The Tram
There is a tramway (tight rail) in Jerusalem that joins the Palestinian/ Arab East Jerusalem and the Jewish remainder.
Jerusalem Light Rail (Wikipedia Commons)
The Trams were designed and built by a French company and are very modern. The tramway features an architectural suspension bridge that has come to symbolise it.
We needed to use it to to get to the Bus Station to go to Nazareth and had a trial run to other places of interest to work out how to buy tickets and so on. A helpful secular man showed us how to negotiate the ticket vending machine that appeared to have instructions only in Hebrew and Arabic in order to reach instructions in other languages. We might have expected French at least!
But like almost everything here the Tram is steeped in controversy. A Muslim woman we talked to at some length told us that it used to be possible to use unexpired tickets to travel to work because other Muslims would give them to each other when they got off the tram. But this has been stopped by inspectors and heavy fines. So now she has to buy two full price tickets each day, whereas Jewish Israelis can purchase a weekly or monthly ticket and travel for a fraction of the price. To do that too she would need a credit card and/or ID Card that Muslims are reluctant to have as it makes them vulnerable to the Israeli authorities. Perhaps she is here illegally as a result of her religion? She sounded as if she is hiding-out somewhere - a bit like Anne Frank in her garret.
I looked the tram up on the Web and this is what I found:
Wall Street Journal, 2009 Reporting on the Tram's construction:
In Jerusalem, Arabs and Jews Finally Agree ...The PLO fumes against an "illegal Zionist project" it says is designed to consolidate Israeli control over Arab districts seized after the Six-Day War in 1967. Ultraorthodox opponents have their own set of complaints. They worry about easy mingling of the sexes at tram stops and on the tram and say the light rail system will disturb a network of so-called "kosher buses," a privately run service that keeps male and female passengers separate. In a letter to city hall last year, seven rabbis complained that their followers will have to pass through secular areas "where a God-fearing person would not set foot." In Arab quarters of Jerusalem, meanwhile, supporters of the PLO raise more concrete issues: Will it be safe to get on a tram used by Israeli settlers? Nabil Issa, a shopkeeper whose store looks out on a heap of tram-related rubble, curses the project for disrupting his business and thinks that riding with Israelis will be "too risky." Some Jewish settlers, he says, can be aggressive but he's more worried that the tram will become a target for Palestinian militants. "It is not safe for my family to ride with Israelis," says Mr. Issa. |
Since then we have returned to Sydney only to see on television a car careering along the platform of the Ammunition Hill tram stop, where we stood, killing a child and injuring eight. The Palestinian driver was shot 'trying to escape'.
The previous day (October 22), a few hours apart in real time, a car was backed through a Neutral Bay coffee shop in Sydney injuring seven people. When the TV cameras arrived the shaken driver was being commiserated with by some of the victims of the terrible accident. They were all taken of to hospital for observation.
A tale of two cities.
Since that time the Jerusalem driver has been identified as a Palestinian terrorist, as well he may have been, and the city was in lock-down as recriminations fly on both sides.
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This was the news on ABC Radio on the morning of October 28 The Israelis say Abdul Rahman Shaloudi was a terrorist who deliberately drove his car into a crowd of at a tram stop last week. A baby and a 20 year old woman were killed. The driver was shot at the scene by police and died later. "Thank God. Thank God that my son is a martyr," his mother says at his funeral. "He had a smile on his face; finally he is happy now. Thank God." There've been nightly clashes in Jerusalem and the West Bank ever since last week's incident. In one demonstration, a 14 year old Palestinian boy was shot and killed by Israeli forces. In this environment of anger and unrest, Israel's prime minister has reportedly moved to advance plans for 1,000 new units in two different settlements in East Jerusalem. "There is a public consensus that Israel has the full right to build in the Jewish neighbourhoods in Jerusalem and in the settlement blocks," Benjamin Netanyahu told the Knesset. "All the governments of Israel in the past 50 years have done so. It is also clear to the Palestinians that these places will remain under Israeli sovereignty in any future arrangement," he said. "The French build in Paris, the English build in London, Israelis build in Jerusalem." As he was speaking, the Palestinian prime minister Rami Hamdallah was making a rare visit to the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem's old city: the site the Israelis call the Temple Mount. "All the Israeli violations, all these settlements, everything that the occupation is doing in this area is illegitimate", he declared. "It is confirmed by the judgement of history that any occupation in the world has to end. God willing this occupation will end and there will be an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital." |
Addendum:
After I wrote this, running down Israelis with a car has become a new fashion among Palestinians in Jerusalem and has happened twice again, in the street and at a bus stop, an iron-bar wielding perpetrator being shot on the spot.
We asked the Muslim woman we befriended what she thought the resolution to the obvious tensions might be. She told us God will bring peace. Later our Christian cab driver/guide said exactly the same thing. A lot of people here believe in prophecy or in the will and ultimate plan of God, as obscure as that seems here. A lot of people seem to be very scared.
No one Jewish has yet expressed this view but I'm sure they might. They seem to be preparing for a fight. There are Jewish kids in uniform everywhere, many of them girls, carrying weapons and live rounds.
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Kids in Uniform - Ready for a Fight - if G_d wills
In the Old City weapons are more or less restricted to the Jewish quarter. In the Muslim quarter, around our hotel, there is just an occasional police person with a sidearm. At night at least one passage that we attempted to use between the quarters was blocked by gates and armed guards.
We are here for three more days then back to Germany where there is absolutely no sense of danger and no one is carrying guns. How things change!