The imbroglio of Jerusalem is arguably at the center of the Arab-Israeli conflict and presents an impasse to establishing peace. Its capacity to evoke powerful emotions is the key to understanding the connection between politics and sacred.1 The intent of this work is to closely examine the connection between politics and holy space by analyzing how Hamas' use of Jerusalem's sanctity and space for its symbolic value during the first Intifaḍa (1987--1993) contributed to simultaneously fueling the Intifaḍa and creating the potential to thwart peace in a number of ways: by portraying the Palestinian-Israeli conflict as a continuation of the conflict between the Muslim and Jewish communities in seventh century Arabia; justifying the Muslim Palestinian claim that Israel is an illegitimate entity on Islamic land; rejecting any form of negotiation or peace process as un-Islamic; mobilizing the masses; justifying armed struggle for Jerusalem in the form of jihad; gaining political influence; and presenting an alternative to the national-secular agenda of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). / 1Roger Friedland and Richard D. Hecht, "The Politics of Sacred Spaces: Jerusalem's Temple Mount/al-haram al-sharif" in Sacred Places and Profane Spaces: Essays in the Geographics of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, ed. Jamie Scott and Paul Simpson-Housley (New York: Greenwood Press, 1991): 23.

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