Abstract
Contemporary scholarly literature has largely undermined the common perceptions of the term sovereignty, challenging especially those of an exclusive territorial orientation and offering a wide range of distinct interpretations that relate, among other things, to its performativity. Starting with Leo Gross’ canonical text on the Peace of Westphalia (1948), this article uses new approaches to analyze the policy of the State of Israel on Jerusalem in general and the city’s Mount Scopus enclave in 1948-1967 in particular. The article exposes tactics invoked by Israel in three different sites within the Mount Scopus enclave, demilitarized and under UN control in the heart of the Jordanian-controlled sector of Jerusalem: two Jewish institutions (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Hadassah hospital), the Jerusalem British War Cemetery, and the Palestinian village of Issawiya. The idea behind these tactics was to use the Demilitarization Agreement, signed by Israel, Transjordan, and the UN on July 7, 1948, to undermine the status of Jerusalem as a Corpus Separatum, as had been proposed in UN Resolution 181 II.
