On the second Friday of Ramadan at first light, the army and police began to arrive and take up their positions at the gates to the Old City and at every street leading to Al Aqsa Mosque. This is where it had begun this time - the Al Aqsa Intifada - and where until last week no man younger than 45 could go to pray on a Friday. Israel had known that this was where things would blow in Jerusalem and Jerusalem was the one place they had wanted to keep quiet and out of the headlines.
At the gates to the city the showing of identification began. It had been announced that any Palestinian who did not live within the Old City would be kept out of it but older men and women were usually not required to show identification. Businessmen who previously had trouble getting in on Friday to open their shops got in without a problem. There was little rage and a weird civility prevailed. The situation was easing.
No identification was required to get into the mosque. This had been hateful. Jews keeping people out of their house of worship. The showing of identification by men who looked under forty. Of quiet spectacles this had been bad and degrading to everyone. Healthy men deemed toothless let in together with women, children and old men leaning heavily on canes. Since the Intifada had started the age had gone down to 40, then 35, and then back to 45, and had become the barometer of the conflict. Now this had been eliminated. If a Muslim had gotten past checkpoints and then within the walls of the Old City he could get into Al Aqsa. It was the Muslim holy month and no one was kept out at the entrance. A fraction of those who would have come could come, but 40,000 people were in the mosque.
It was a fine day. When prayers ended young men previously barred came out with young children on their shoulders or held by their hands. The exiting crowd looked less angry than fans leaving a stadium where their team had lost.
The spot where a teenager fell becomes a
shrine to the Palestinian cause, even before
the blood dries.
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Then, after a while, a few rocks were thrown. I was hit on the collarbone by a rock and had a brief meditation on stoning as a form of execution. A few rocks had been thrown the previous week also and a couple of photographershad brought helmets but it didn't seem like it would keep up this time either.
But it did. It built and built until the police and troops charged down the Via Dolorosa and by then it had somehow gotten big enough that they thought better of trying to clear the square. I crossed over to the Israeli side and was hit in the face with another rock, The Israelis retreated back down the street and the young men - only one or two of whom could possibly have been 30 and 80 percent of whom were under 20 - were emboldened and kept up for hours, building a barricade and setting it on fire and risking their lives to get within range for a rock to be more than symbolic.
Rocks. A wall was smashed and then broken up to get rocks. A woman arrived with her daughter and basket - containing eight rocks. Six or eight of the rock throwers asked me if I'd been hit by a bullet or a rock. When I said a rock every one of them apologized and kissed me on the head! Observers with notepads or cameras are well liked here when not taking pictures of uncovered faces but that does not entirely explain it.
Finally there was no more energy to demolish walls for rocks and every one went home except for a dead 16-year-old boy with an American passport (who was supposed to go back to Miami on Thursday) and those whose blood now filled a corner. His blood was used to write and redden hands, and the corner was quickly turned into a shrine. Perhaps a couple of the few taken away by the ambulance didn't go home last night either - and it will change nothing and Jerusalem will probably
be quiet again this week, and next week the age will be back up to 45.
How it began this time is the open question. Ariel Sharon, leader of the right and the Israeli most detested by Palestinians, visited the magnificent Dome of the Rock mosque by the Western Wall - with 40 police and soldiers according to someone in the Israeli Press Office and 1,500 police and soldiers according to Palestinian press sources. The stories as to what happened after that are so conflicting that it's hard to even guess what really happened. Rocks seem to have been thrown over from the mosque onto The Wall, endangering Jewish men at prayer. Bullets, and the first Arab deaths. Now, more than two months later, more than 300 are dead and thousands are wounded and there is hatred on both sides that both sides agree is new.
Most Israelis deny Sharon is the cause, including those who don't like him. It's too painful to think he is. This is a Palestinian-built bonfire and Sharon a mere match. Maybe. A week before Sharon went to Dome of the Rock something called Palestine Media Watch had described Palestine Broadcasting Corporation programming as having "reached unprecedented levels (of violence and hate) this Summer... to the point where the atmosphere is as of on the eve of the outbreak of war." It maintained that normal television - children's programs, movies, etc. - had disappeared. The Palestinians deny incitement. People had lost interest in pretending things were going forward and the media perhaps reflected that. Forty, fifteen hundred. The truth is a slippery fish in the Middle East.
Everyday reality is, however, easy to grasp: Jerusalem is empty of visitors and the people who live here are worried about everything. Arab cab drivers at Jaffa Gate stand around and talk to each other, waiting to take the odd fare into the Western part of the City. Here and at Damascus Gate Arabs who do not usually take cabs, do. They do not feel safe either on the streets of the New City or on the bus. Israelis feel equally unsafe coming to most of the Old City, much less East Jerusalem outside its walls. When I went to the Rockefeller Archaeological Museum on a perfect weekend afternoon, my daughter and I were not only the only people there but were the only people who had been there all day.
The situation is not, however, tense in a casually discernable way. Anyone wanting to visit Jerusalem - especially the Old City - should visit it now. There is no hostility towards foreigners, including Americans, none whatsoever. The churches are almost empty - and it is possible to feel the streets. People have the time and the need to talk. A rug merchant will sell below his cost. Even the hotels are empty and religious groups have not had sufficient faith not to cancel their tours and the few that haven't will probably cancel now. The Holy Land this Christmas is interesting. There will be room in the inn.
I had moved into an Arab Quarter in the Old City a month before the current crisis began and almost left. Too crowded. Now it is possible to imagine the Crusaders here and the city Aldous Huxley described as the "slaughterhouse of the religions" and Graham Greene called the "survivor of the world." The city is safe now from its usual flab and one can experience it a little bit. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre can be seen in all its tawdriness and passion. There are no American Bar Mitzvah boys providing comedy at the Wall.
I have had not one bad unsought moment and I walk the streets - all of them - sometimes for hours a day.
I did, however, have an insane vision inspired by the bizarre silliness that non-combatants are at risk here. Once a week I take a shave. I went into a barber shop I didn't know. The owner was giving a haircut in the chair near to me and had lived in the States. When I told him I was from New York he asked if I was Jewish. My daughter was there: "Yes." And for a moment I realized I'd see my throat cut before I felt it - the blood red as Santa Claus coming through the lather. The man shaving me continued to do so as the owner and I discussed what was likely to happen here next.
