armstrong 16-18! doneeeeeeeee =)

chapter 16 starts out wth "the nineteenth century started out badly for jerusalem" (armstrong, 347). my automatic thought was well duhhhhhhhhhhh. poor freakin Jerusalem, nothing ever goes their way. at this point the muslims were the majority with 4000 inhabitants, christians has 2750 and 2000 jews. this made me wonder, though, how do they have accurate numbers like that? were records that good back then? it also seems like whatever records they had would probably be exclusive- muslim christian and jewish records kept separately and probably would misrepresent the other groups.

around 1834 christians, jews and muslims started rebuilding, separately, of course. this quote stuck out to me "almost every new development in Jerusalem seemed doomed to increase the sectarianism and rivalry that now seemed endemic to the city" (armstrong 351). what a sad concept. rebuilding a city, repairing the damage that had been done was harming the city further? was ripping it farther apart?

reading about Israel and all the decisions that Great Britian was making about their future slightly annoyed me. i guess because the US has never been an imperial power, its hard for me to understand why the fluff Britain should have ANY say in the formation of Israel, whether its before or after WWII.

the last chapter was much more familiar information to me (FINALLY), both from my own reading and through my middle eastern studies classes. something i had never considered though, was the overlapping israeli/palestinian laws. they were kind of trying to punish eachother by enforcing laws that conflicted beliefs- like the one that was refusing to allow jewish women certain rights, like the right of marriage and divorce. this seemed to be a sort of civil disobediance