My Experience with the Tension in Jerusalem (Part 1)

I shot this video on May 13, 2012, while I was in Israel. What you're seeing is a group of Palestinian protesters marching around the "Old City" of Jerusalem. You may notice the young man at the very beginning who looks very unhappy with me, to which I was utterly oblivious as I marveled at this peculiar and foreign spectacle with touristic enthusiasm, completely enthralled by the intimidating roll of the "r" in the Arabic tongue. Before this trip, I was only vaguely aware of the conflict between the Palestinians and the Israelis over Jerusalem, and I'd like to share what I've learned (and some of the pictures I took!)

Image: US State Department

The political entity of Israel as it exists today was founded in 1948 in the aftermath of WWII, and the Palestinians are the people who were displaced by the carving out of the Jewish homeland. Israel expanded its borders during a war in 1967, and this expansion has long been a bone of contention in peace negotiations. Check out the map at right (click to enlarge), where the pre-1967 region is displayed in light tan and the territory acquired in 1967 is offset by a dashed line. You'll notice that the dashed line seems to go directly through the city of Jerusalem, which is indeed the case!

Only part of Jerusalem belonged to Israel up until 1967. Prior to going there, I naively pictured Jerusalem as being one big ancient artifact rather than a modern city. Actually, there is a 1 square kilometer area known as the "Old City" where all of the ancient history is. While it is ancient, it is far from an artifact - the Old City is extremely densely populated by religious Muslims, Jews, and Christians. The Old City is where Jerusalem has historically been confined to, and, prior to the late 1800s, it comprised all of Jerusalem - despite its religious importance, Jerusalem has historically been a small walled settlement, and the current incarnation of the Old City has been standing for about 500 years since it was last destroyed. Over the last century, Jerusalem has grown (mostly westward) outside the high stone walls into a sprawling modern city home to nearly 1 million people.

Outer walls of Old City. Until 1860, everyone
who lived in Jerusalem lived inside these walls.

The modern road shown above circles the exterior of the Old City. There are 7 gates by which you can enter, and only 3 of them can be driven through (most of the streets are either too narrow or too steep for a car, but a couple of throughways exist and there is some limited parking for residents - not nearly enough for the ~40,000 people living there).

I drove through here by accident. It was thrilling.
People live in these buildings on either side.

The protest in the featured video took place on a particularly nice part of the road that traces the outside of the city - a portion which is flat (The Old City is built on a hill, so the road around it goes up and down quite a bit) and also which hugs the wall more closely than in other places. I don't know whether they continued the march all the way around or not - it would be a tough trek at some parts, and traffic would very quickly pile up. They were protesting to have the Old City returned to Palestinian control - the vast majority of its populace is Muslim (over 80%). Besides the displacement of their people, the Palestinians want control of the Old City for the same reason that Israel does - it's an important center of worship for them. In Part 2 of this series, I'll elaborate in both word and photograph on the religious landmarks contained in the Old City that make it the envy of both Jews and Muslims (and, to a lesser extent, Christians).