New walls divide ancient city of Jerusalem

Herald writer SIMON COLLINS reports on the resignation, resentment and hope that come with living in Jerusalem.

One of the front lines between Jewish and Arab areas around Jerusalem is a street in the upmarket hillside suburb of Gilo.

The street looks directly down across a gully to a poorer suburb in Palestinian-controlled territory.

At times since the Palestinians launched their intifada, or uprising, against Israel last October, Palestinian snipers have fired at night into the apartment buildings along this street.

Astonishingly, no one has moved out. Instead, people in the most vulnerable flats have filled in their window spaces with sandbags.

The Israeli Government has built high concrete walls along the exposed parts of the street. An artist has painted murals on the walls, poignantly showing the view before the walls went up. High walls and barbed wire fences have been built around two schools in the street.

Below the street, on spurs running down into the gully, Israeli soldiers and armoured vehicles have been stationed.

Every time the street is hit by Arab snipers, the soldiers hit back with heavy gunfire at the houses in the Palestinian area they suspect of harbouring the snipers.

John Ponger, a New Zealander who moved to Israel in 1976, lives a few streets away on the city side of Gilo. His house is out of the snipers' range, but when residents in the exposed street demonstrated recently in a plea for the Army to hit back at the Palestinians, he joined them.

"The residents got so fed up because the Government was not answering back. I came up to give my support," he says. "The shooting that was going on here was a real war."

Since the intifada started, and especially after this week's series of bombings in Jerusalem, Mr Ponger admits to feeling "a lot less secure than I have ever felt."

Yet though he has New Zealand and British passports as well as his Israeli one, he is staying put.

"This is home," he explains. His wife was born in Jerusalem. Their daughter, aged 22, is working in Israel, and their 18-year-old son is about to start the three years' military service that all Israeli men do between school and further education. (Women serve two years).

Israel is an immigrant society, with one of the highest proportions (25 per cent) of graduates of any working-age population in the world. Most Israelis could move if they wanted to. But most remain committed to their country.

Most adults, or their parents, came to Israel as a deliberate political act to support the world's only Jewish state. They came knowing they might face bombs, and they are not about to quit now.

Across the gully in the Palestinian areas, the mood is equally entrenched and fuelled with resentment.

Another New Zealander, Jon Reinholt, a United Nations Middle East veteran who distributes food to Palestinian refugees for the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), says Palestinian towns such as Bethlehem, Nablus and Ramallah are still effectively blockaded by Israeli forces, even though the blockade has been officially dropped.

"They [the Israelis] might put a ban on a village for three to five days, depending on whether they 'misbehaved' or not," he says. "They have a mountain of earth and rubble on the road so no vehicle can pass. You have the harassment of the military checkpoint. They have driven them to hatred."

You have to be desperate to be willing, as a Palestinian was in Jerusalem this week, to wrap explosives around your body and blow yourself to bits in order to scatter nails into a bus full of Israelis. You have to be equally desperate, as another Palestinian was in nearby Hebron, to shoot dead a 10-month-old baby in her father's arms.

More than 50 years after fleeing their homes in what is now Israel, some two million Palestinians are still living in refugee camps in Palestine-controlled areas of the West Bank and Gaza Strip and in surrounding Arab countries, refusing to give up rights to the homes they, or their parents or grandparents, left behind.

It is possible, most of the time, to ignore all this in Israel. Lying in the sun outside the walls of Jerusalem's Old City on his third day in the country, German visitor Christian Egger said: "The first day you don't feel safe. After that you forget about it."

On the East Talpiyyot Promenade overlooking the Old City, American tourist Tom Schiffgen declared: "It's a great time to come because there are no lines [queues]."

So long as they stay in Israel, people really have no choice but to keep going to work and to carry out their daily activities.

In Tel Aviv, residents feel far removed from the front line. A common refrain is that you are far more likely to die in a car accident than in a bomb blast (around 500 to 600 Israelis die on the roads each year).

Former Auckland lawyer Jeremy Levy, who moved to Israel four years ago, says: "It's a fun place to be. I see myself having a lot more opportunities here than in New Zealand."

The intifada is, however, affecting some areas of business. Tourism has evaporated. Jerusalem hotels, normally bursting at the seams at this time of year, as Passover and Easter loom, are only a quarter full, and the narrow shopping streets of the Old City are almost deserted.

"Bad business," says Yusuf Mohamed, the third generation of his family to run a silverware shop in the Old City. "No people go, no people buy."

Agriculture and construction have also been hit, because 10 per cent of farm workers and 30 per cent of building workers used to come into Israel every day from the West Bank and Gaza. That labour force of around 110,000 people has been largely shut off.

Gurion Meltzer, a Tel Aviv director who goes regularly to southern Israel for board meetings, says he used to see 80 to 120 buses leaving Gaza at 5 am daily loaded with workers for Israel. "Now there are none. It's bad for both sides," he says.

Mr Reinholt says UNRWA has just distributed food parcels to 90,000 Palestinian families who are living in refugee camps or have no means of support because they have been shut out of jobs in Israel.

In various ways, Israelis have adjusted to living under constant threat.

"I listen to the news, and it's part of me, that's true," says honorary NZ Consul Gad Propper, who is involved in numerous Israeli businesses. "But there is no real fear of the next bomb to explode next to me."

He says that when a bomb goes off he feels as though he is in a herd of deer with a tiger standing nearby. "One day he gets hungry so he rushes out and gets one of the deer. But the rest of the herd continues to graze just as if the tiger wasn't there."

Some Israelis go to more lengths than others to avoid the tiger. Mr Ponger tells of one Tel Aviv businessperson who refuses to attend meetings in Jerusalem because of the bombings.



Security is tight. Car boots are checked when you park in any building. At many tourist attractions such as the Western Wall visitors have to walk through electronic security checks. Long-term residents such as Mr Ponger have learned not to go shopping at peak times when the crowds are greatest, and also the times when bombs are most likely.

"I'm looking out of eyes in the back of my head when I'm walking in the city," says Mr Ponger. "I'm telling the children to go in the middle of the bus - don't sit at the front or back of the bus."

Everyone says that most people want peace. Mr Reinholt says the crowds shown on television throwing stones, shooting or bombing are supported by only 5 per cent on both sides.

Attitudes are, however, entrenched. Palestinians, like Old City shopkeeper Mohamed Ali, blame Israel for "stealing" Arab land on the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Then there's the Tel Aviv cabbie who says he is afraid of bombers but asks: "What can I do? This is the only Jewish country in the world. We trust America today, but we trusted Germany, and look what happened."

In the longer term, if the taxi drivers are any guide, perhaps there is hope. Jerusalem driver Lior Mhlev worked in a removal business with Arab colleagues last year. "We slept together, we ate together, everything we did together," he says.

"I think it is possible."

Herald Online feature: Middle East

Map

UN: Information on the Question of Palestine

Israel's Permanent Mission to the UN

Palestine's Permanent Observer Mission to the UN

Middle East Daily

Arabic News

Arabic Media Internet Network

Jerusalem Post

Israel Wire

US Department of State - Middle East Peace Process