Historical readings for second week of class

These readings were very much insightful. I feel like I had a better than average knowledge of Jerusalem's history and the Arab-Israeli conflicts before; however, these few articles, specifically Pressman's really brought everything together.

I realize that these four articles/papers are written by people who are certainly involved personally in the conflicts, however the degree of biased that one might assume to detect throughout each piece, in my opinion, is not extraordinarily present. I expected much more one sided information. In my opinion Pressman's piece wraps up or summarizes Israel from 1861 to 2005. I totally enjoyed reading his piece, I felt as if all of the important names in contemporary Arab World history were defined and discussed. People like Ben Gurion, Gamal 3bd Al Nasser, 7afiz Al 'Assed, Bill Clinton, Yasser Arafat and the like, obviously played key roles in the so called peace process or road to such which our leaders have tried to establish. It was very beneficial to read about all of these people, sort of combined, in one article. From my perspective, the author takes a microscope and points it towards Israel and the Arab World and discusses what happened from the onset of modern conflict in May of 1948, up until now.

The way that Reba V Rubin articulates Jerusalem from the era of the Jebusites and Babylonians is also very beneficial. I remember some of these names from studying the Old Testament, when I was younger, however reading about the Assyrians and Philistines and Caananites helps to bring who those people are into understanding. I certainly remember studying those peoples, but I did not know that the Jebusites were a group outside of Jersulames walls, in the suburbs who are relatives of modern Palestinians.

These articles were very valuable.