The Fight For Jerusalem Begins With Who Controls Its Story
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem celebrated the recognition by promoting the city’s markets, museums, ancient history and university life to international students.
On the surface, it is an ordinary university advertisement built around a legitimate travel ranking. Its political significance, however, lies in how seamlessly it presents Jerusalem as one coherent Isr*eli destination without acknowledging the city’s unresolved status or distinguishing between West Jerusalem and occupied East Jerusalem.
The post does not openly argue that Isr*eli sovereignty over the whole city is internationally accepted. It simply presents the dispute as though it has already disappeared.
When Tourism Makes a Political Reality Look Settled
The Old City, markets, museums and university campus are folded into one uninterrupted urban identity. Palestinian history, occupation and competing claims to the city remain outside the frame.
That omission matters because Isr*el’s annexation of East Jerusalem is not internationally recognised.
After occupying East Jerusalem in 1967, Isr*el enacted its 1980 Basic Law declaring Jerusalem its complete and united capital. UN Security Council Resolution 478 censured that law, decided not to recognise it, and called upon states with diplomatic missions in Jerusalem to withdraw them. Today, fewer than five countries maintain embassies in Jerusalem, with the overwhelming majority of UN member states still keeping theirs in Tel Aviv in direct compliance with that resolution.
The university post does not defend Isr*el’s position against that legal record. It avoids the dispute entirely, replacing contested geography with tourism, culture and student recruitment.
This is how political normalisation can work without ever sounding political.
Mount Scopus Has a Complicated History
The Hebrew University’s Mount Scopus campus gives the issue a specific legal and historical dimension, although its history cannot honestly be reduced to a simple settlement narrative.
Mount Scopus was the university HYPERLINK “https://international.huji.ac.il/sites/default/files/internationalnew/files/mt_scopus_lands_-_english.pdf”‘ HYPERLINK “https://international.huji.ac.il/sites/default/files/internationalnew/files/mt_scopus_lands_-_english.pdf”s original campus. Its cornerstone was laid in 1918, and the university officially opened there in 1925, decades before Isr*el occupied East Jerusalem. Some original campus buildings also predate 1948.
Between 1948 and 1967, the campus remained an Isr*eli-controlled enclave surrounded by Jordanian-held territory under armistice arrangements. Defenders of the university consequently argue that its historic core is meaningfully different from settlements established after 1967.
Critics, however, argue that later facilities and expansions extend into occupied East Jerusalem and onto land whose acquisition remains contested. In 2017, ten Palestinian human rights organisations and a group of international law scholars formally objected to the European Society of International Law HYPERLINK “https://criticallegalthinking.com/2017/11/23/statement-against-holding-esil-at-the-hebrew-university/”‘ HYPERLINK “https://criticallegalthinking.com/2017/11/23/statement-against-holding-esil-at-the-hebrew-university/”s 2018 Research Forum being held at the university, citing its physical presence and expansion in occupied territory.
The distinction is essential: the original campus predates the occupation, while controversy centres partly on later expansion and the presentation of the modern campus as belonging unquestionably within sovereign Isr*eli Jerusalem.
The Quiet Power of Cultural Institutions
States do not build territorial narratives only through legislation, military control or diplomatic declarations.
Universities, museums, archaeological projects, tourism campaigns and international rankings can also shape how disputed places are understood. They turn sovereignty into something experienced through attractive streets, ancient monuments, university programmes and ordinary cultural life.
Repeated often enough, this framing may make contested control appear natural and permanent. International audiences are not asked to accept a political argument. They are invited to behave as though the argument has already been settled.
This does not prove that every tourism post or university advertisement is part of a coordinated campaign. The intentions behind this particular post cannot be established from the advertisement alone.
Its effect, however, can still be examined.
Who Gets to Define Jerusalem?
Jerusalem’s history belongs to no single period or community. Its identity contains Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Palestinian, Arab, Roman, Byzantine, Mamluk, Ottoman and numerous other historical layers.
The struggle is therefore not only over territory. It is also over which history becomes dominant, which people are presented as native to the city, and which communities become invisible.
When Jerusalem is marketed through a single national narrative, international law and Palestinian presence can quietly become background details rather than central parts of the city’s present reality.
A city can be claimed through maps and legislation. It can also be claimed through memory, language, education and repetition.
The fight for Jerusalem begins with who controls its story.
Sources Used
• TravelPulse, Jerusalem Cracks Top 10
• United Nations, Security Council Resolution 478
• Hebrew University of Jerusalem, History of the Mount Scopus Campus
