PROVIDENCE — The topic of Jerusalem is so politically charged that even the organizer of yesterday’s conference at Brown University worried it might backfire.

But Katharina Galor, a German-born Jew and visiting assistant professor of archaeology at Brown University, was determined to try to “build bridges” between Israeli and Palestinian scholars. It would be the first time, she said, that Israelis and Palestinians have come together to discuss the archaeological history of Jerusalem – a discourse that is not possible in their own city.

The first challenge was finding Palestinians willing to participate. For years, Palestinian scholars have boycotted speaking engagements with Israelis. Her list of 10 Palestinian invitees quickly dwindled to 3.

One of the Palestinian scholars who accepted her invitation was Sari Nusseibeh, a Harvard-educated professor of Islamic philosophy and president of Al-Quds University in East Jerusalem. Yesterday, Nusseibeh delivered the first lecture in the three-day series, “The Jerusalem Perspective: 150 years of Archaeological Research.”

Nusseibeh, whose academic and political work on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict fills a nearly six-page online biography, approached the lecture as if his presence were an accident (“I think I was only invited because I happen to live there”), and remarked that he was having troubling reading his note cards. But as he began to speak – a homemade slide show of Israel playing on a screen behind him – the room of 85 people fell silent.

He opened with a story about his father’s death-bed request. The late Anwar Nusseibeh was a Palestinian-Jordanian diplomat who held many titles, including, in 1965, governor of Jerusalem. But on the day he died, in 1986, Nusseibeh’s father told his son that the only words he wanted inscribed on his tombstone besides his name were “Born in Jerusalem 1913; died in Jerusalem. …”

Initially, Nussebeih said, it sounded like a wonderful statement of humility; that “just by living [in Jerusalem], he fulfilled his mission.” For a long time, Nussebeih said, he identified with his father’s view of his role in the world. But more recently, he said, “I got fed up and frustrated by it.”

The term “frustrated” was an understatement. Nusseibeh said that he has come to feel that serving a city is like being “a slave to a city.”

“Does it make sense,” he asked, with a philosopher’s composure, “that we place cities above men. … That we make them more valuable than human beings?”

As he spoke, images of Israel flashed on the screen: a mosaic-tiled mosque, a walled-off neighborhood, a barbed-wired fence, worshipers praying, a street littered with rubble.

The center of Jerusalem is “amazingly beautiful,” he said, but “you discover everything around the city is very ugly.”

Nusseibeh talked about what he described as an unhealthy “competition” between religious groups – Jews, Muslims, Christians – all laying claims to Jerusalem. People feel so strongly about Jerusalem that they have deified it – sanctified it. But that has created a sort of love-hate relationship with Jerusalem, he said; a “possessive love” that transforms to being “possessive of the city.”

Nusseibeh sketched what sounded like a psychological description of an obsessive love.

“I’m not a master of it; I’m a slave to it.”

“I belong to the city, but the city does not belong to me.”

“We probably made the mistake by making it so important. It’s reflected by the fact that we now suffer.”

Asked if there was a solution to this age-old conflict, his tone lightened, and he replied that the problem required “a message” from God. “Maybe then,” he said, “we can find a way that Muslims and Jews and Christians can live together.”

In his dual role as scholar and political activist, Nusseibeh has been an outspoken supporter of a two-state approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (detailed in a book he co-authored with Mark Heller, No Trumpets, No Drums). He also served 90 days in a Ramle prison in 1991, after which he was released without being charged, according to his online biography. In 2001, he was appointed by Yasser Arafat as a PLO representative in Jerusalem.

Nusseibeh, who is Muslim, has continued to live in Jerusalem, even though he is unlikely to ever own a home, he said during a brief interview. There are only a limited number of building permits, he said, and most of them go to Jewish residents. He sipped a cup of coffee into which he had added three or four packets of sugar and creamer, and reflected on the characterization of Jews by another speaker as having a uniquely singular attachment to Israel.

“There’s this competition,” he said. “I hear the same from Muslims and you see it in the policies and even in the building. … So every now and again I feel fed up and wish it was just a normal city where you walk along the street, like here.”

The conference, “The Jerusalem Perspective: 150 years of Archaeological Research,” continues today with lectures from 9:30 a.m. through 5 p.m.; and tomorrow from 9 a.m. to 3:15 p.m. at 111 Thayer St. Lectures are free and open to the public. For more information go to www.brown.edu/Conference/Jerusalem_Perspective/schedule.php