem was partitioned between Israel and Jordan after the 1948 War. Then came the Six Day War and Israel captured the Jordanian sector. This included the historic and sacred walled Old City and the Mount of Olives. Many of the Biblical sites are located in these places. At the end of June 1967 Israeli law was applied to eastern Jerusalem, meaning it was annexed to the Jewish state. Then in 1980, the Basic Law of Jerusalem as the eternal and indivisible capital of Israel was passed by the parliament, the Knesset. All of this is well known. Yet, what is overlooked is that there was a gradual change in a age-old phenomena called Christian pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Like a flowing river, foreign Christians have been coming to the holy city almost from the very beginning of the church age. After 1967, the demographics and numbers of pilgrims would change, slowly but surely. The first bona fi...

Last month, we looked at two major anniversaries in 2017: the 500th Anniversary of the Protestant Reformation and 120th Anniversary of Theodor Herzl’s first Zionist congress. This month, we focus on four more anniversaries for this year. 100 Years Ago - Battle of Beersheba 31 October 1917 Exactly 400 years after the Reformation, the Australian Light-horsemen, along with the British, captured the city of Beersheba in the south of Turkish-occupied Palestine. This campaign not only highlighted the great bravery of the Allied troops, but it was the beginning of the end of 400 years of Turkish rule. The British would capture the rest of the country, including Jerusalem in December 1917, were granted a mandate in Palestine by the League of Nations, and all this led to the creation of Israel in 1948. 100 Years Ago - The Balfour Declaration 2 November 1917 A seemingly harmless letter written by the British Foreign Secretary Lord Arthur Balfour to Lord Rothschild became th...