Description
The question of Jerusalem, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict more generally, are subjects of extreme sensitivity in France, because of the compunction caused by Vichy France’s collaboration in the mass killing of Jews during World War II, because of the trauma left by the Algeria war of independence against the French occupation, and because France is home to the world’s third largest Jewish community after Israel and the United States. For these reasons and others, never in the country’s history has a foreign conflict provoked such passions, such tensions.
At the heart of it, Jerusalem stands as one of the most complex issues to resolve; it has been the object of desire of a multitude of outside players who aspired to assert their power by possessing the city that is home to some of the world’s holiest sites. This has left a multitude of material and immaterial traces still perceptible in the city today.
This study seeks to synthesize France’s cultural and political involvement in Jerusalem. On the basis of existing scholarship, media reports, political analyses and personal interviews with specialists and informed people on the ground, it aims on the one hand to review the position of the successive French governments on the issue of the status of Jerusalem in the wider framework of the question of Palestine, and on the other hand to examine France’s cultural heritage in the city as well as the descriptions and feelings it has inspired in French travelers, pilgrims, and artists throughout the centuries. It is hoped that this work will serve as a broad introduction to the subject, and will contribute to shed light on this specific aspect of the city’s past and present.
