ABSTRACT
The political partitioning of the Holy Land is a phenomenon as old as the geopolitical concept of this ancient land itself. Abram and Lot, returning from Egypt, found the resource base of Canaan inadequate to support their combined sheep and cattle holdings. The development of most national core areas takes place as a consequence of internal forces. Significance of core as a spatial concept emerged during the period when land was the major resource from which wealth was accumulated and the economy was developed. Land tenure was the overriding societal-organizing instrument and political mechanism by which people competed for power. Core areas were those most favourably endowed in terms of soil and other physical variables which differentiate land. As Israel's new competing core, Jerusalem is at least as accessible to the periphery as is Tel Aviv, and is more directly involved in Arab-Jewish conflict and accommodation owing to its ethnically-mixed and frontier city status.
