Jerusalem Undivided
In his small grocery store just off Sultan Suleiman Street, which runs past the Old City's Damascus Gate and through the Arab side of downtown Jerusalem, a Palestinian merchant grumbles about the hardships and indignities under Israeli rule. His complaints are long-standing among Palestinians here, yet the reality for him and others is shifting in response to the violence and economic hopelessness of Palestinian Authority rule in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. "There is no safety there," he says.
As a result, the merchant has given up on what has long been the dream and demand of Jerusalem's Palestinians: to see the city redivided, with the Arab side--which Israel seized from Jordan in the 1967 Six-Day War--becoming the capital of a Palestinian state. "Gaza should be for Palestine, the West Bank should be for Palestine," he says, "but Jerusalem should stay like it is." On this, he is not alone.
Local Palestinians, by deed if not by declaration, are increasingly opting for the status quo, for life under Israeli sovereignty. Jerusalem is by no means happily unified, but it is becoming grudgingly unified. "It's not that the Palestinians here have become Zionists; it's not that they've fallen in love with the State of Israel. They haven't," says an Arab attorney in Jerusalem who, like the merchant, requests anonymity because of the political sensitivity of the issue. "They just want to live normal lives, with security, with a little money in their wallets. They want their kids to be able to go to school. They want what everybody wants."
Distinct. It is now 40 years since Israel tore down the walls and fences that had divided Jerusalem since the country's 1948 War of Independence. International conventional wisdom holds that, despite Israel's strenuous claims, the city is still effectively divided. And, on the surface, it is. Jerusalem's 480,000 Israelis and 250,000 Palestinians each live in their own distinct neighborhoods. Aside from Palestinians who do mainly low-wage jobs on the Jewish side of town and Israelis who have business on the Arab side, the two populations don't mix. The Israelis hold Israeli passports, while 98 percent of the Palestinians hold only Israeli-issue travel documents listing them as Jordanian nationals. Jews in Jerusalem vote in national and municipal elections; Palestinians don't. The Jews identify with Israel; the Palestinians, or certainly the Muslim majority among them, identify with the Palestinians and the greater Arab world.
Yet while the city's Palestinians remain spatially and nationally divided from the Israelis, the relative security of life in Arab Jerusalem has deflated their nationalist spirit. Only 15 percent of them voted in last year's PA elections--compared with 78 percent of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, notes Hillel Cohen of the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies. Except for aging members of the Palestine Liberation Organization, the locals no longer clamor publicly for al-Quds--the Arabic name for Jerusalem--to be recognized as the Palestinian capital.
Since the 2001 death of Faisal Husseini, head of Arab Jerusalem's most illustrious family, the city's Palestinians, for the first time in modern history, have had no recognized political leader. This is partly because Israel has cracked down on Jerusalem Arab political activity since the intifada uprising in 2000, and partly because the city's Arabs have become deeply disillusioned by the PA's dismal performance. "Let's be honest--we've lost the battle for Jerusalem," admitted a locally elected Palestinian legislator. "Frankly, when I see what's happening in the West Bank and Gaza, I can understand why."
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