The Institute of Jerusalem Studies

The Institute of Jerusalem Studies (IJS), the Jerusalem branch of the Institute for Palestine Studies (IPS), was established in 1995, functioned in Ramallah and then moved to Jerusalem 2000. IJS draws upon a local board of trustees, scholars, and administrators. The main objective of the Institute of Jerusalem Studies is to commission and publish research on final status issues, with a particular focus on Jerusalem and refugees. In addition, IJS is active in setting up networks with both local and international research communities around common areas of interest and in computerizing data on Palestine.

The work of the Institute of Jerusalem Studies encompasses several main areas: 1) the publication of our quarterly journal entitled the Jerusalem Quarterly File; 2) the printing and distribution of the Palestine edition of Majjalt al-Dirasat al-Falastineyeh; 3) hosting of scholarly conferences on Jerusalem and refugee issues; 4) the support and coordination of scholarly research projects for IPS; 5) the dissemination of research on Palestine to the local community through publishing and distributing the publications of IPS inside Palestine; and 6) the creation of on-line research and information resources about Palestine in cooperation with Palestinian and international research institutions.

I. The Jerusalem Quarterly File.

In 1998 IJS began publishing the Jerusalem Quarterly File, an English-language journal aimed at identifying and tracing trends in the changing status of the city. Issues that the journal is committed to covering include: zoning and land appropriation, the building of new settlements and the expansion of old ones, regulations affecting the status of Arab residency in Jerusalem, demographic trends, formal and informal Palestinian negotiating strategies on the final status of Jerusalem as well as the impact of these urban policies on local, everyday culture.

The journal seeks to occupy a middle ground between investigative journalism and academic research as a way to advance understanding of Jerusalem issues among concerned professionals and the general public, locally and abroad. We provide a forum for crisp, non-specialist yet scholarly pieces about all htmlects of Jerusalem’s past and present development, with an emphasis on neglected Arab experiences and perspectives.

This middle ground encompasses several kinds of writing. First, we have articles grounded in empirical research, interviews, and statistical analysis. Secondly, we have personal “essays” in the sense of reflective, individual encounters with and recollections of the city. Thirdly, in the “Jerusalem Journal” that opens each issue, we provide commentary on current events that seeks to understand them in their larger social and historical context. Finally, we present articles and reviews that examine the role of art, culture, and the media in the struggles to claim the city. This means analyzing ideological projections of the city and the way these projections are lived out, shaped, and contested through the lived experience of the city’s diverse inhabitants.

The regular sections of the journal include the following: a “Fact File,” which compiles useful information on a special htmlect of the city of interest to scholars; a “Reviews” section that evaluates recent books, videos, and movies concerned with Jerusalem; a “Libraries and Archives” section that, for the benefit of scholars, describes and assesses a particular research resource in the Jerusalem area; and finally, a section entitled “Classical Texts Revisited” that re-introduces the reader to a classic scholarly or literary text about Jerusalem.

II. Workshops and Conferences

In December 2000, IJS hosted a symposium on research trends in the history of Jerusalem. Twelve different scholars presented papers on various themes relating to the history of Jerusalem. This symposium, it was decided, will become an annual tradition to be held in Jerusalem at the end of each year. In future years the symposium will be announced as the “Burhan al-Dajani Symposium on Jerusalem” in memory of the late Burhan al-Dajani.

The Institute of Jerusalem Studies has organized workshops and lectures to present the current state of research on the city of Jerusalem. In July 1997 IJS brought together local and international scholars for a “Roundtable Workshop on the History of Jerusalem before 1948.” The previous year the Institute initiated a “History of Islamic Jerusalem” Lecture Series. IJS plans to publish these lectures in a two volume History of Jerusalem.

IJS has published a number of studies in both English and Arabic. They include: