Paper short abstract:

Rachel's Tomb and its quarter in Bethlehem constitute a point of reference for imagining what might lie beyond the present occupation and the landscapes of disintegration: what 'separation' looks like on the ground, and the broader polarising forces and processes within and beyond the Middle East.

Paper long abstract:

The paper starts by describing Rachel's Tomb in Bethlehem. Formerly this was a small domed structure perched on a piece of open land on the ancient route between Jerusalem and Hebron and between the predominantly Christian towns of Bethlehem and Beit Jala. It was part mosque, with an adjacent Islamic cemetery, part Jewish holy place: a shrine to a kind of religious cosmopolitanism characteristic of this part of the Eastern Mediterranean. Nowadays, surrounded by high concrete walls and extensive Israeli military defences, it has become an exclusively Jewish site - a yeshiva, or centre for religious study - for predominantly orthodox Jewish visitors accompanied by a few tourists from Jerusalem brought to the tomb in armed buses.

The area surrounding Rachel's Tomb was, up to recently, a bustling neighbourhood of houses, shops, and restaurants. Now it consists of an almost deserted set of streets, broken up by walls, barriers, and surveillance points, being part of a vast superstructure of concrete walls, electric fences, military roads, and checkpoints, which snakes its way down from the north to the south of Palestine, encircling villages and towns (Bethlehem included) on its way. The tomb and its quarter demonstrate what 'separation' actually looks like on the ground and can be read as a symbol not only of the present relationship between Israelis and Palestinians but of more general polarising forces and processes within and beyond the Middle-East itself.

The plight of Rachel's Tomb and its quarter thus speaks eloquently of 'separation', military occupation, and conflict, and her tomb reminds us of Rachel's own experience of exile and murder. However, the stories of both Rachel and her tomb contain points of reference that encourage us to imagine what might lie beyond the present occupation and the landscapes of disintegration in which this is carried out - and a substantial part of the paper considers what these points of reference are.

Tom Selwyn, London Metropolitan University, EC TEMPUS and MED-VOICES programmes.