Sacralizing territory lets political claims override demographic and geographic facts

Evidence

Zionism has the inherent driving force for using religious claims to legitimize settler-colonial policies. Take, for example, the continued occupation of the West Bank and the aggressive settlement activities. If Zionism sees the West Bank as part of the Jewish homeland and Jerusalem as its heart, the religious cultural framing becomes the most relevant for such policies. This was precisely the logic that pushed the Serb elites under Milosevic to frame the conflict with Albanians in Kosovo in cultural religious terms. If Albanians were the majority (by about 90 percent in Kosovo), and they were seeking independence, the political realities would have made their political demands sensible. But if Kosovo were religiously the Serbs’ Jerusalem, as Chapter 9 explains, then such demands would be framed as Orthodox Serb vs. Muslim Albanians and the demographic balance and geographic reality would be overlooked. — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized, 561

Categorization

• XREF: Parallels the sacred-values mechanism where deontic framing resists compromise and material tradeoffs — extends it from values to territory. — connects to: Sacralized claims to territory are framed as non-negotiable across all authority — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized:…, 1548; Space homogenization clashes with place-based identity, fueling political antagonism — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An…, 1628; Territorial claims idealize the maternal body and repudiate the Other — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1394 (+6 more)
• SEED: The Milosevic-Kosovo versus Israel-West Bank comparison is a compact illustration of how sacralized framing overrides material reality — usable in an essay on sacralized territory.

Broader Connections

• Majorities differ from minorities by claiming the state as their own #expands (0.78)
• Space homogenization clashes with place-based identity, fueling political antagonism #complicates (0.75) — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, 1628
• Foundational myths reinterpret the past to justify future political claims. #expands (0.75)
• Territorial claims idealize the maternal body and repudiate the Other #complicates (0.72) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1394
• Cartographic naming or omitting names legitimizes colonial claims to inhabited land #expands (0.70) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1405