The security fence winds over the hill toward the Dead Sea.
Jerusalem has a unique architectural unity, much more so than other beautiful, ancient places that are now modern cities. There’s nothing monotonous about the building styles. The wonderful coherence comes from the golden, cream-colored Jerusalem stones that are the structure and facade of everything from the old city wall, built in the 1500′s by Sultan Sulieman the Magnificient, to the newest office building or hotel.
But the unity ends with the stones, and the divisions are everywhere. From our regular vantage point at Succat Hallel, the security fence, erected by Israel to stop the terrorist violence that occured during the Second Intifada, winds like a silver ribbon from Jerusalem over the hills in the direction of the Dead Sea. It has accomplished it’s objective. We, like the people who live here all the time, ride buses and eat in restaurants without constant anxiety about terrorists. This wasn’t the case the last time we stayed in Jerusalem or when we visited Gaza and could hear the rocket warnings.
The security fence looks different up close and from the Palestinian perspective. We saw the wall near the Qalandiya Checkpoint, where Hasan, our taxi driver friend, pointed out “the longest letter in the world.” It’s written in large letters on the wall. As you drive along, you get the gist of it without really being able to read it. The substance is that the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories is like the apartheid system that has finally fallen in South Africa. People from all over the world have come to paint pictures and write messages in support of the Palestinian cause and to plead for justice.
But the ongoing Israei-Palestinian conflict is just one of the divisions. The rift between secular and religious Israelis is deep. Many secular Israelis regard ultra-orthodox Jews, a rapidly growing sector that holds great political and receives massive subsidies while denying the legitimacy of the State of Israel, with as much contempt as they regard the Palestinian Arabs. We talked with a Palestinian man who said that he hates the Druze, an Arab subgroup that supports the Israeli government. The Bedouins, also Arabs, played an important role in the military victories that made the Jewish State possible, but they are discriminated against.
Palestinian Christians, an increasingly smaller group since there has been a huge outmigration of Christians, have a difficult time in the midst of a Muslim majority. And Messianic Jews, a group which is growing more rapidly than any time since the first century, are not considered to be Jews by religious Jews and are rejected and sometimes persecuted. No wonder this is such an interesting place!
