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Conrad S. Schick, Model of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and surroundings, Jerusalem, 1862. Photo: Adi Gilad

In Statu Quo: Structures of Negotiation

By Deborah Pinto Fdeda and Ifat Finkelman and Oren Sagiv and Tania Coen-Uzzielli

In 1862 the Turkish governor of Jerusalem, Süreyya Pasha, commissioned Conrad Schick, a German Protestant archaeologist and clockmaker, to make a model of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. He believed that a three-dimensional representation of the church could clarify its elaborate ownership arrangements to his superiors in Constantinople. This would be essential after the Crimean War (1853–56), which had been sparked by disputes over the rights of Christian minorities at holy places.

The model, illustrating the complex state of affairs in the church, turned out to be an object of interest for several world leaders, and three more copies were made: one for the Greek Orthodox patriarchate, another for the king of the German state of Württemberg, and a third for Queen Victoria. Made with movable parts and color coded, it served as a key instrument, not only defining the space and communicating information but also pointing out possibilities to those who would determine and formulate a new concept of governance: the Status Quo system.

The arrangements at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, believed to be the site of Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection, divide the structure into minute segments and subsegments with clearly delineated areas of responsibility for the denominations that have privileges there: Greek Orthodox, Latin, Armenian, Coptic, Syrian, and Ethiopian. Thus pillars have been numbered, walkways divided tile by tile, doors halved, and cornices dissected, with each party zealously guarding its rights to the sections allotted to it while maintaining its claim to the entire church. The precise division of the space is complemented by a meticulous schedule of daily ceremonies, whether the celebration of a mass, maintenance and restoration works, access arrangements, or cleaning rights. Altogether they articulate the so-called Status Quo in the church, a tense choreography of division and sharing.

In the 21st century, religion has once again become central to the identities of many local and global communities and is at the heart of numerous conflicts. Thus, in the region known as the Holy Land, the cradle of the three monotheistic religions and an ancient arena of struggle over both territory and worship rights, the Status Quo is an essential regulatory tool. The term Status Quo, which refers to the codes that govern holy places shared by different religious groups and communities, is the nominal form of the Latin prepositional phrase in statu quo res erant ante bellum, literally, “in the state in which things were before the war.” Initiated by the Ottomans in the mid-nineteenth century, later advanced under British and Jordanian rule, and still in use today by Israel and the Palestinian Authority, it requires whoever is in power to maintain a delicate web of negotiations and agreements that allow contested sites to maintain their daily routines. 

Although it seems to preserve a state of affairs rooted in long-standing precedents, the Status Quo is dynamic in its essence, a meantime solution always favoring the potential that lies in possible change. Unlike other regulations it tends to evade recording, and still it is successful in walking the thin line between the sought-after and the established. As such, it serves as a loyal yet elusive and informal agent to create secular and rational tools of control and management within the sacred place, which by definition is a nonrational, sublime, and uncontrollable domain. Moreover, it demonstrates the complexity and fragility of such a conflict resolution apparatus within a place that cannot be divided or parceled out without losing its cohesion and subsequently its value. 

A contemporary reading of this unique and ever-challenged mechanism of forced coexistence and its impact on the local landscape highlights different spatial and temporal strategies through which places in conflict manage to retain their modus vivendi. While focusing on four major holy sites, it traces rituals—religious or mundane—as protocols in space and time in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (Jerusalem); it outlines the ongoing negotiation over the Western Wall Plaza (Jerusalem) through architectural proposals; it presents the Cave of the Patriarchs (Hebron/Al-Khalil) as a space in transition in which simple objects are used, just like the elements of a stage set, to define the changing identity of the place; and it considers Rachel’s Tomb (Bethlehem) as a landscape in the making, a palimpsest written and rewritten through the events and actions that changed the politics of sharing the site and sowed the seeds of permanence and exclusion.

The investigation of contested holy sites, beyond being relevant at any given time in history, reveals programmatic spatial phenomena that suggest alternatives to the antagonism within such places. It considers not only the instrumental use of architecture to lay claims in the conflict but also its capacity to negotiate between different identities in space and hence its critical role in these complex and highly disputed territories.
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Latin’s Mass at the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem, October 2, 2017 Photo: Ori Orhof

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Demolition of the Mughrabi Quarter near the Western Wall, June 1967. Photo: David Rubinger. Courtesy David Rubinger, Yedioth Achronoth

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Moshe Safdie, plan for the Western Wall Precinct, 1974, model. Courtesy Safdie Architects Archive

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Superstudio (Adolfo Natalini and David Palterer), the Wailing Wall, 1980–82. Source 'Metaphors and Allegories- Superstudio Firenze', Israel Museum Jerusalem, spring 1982

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Tomb of Rachel. Jerusalem Holy Land, 1890–1900. Courtesy Library of Congress

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On the way to Rachel’s Tomb, 2018. Photo: Gili Merin

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Hebron—Le Harem El-Khalil, Plan. Source: Hebron—Le Harem El-Khalil: Sepulture des Patriarches. L.H. Vincent, Le Cap. E.J.H. Machkay and F.M. Abel (Paris: Editions Ernest Leroux), 1923. Courtesy of the Israel Antiquities Authority.

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