Religious War Has Moved to the Forefront of the Israel-Palestine Conflict

"Religion is a dangerous thing. It has always been present here, but now its role in the conflict is increasing," Rabbi Daniel Landes, director of Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies, told VICE News in his book-lined study in Jerusalem. "The questions that we now need to ask ourselves are: How much? And whom does it serve?"

Several millennia of history sprawl across the horizon from atop the old city's marketplace at the nexus of Jerusalem's Jewish, Muslim and Christian neighborhoods. To the west, red rooftops and silhouettes of crosses dominate the skyline. To the east, the golden Dome of the Rock, located on a site known to Muslims as Haram al-Sharif and Jews as Temple Mount, glints in the afternoon sun.

Yet, despite its omnipresence in the fabric and landscape of Jerusalem — claimed in part as the capital of both Israel and Palestine — religion, until recently, has been seen as a backdrop to a protracted conflict that centered on struggles for territorial and national rights.

That changed on November 18, 2014 when Ghassan Abu Jamal and his cousin Uday Abu Jamal stormed into a synagogue in a usually peaceful neighborhood in west Jerusalem. Armed with butchers' knives and guns the Palestinian cousins ruthlessly hacked four elderly rabbis to death during morning prayers.

Images of the lifeless bodies covered in prayer shawls sprawled on the synagogue floor were like a mirror shattering on a concrete floor. The attack was not only the most deadly act of terrorism in the holy city since 2008; it was a brazen and deliberate assault on religious men in their place of worship. Memes circulating on Palestinian social media groups glorified the attack. Horrific headlines accompanied by gory photos rammed home to Israelis the terror knocking at their door.

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For many, this bloody tableau signaled the end of understanding the conflict as a purely secular issue, or at least the pretense of understanding it this way. Yet while the violent eruption grabbed the headlines, below the surface the shift in the tectonic plates of the conflict had begun months before, as politicians on both sides vied for support amid a frustrated status quo.

On one side of the wall, for Palestinians, 2014 marked nearly half a century of occupation. Year-on-year walled Jewish settlements — guarded by Israeli police and illegal under international law — have continued a creeping expansion beyond 1967 lines, and more than 1,500 new units were announced in June.

The Gaza Strip, under Israeli blockade for more than seven years, is now in devastating long-term economic isolation after the 2013 regime change in Egypt closed the smuggling tunnels that provided a vital lifeline of goods in and out of the territory. Adding insult to bitter injury, a bloody and unequal summer 2014 war between Hamas and Israel — for a seven-year-old child the third in their short lives — killed more than 2,100 in the Strip, mainly civilians.

Israeli brutality, occupation, and siege are not the only problems, however. The latest seven-week war rammed home to Palestinians not only the apparently endless cyclical nature of the conflict, but also the impotence of their leaders amid seemingly intractable internal divisions. Even as the final ceasefire came into place, a June "unity government" agreement between Hamas (the de facto rulers in Gaza deemed an Islamist terrorist organization in the US) and the Fatah-dominated authority in the West Bank led by Mahmoud Abbas (preferred by the West as the moderate option) was already disintegrating. Bitter squabbles broke out over responsibility for reconstruction efforts, hindering the transfer of international aid.

On the other side, 2014 was a fraught year for Israeli politics too. Also marred by internal divisions, a fragile coalition government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu found itself making policy decisions with its back to the corner.

Under mounting pressure from the powerful far right, including the influential religious Zionist movement, Netanyahu's coalition was not only ultimately railroaded into the Gaza war but also showed an initial willingness, or at least reluctance to act against, the contentious activities of Jewish extremists marching on and praying at Temple Mount. (Currently Jews are permitted to visit but not worship at the site under Israeli law, which is seen as one of Israel's few concessions to Palestinian Muslims. The complex contains the third holiest site in Islam and the holiest place in Judaism.)

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It is against this backdrop of political frustration and mounting religious tensions that a new era of unrest emerged in Jerusalem's east. Dubbed variously the "silent," "car," or "lone-wolf," intifada the violence began almost as soon as the war in Gaza ended. Young Palestinian men, working alone or in small non-affiliated terror cells, crashed vehicles into pedestrian sidewalks at high-speed and went on stabbing rampages; 11 Israelis, including a three-month old baby, were killed in the attacks and at least a dozen more injured.

