One yearns for some clarity of purpose is this place called the Middle-East. There is so much talk, and so many contrary deeds, that one despairs.

To me it says–Bophuthatswana–one of the Bantustans. Unless Israel succeeds in fomentng a regional war, and uses it as an occasion to complete the ethnic cleansing of the territories–this cannot stand.

Francis Boyle writes in to say: "The Muslims and the Jews do not “share” the Ibrahimi Mosque. In fact, Israel confiscated the chamber of the Mosque where Ibrahim, Isaac, Jacob and their wives are buried, then built a synagogue in there. In other words, the Israelis desecrated the Mosque by building a synagogue within it. I have seen it myself, truly disgusting. This regime is enforced by armed Israeli soldiers within the Mosque—further desecrating it. This was clearly a war crime in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, inter alia."

It is modern nationalism that lies behind the current tensions over Abraham's tomb and the Haram Sharif. Jews and Muslims shared pilgrimage sites all through history, most often amicably. Israeli, Arab and Palestinian nationalisms are reconfiguring sacred space as sites of national authenticity and as exclusive.

The phase-change Dr Cole is suggesting, from "sacred" to "national", may read as though piety is replaced by politics, the sacred by the secular. Surely it's more subtle than that.

It seems of particular note that there remains a hard core, within both Palestinian and Israeli nationalisms, of believers with apocalyptic expectations: the Hamas charter quotes the Gharqad tree hadith, an Islamic "end times soon" marker, while the Temple Institute, Temple Mount Faithful and others who wish to see the Third Temple built, do so as a result of Messianic expectation — and with the strong financial support and encouragement of Christians expecting the Second Coming and believing the rebuilding of the Third Temple to be a necessary precondition.

Nationalism is subject to negotiation (and can also be persuaded to some degree by conquest): eschatological expectation based on the interpretation of prophecy is more liable to exclusivity, and can be highly resistant to any form of persuasion or disconfirmation — as has often been noted, even when a date certain for the end of the world has been proclaimed and passes without incident.

The Christians added to the mess in the 4th century AD be declaring Jesus a god, and then we have the mysterious Trinity. That declaration was rejected by some sects in Palestian and Arabia which then filtered through to Islam. One of its pillars is considering it blasphemous to treat Jesus as a god. But the demons and angels are kept all the same.