The Jerusalem of 2006, during the Second War of Lebanon was a very different and much less welcoming scene than just a few years before. The Arab shops tucked away behind the heaps of zaatar, baharat, and sumac were still open. The moustached 60-year-old shop-owner was still walking back for a small canvas bag between the spice stands, the heaps of fruit, and baclava trays, in his worn-out jacket, rolling the beads of prayer string between his fingers. The slightly overweight Arab woman was still sitting on the white plastic chair behind the line of traditional black and red dresses hung up on racks in the vaults opening inside the Old City’s bazaar. Young men in modern sporty jackets and jeans were still walking down the old alleys’ stone pavements, holding their black plastic bags with three pieces of Sharon fruit (or kaka as it is called in Palestine). Nevertheless, any foreigner could immediately sense how people’s attitudes changed since the Al-Aqsa Intifada of 2000, and especially now, that another war erupted on Israel’s northern border.
Hizbollah, rocketing the northern settlements including Haifa, triggered IDF’s inevitable retaliation.
Israeli troops moved into southern Lebanon, with artillery constantly targeting firing posts on the hillsides, and modern Israeli technology trying to reveal and eliminate small military cells hidden among the idillic, peaceful villages of Lebanon’s picturesque countryside.
As international students taking part in a language-learning programme originally planned for Haifa, we were relocated to Jerusalem, the place and home of my earlier stays in Palestine/Israel, and with a closely tangible presence of improverished Palestinians everywhere in East Jerusalem, off the Hebrew University’s well-guarded, modern campus. Right outside the white-stone dormitories opposite Hadassah hospital, streets brought forth a mix of family homes with lemon trees or sabras plants within and along the fences. Arab homes revealed family scenes with fathers sitting at a garden table with children in and out of the house, playing or serving drinks, sometimes ten-fifteen years apart in age. Religious Jewish families were seen elsewhere, keeping their private lives secret – women in dark dresses, covered heads, men with hats and peyot retreating into their libaries with volumes of Talmud and commentaries lining the tall shelves.
We as foreigners were trying to make sense of this unconventional blend of closeness and separation; cultures, societies existing right across the fence but with centuries and worlds of division between them.
With a large proportion of our student group coming from American Jewish families, some felt it necessary and appropriate to approach the Old City’s Western Wall for the Shabbath, and that we as a group take a walk across the Arab neighbourhoods starting from Mount Scopus and the university dorms. This half cultural, half religous stroll attracted about ten or twelve of the group, some Jewish, some not, some religious, some not, some evangelical Christian, some not. Some of the Americans feeling the full fervour of Jewish religious zeal - much less in the open in their New England suburbs - displayed the full kit of Jewish middle-class social commitment: the kipah, the beards, and the tzitzot – the knotted frignes hanging under the shirts.
The group’s descent from the hilltop in the late afternoon twilight went without problems. Arab businesses – garages covered in oil, tar, and grease with old tyres piled up outside - were already closing. Families had already found their usual bliss behind the iron gates and concrete fences, after the wives had collected the large heaps of clothes hung out to dry earlier in the day. Our student group was spontaneous and carefree on our leisurely walk towards Old City’s Damascus Gate.
Following the walk made easy by the casual conversation between us - the European students and the Americans - we took little notice of the fact that a war was raging just miles from us.
Islamic fundamentalist groups were active all across the West Bank. An Italian peaceworker had been stabbed in Old City Jerusalem by Islamic Jihad just days before then. Clearing the quiet, declining slopes of Arab East Jerusalem, we discovered that the much frequented Damascus Gate area was blocked by Israeli military and police, and that no passage was allowed, with all Arab shoppers, idlers, passers-by diverted in any direction they see fit - with hundreds of scarved women, nine-year-old children, Arab youth, family men, devout students of Islam, modern Arab girls in jeans and headscarfs holding university text-books - all acknowledging the disruption and the common and sudden change of routine.
At times like this the crowd often follows the police’s instructions without a fuss and take short, practical steps in order to reach home safely before any violence or arrests take place. Another question is what internal turmoil this police intervention causes, and how much the Palestinian civilians saw the Jews’ presence as an intrusion and as an oppressive incision made right in the flesh of Arab statehood and shared communal awareness. The thoughts and inclinations to pick up rocks, to hide Palestinian activists, cover up for jihadists and Hamas members was not far away. Conversations in Arabic will often call out for ’death’ to the Jews, and will be in full agreement of harsh revenge and retiliation to traitors and collaborators.
Our group’s self-appointed and devout Jewish members saw it best to give an open demonstration of our non-Middle Eastern identity and rather than walk uphill, towards the New Gate, nearer Jewish restaurants, residents and businesses, we should walk in the direction of Dung Gate, or Moroccan Gate, as it is also called, leading into the less touristy depths of the Old City’s Arab quarter, beyond the Ottoman style medieval gate and its rather narrow turns hidden away from police observers and the presence of security.
While the Palestinian passers-by are generally peaceful and non-interfering, this time, in the early Friday evening’s dusk the crowd felt generally distrustful and unwelcoming to us, Europeans. Faces revealed few if any smiles, their looks showed unfriendliness and anger rather than recognition and invitation. With the group’s long-haired German rock-fan, Bernard next to me, I found it timely to call out to the guys ahead and warn them that what they were doing – walking into a hostile Muslim crowd with kipas on their heads at the time of war – was sheer provocation and going against most things reasonable. The guys and girls some steps ahead could hot hear me, which left me and Bernie separated in the 6pm twilight right in the middle of the Arab multitude closing in on us. The unpredictability of bearded faces and the gazes of youth and men of different ages showing hostility and contempt will always stay with me. Although the situation did not reach any acts of violence or physicality, the dread and fear that we could soon be the victims of mob violence and the targets of the people’s anger will always stay with me.
Having reached the Western Wall’s safeguarded ceremonial safety and religious beauty, Bernie, me, and the whole group received invitations to an orthodox Jewish communal hall nearby where a Shabbath dinner was served. Seeing the otherwise denominationally distant bearded faces framed by hats and sidelocks was yet another strange experience for the day. The culturally and emotionally distant community, partially identifying with ultraorthodoxy is traditionally non-accepting and strongly sectarian towards seculars and outsiders. This time, with all of them, us, sitting around a large table, with dozens of them singing Shabbath songs, passing around large trays of food – meat and desserts – was another awkward though greatly pleasant turn of that day. Bernie and I were able to exchange views on several American new metal bands, which we wer both into and this is an excellent opportunity to copy in a part of our email exchange from some months later:
Clawfinger and Madball. Still, my favorites of that time would be DOWN, a project by Phil Anselmo, singer of the band Pantera and a few other guys… I hope he is doing fine.