The anger and desperate frustration of the latest unrest is evidenced not only in the up-close and personal nature of the recent violence, but also in its end. Although not wearing bomb belts the attackers all left their houses on de facto suicide missions — most suspects have been either shot dead at the scene or killed during later raids by Israeli forces.

That the recent wave of Palestinian unrest has not yet been accompanied by the mass mobilization seen during previous intifadas is due in large part to the efforts of Abbas' administration to stymie the violence. "This is a crucial time, there's terrorism, religious conflict, and violence," implored the bespectacled Palestinian leader in the aftermath of the November synagogue attacks. "I am warning against turning a political conflict into a religious one. Let's talk about politics not religion."

Yet while Abbas, 79, may have been successful in keeping Palestinians from taking to the streets en masse — recent demonstrations and riots have usually capped at a couple of hundred young men — his Palestinian opponents have been quick to portray the ageing leader's words of caution as tantamount to capitulation to the West, and even Israel. In stark contrast to the Fatah leader, Hamas has openly praised the recent terror with spokesperson Sami Abu Zuhri calling for the "continuation of revenge attacks."

The group has also been keen to capitalize on Abbas' inability to resolve the issue of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, also on the Haram al-Sharif site. During the worst of the east Jerusalem violence, Israel limited Muslims' worship at the mosque to women and men over the age of 60 amid security concerns.

"We call on all our people inside the country to hurry up to Al-Aqsa to defend it," the Hamas chief, Khaled Meshaal, said in a statement from Doha, where he lives in exile. "Al-Aqsa is worth us becoming martyrs for, and anyone who can carry a weapon in the region should go and defend it, as this is the true meaning of jihad."

The hardliners' message appears to have resonated. A December poll by the Ramallah-based Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR) found Hamas edging ahead in approval ratings in West Bank while still maintaining a marginal lead in Gaza.

Support for attacks is also evidenced in angry funeral chants and eerie silences in grieving families' living rooms, where telling posters show "martyrs" faces photoshopped against the conflict's centerpiece — the Dome of the Rock. According to the PSR survey, 86 percent of Palestinians think Haram al-Sharif is in "grave danger" and 56 percent believes Israel intends to destroy the Al-Aqsa Mosque and replace it with a Jewish temple.

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In the face of waning support, Netanyahu apparently found solace in religion too. While the beleaguered leader's popularity soared to the mid-80s in opinion polls during the summer war, it quickly dwindled to as low as 32 percent once open hostilities ceased.

However, with an eye on a fourth term in power the 65-year-old leader has shown that he is not out of the game yet, making a high-stake gamble on a controversial Jewish state bill. The proposed legislation — which would see Israel defined as the official homeland of the Jewish people, privilege Hebrew as the state's only official language, and draw on Jewish law as a source of "inspiration" — infuriated the left and even ministers from Netanyahu's own party and ultimately resulted in the break-up of the coalition government. But the leader is hoping that the applause of the hawkish far right will be long-term political winner shoring up enough support and votes to form a new coalition after early elections on March 17.

Yet while both Israeli and Palestinian politicians have been quick to hijack religion for political ends, as the adage goes: "If you play with fire, you get burnt." Sitting in his east Jerusalem study, Dr. Ekrima Sa'eed Sabri, the former grand mufti of Al-Aqsa Mosque, starkly outlines the dangers of the new blend of theology and politics.

"Politicians are weak and self-interested, people with religious motives are pure," Sabri told VICE News. Behind him is a framed black-and-gold Arabic typography of the 99 names given to God in Islam. "A religious conflict is much stronger than a national one, people will go further because religion is the most important thing [to them]," he warns.

Back in the walled old city, the mosques' call to prayer reverberates and echoes through the tightly packed limestone buildings. A traditional message of peace moves across a blue sky, as white birds released in celebration of an afternoon bar mitzvah flutter across the Western Wall before circling the Dome of the Rock. But in Jerusalem there is no olive branch in sight.

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Follow Harriet Salem on Twitter: @HarrietSalem