As the preceding, brief history reveals, throughout history, Jerusalem and the holy sites have served as a lightning rod for conflicts in this region. This conflict has been pronounced and virtually unending for the last hundred years, generating over seventy significant proposals by governments, international organizations, as well as many public intellectuals on how to resolve the conflicts in the Middle East and promote peace. Those developing new proposals need to consider what lessons may be learned from this rich intellectual past.

In considering prior proposals about how to protect the holy sites, the first feature of note is that few have addressed the topic separately from the city itself. Inherent in this absence is the fact that Jerusalem and the holy sites represent a uniquely interrelated set of problems. Indeed they may be so symbiotic that in some ways they represent a single problem with numerous subparts. Jerusalem's national and international political importance stems in large part from its holiness to the three monotheistic religions and the extraordinary concentration of holy sites in the Old City and its environs. Adding to this religious dimension, the conflict in the region can all too easily be viewed as a conflict between faith traditions because governments predominately representing two of these faith traditions are the mutually hostile parties in this nationalist struggle.