This video presents a 1991 C-SPAN interview with Jerusalem-born historian and spokesperson of Armenian-Palestinian descent Albert Aghazarian, filmed in the Old City of Jerusalem, near the edge of the Christian Quarter, where he speaks from within its ancient walls about the city’s layered identity and fragile pluralism. At the time, Jerusalem was living the aftermath of the 1967 Israeli occupation, its quarters redefined, its people forcibly fragmented; however, its Palestinian community still resisting the imposed maps, policies, and narratives.
Albert, who was a professor of history at the Birzeit University at the time of the interview, embodies the city’s mosaic. His words weave together history, humor, and heartbreak. He speaks of the Status Quo agreements that were recognized internationally and broken time and time again by the Israeli government, the demolitions, the creeping homogenization of space, and the enduring pulse of diversity that defines the Old City (see What Is the Status Quo?).
In this interview, he reflects on what it means to belong to Jerusalem, not as an abstract symbol but as a living city, shared, plural, yet unmistakably Palestinian. His voice captures something every Jerusalemite and every Palestinian can recognize: deep, unexplainable attachment to a place whose identity cannot be owned by one narrative. That is the beauty of Jerusalem, that Palestinians are happy to share with the world.
He concludes with a simple yet profound reflection, that we can draw from it the following: Jerusalem, in its nature, has always been international but Palestinian and Arab in its essence. To strip it of that essence through the ongoing Judaization of its streets, homes, and horizons is to deform and distort it beyond recognition. A Jerusalem emptied of its inhabitants, plurality, and Arab heart is no longer Jerusalem; it becomes a shell, a distorted piece of land severed from its truth.