Daily Life in Jerusalem? ‘Difficult’ and ‘Intense’ for Arab and Jew
You hear it in the way people talk — "The Arabs," "The Jews" — about people with whom they have been sentenced to share a tiny patch of soil atop a ridge with no strategic value, over which the world has been battling for thousands of years,
and negotiating on and off for decades, with no end in sight.
Once there’s a little bit of balagan" — chaos — "between Jews and Arabs, Jews won’t go in my taxi, and Arabs won’t go to the mall.
Back on the light rail, Rina Pure, who grew up in Acre, on the Israeli coast, said she bought her apartment in the French Hill neighborhood
of Jerusalem years ago, "but now half the people are religious," and it was getting to be too much for her to stay.
There’s no difference — we’re one country — but it’s Israeli Arabs, or Palestinians,
or Israeli Jews." For Jerusalemites, stress is something to learn to live with.
It builds up, day by day, culminating in the release and rest of the Sabbath — a one-day weekend
that religious Jews build their lives around, and secular Jews and Arabs make the most of.
Tomer Aser said that We all believe there’s something sacred in this city, but it’s too difficult,
The Red Line — the city’s only line, so far — begins in West Jerusalem at Mount Herzl, a monument
to Israel’s origins, home of Yad Vashem and of Israel’s national and military cemeteries.
And if I go into a religious neighborhood and they find out I’m Arab, they’ll stone my car." Mr. Ziada drives past a vacant property he says his family owns,
but where he says the Israeli authorities have barred him from building.