In Jerusalem

JWN readers might like to know that I arrived in Jerusalem
yesterday.  I’m staying in a very calm hotel in East
Jerusalem…  Listening to a tinny church bell as I write this,
having earlier heard the noon-time call to prayer from the minaret of
the Sheikh Jarrah Mosque. 

I’ll be in Israel and Palestine for the next 18 days, reporting on the
political developments in both communities– I ‘ll be writing a couple of pieces for
Salon.com as well as my usual print outlets: the CSM and Boston Review.  So it’ll
probably be hard work, as well as really interesting.  The
logistics have been just a touch challenging.  The hotel here has
the funkiest electric sockets, and I’ve been figuring whether any
combination of my plug-adapters can be rammed into them.  (Yes–
but it also involves poking a pen into the socket at the same time…
Don’t ask.)  The SIM card in my phone had timed out, and I had to
buy a new one.  And the zipper on my suitcase got shot.  Grrr.

But those are minor inconveniences.  Mainly, it’s just good to be
back.  I think this is my 10th visit to Israel and
Palestine.  Back in 1989, Bill and our then-4-year-old and I spent
most of the summer here in Jerusalem– I was doing some research on
Palestinians and Israelis and nonviolence.

Jerusalem is still the most amazing place.  In itself it’s a
microcosm of almost the entire Israeli-Arab conflict.  I wrote a
couple of times about the immense potential of this city– once the
Palestinians and Israelis make a sustainable peace– to become a real
center of world culture and cultural exchange.  It’s an
enthusiastically bilingual city — though there is very rigid
segregation between the Hebrew-speaking areas and the Arabic-speaking
areas as well as huge amounts of discrimination against the city’s
Palestinian residents and their neighborhoods. And it’s certainly a
place where the three Abrahamic religions are all well represented and
have have many institutions.

… Once I got through passport control and customs yesterday at
Ben-Gurion airport I got into a “Nesher” ride-share van posted for
Jerusalem.  The ten seats filled up pretty fast and up we
came.  There is always this strong sense of coming “up” to
Jerusalem, which really is perched on  top of the craggy ridge
of  the Judean Hills.  As always, the van trundled around
several neighborhoods to let out other riders before getting to my
destination.  One rider went to a very new part of Mevasseret
Zion, a small town just east of the city– an extremely well-funded and
well-appointed series of neighborhoods there, with spectacular views
across a ravine towards the receding hills of the West Bank, to the
north.  Another went to Bayt Zayit, an older Jewish village also
just east of Jerusalem.  Then the driver, a Jewish guy who spent
most of the ride swearing under his breath in extremely colorful
Arabic, took us into the center of the city through some fairly heavy
rush-hour traffic.  He dropped an orthodox Jewish family (father,
mother, 13-year-old son with long peyot)
off at the city-center Supersol… along with about seven truly
enormous bags they had flown in with.   It looked like they
were planning a long stay.  Then he threaded through some of the
tight streets of old West Jerusalem into the equally tight streets of
East Jerusalem, where he dropped another passenger and me at our
respective hotels.

I love to walk around these older neighborhoods– Jewish and Arab. Each
definitely has its own flavor.  I also love to walk around the
walled Old City.  I haven’t been there yet.  Anyway, I’ve got
some interesting things set up here for the next couple of days, and a
bunch more phone calls to make.  I’ll check in and post some
things here from time to time… But mainly, I’ll be  in “receive”
mode for the next few days.