As a columnist for Haaretz, Israel’s liberal newspaper Nir Hasson writes “The Jerusalem Blog” which explores the fault lines of the city, often daring to go (and write about) people, places, and events most Israelis avoid. He writes about plans to move Jerusalem’s military colleges, secular residents’ opposition to the opening of more Ultra-Orthodox preschools, the re-opening of a cinema in East Jerusalem, the arrest by Jerusalem police of a Palestinian Pretzel vendor, and the suspicions of Ultra-Orthodox activists regarding negotiations over access to the Temple Mount among many other topics that are both granular and existential. Jerusalem is a city of some 850,000 residents, of whom approximately 200,000 are secular Israelis, 350,000 are Ultra-Orthodox and 300,000 are Palestinian. Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat, now in his second five year term, has focused on upgrading infrastructure, increasing cultural activities, improving the business climate and growing tourism. When I was in Jerusalem in early June, as a guest of the Jerusalem Season of Culture, I met with Hasson in a café on Jerusalem’s busy Emek Refaim Street (once Gaza Street, the historic road to Israel’s south and to Gaza) to talk about the state of Jerusalem and the competing agendas of its residents. We began by discussing the state of Israeli- Palestinian relations in Jerusalem, almost a year after the seismic events of last summer.
Nir Hasson: On the one hand, the Palestinians of East Jerusalem have become more radical in pursuing their national agenda. On the other hand, these same people are part of what I call the Israelization of Palestinians. More than ever in the last 50 years, they study at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and go shopping in the Mamilla mall. They work in West Jerusalem. Palestinian women are having less children and are learning more Hebrew than ever before. They want to study the Israeli curriculum in high school and the demand for the Israeli curriculum is greater and greater every year. It's all happening at the same time. How do you explain, on the one hand the Palestinization of the population and on the other hand their Israelization?
The same thing is happening today among those Arabs who live in northern Israel. They have become very Israeli in their daily life. They speak very good Hebrew. They study and work in Tel Aviv… On the other hand, they have become more and more Palestinian in their identity and in how they think about themselves. I mean today if you call them ‘Arab Israeli’, it's an insult.
Tom Teicholz: What should you call them?
Nir Hasson: Palestinians with Israeli citizenship.
Tom Teicholz: In East Jerusalem I went to a number of museums that won’t accept any Israeli State funds, and as a result, they’re in danger of going under.
Nir Hasson: Some of them receive funds from Qatar and from The Palestinian Authority but you are right, they are trying really hard to adhere to a boycott of all things Israel... So even when I went to report on an event in East Jerusalem, I would talk to someone but he didn't want to be quoted by me.
Tom Teicholz: Because of the boycott? Despite the fact that you are journalist for Haaretz, a left liberal newspaper?
Nir Hasson: Yes. The Palestinian citizen I was interviewing said to me: I like what you write and it's all true and it's very good that you write for such a large audience but I cannot speak with you and have you quote me in Hebrew. And he says this in a wonderful Hebrew. It's amazing. Two weeks ago, the Palestinian Authority reopened Al-Quds Cinema. It's the biggest cinema in East Jerusalem. It was closed in 1987 at the time of the 1st intifada. They reopened it and I went there and tried to interview people who were going to the movies. They didn't want to talk to me because even though I am from Haaretz, it is Israeli media.
Tom Teicholz: In East Jerusalem it seems as more young women are wearing the head scarf. They are fashionably dressed and all made-up, but with a tight head scarf not the loose kind one used to see.
Nir Hasson: We have Ramadan beginning next week and more Palestinians than ever before are observing Ramadan. But it's the same thing in the Israeli side as well.
Tom Teicholz: How so?
Nir Hasson: Because the Israeli side has become more and more religious as well.
Tom Teicholz: Back in the ‘80s before the first intifada, the secular Israelis I knew in Jerusalem on a Friday night would go for dinner to the Philadelphia restaurant in East Jerusalem. Saturday everyone had their own special Arab village where they went for lunch. I knew people with businesses in Jaffa street who had silent partners in East Jerusalem or were laundering money for Palestinian businesses.
Nir Hasson: You are speaking about Israelis who went to East Jerusalem. You are not speaking about Arabs who came to West Jerusalem.
Tom Teicholz: That's true.
Nir Hasson: Now, Israelis go less to the east since the 80s because it's become less secure. You still see Jews in the Old City. You won't see Jews in Eizariya in the West Bank or A-Tur [an Arab neighborhood on the Mount of Olives] but the Palestinians come more and more to West Jerusalem. When last summer, the Palestinians boycotted the Malcha Mall, income dropped by 20% .
Tom Teicholz: Is the Palestinian boycott of Israel having a significant impact?
Nir Hasson: In your daily life you can’t boycott half of your city. It doesn't work. It's more symbolic. I'll give you an example. Last night the City of Jerusalem opened it’s Festival of Light, [a popular show of lighted decorations and designs that is staged outside the walls of the Old City]. There was a Palestinian demonstration against the festival because the festival is held in what once was Palestinian territory and it’s very symbolic to them. The Israeli Police came and tried to stop it, tried to take the microphone, and tear gassed them. And then this morning, the same people who were part of the demonstration went to work in West Jerusalem and the port of Israel, including the market. That's exactly what I am trying to say: on the one hand they are becoming more and more Palestinian in their identity, but more and more Israeli in their daily life.
Tom Teicholz: From the point of view of someone who is not only a Jerusalemite but writes about Jerusalem, how do you find Jerusalem today as compared to 5 or 10 years ago?
Nir Hasson: Ten years ago during the 2nd intifada, in 2002 and 2003, that was the worst time for Jerusalem. In 2002, we had about 150 casualties in terror attacks alone in Jerusalem. The city was really down. Since then the situation has improved. The economy, tourism, cultural events, have all increased. Until last year, until July 2014, we had a good run of things improving. However, you always feel that there is an undercurrent and that something is going on. We saw some of it last July. Then in August; and it still hasn't ended. Just because you don't have terror attacks every day, there are still incidents almost every day on the light rail or in East Jerusalem. Still the situation is better than 10 years ago.
Tom Teicholz: Also there was a time when most people who grew up in Jerusalem went to Tel Aviv. Now are they staying or coming back?
Nir Hasson: People returning to live in Jerusalem creates other problems. In the ‘90s, young people went to Tel Aviv. Now the parents who also left Jerusalem for Tel Aviv have retired and come back to Jerusalem. We call them the dead parents because they no longer work. In the ‘90s Jerusalem had a problem in keeping the secular population. Now, it’s less of a problem because Jerusalem has become so big. You have approximately 200,000 secular people in Jerusalem. I mean it's huge. There’s still a problem when Haredim (Ultra Orthodox) move into a secular neighborhood.
Tom Teicholz: Is the problem that they want to close the streets on Friday night and Saturday?
Nir Hasson : Not really. That’s not a problem, They haven’t closed a street in the last 20 years in Jerusalem. However the growth of the Ultra-Orthodox community in Jerusalem] has had a great impact on the character of Jerusalem’s neighbourhoods and is very symbolic. It puts real pressure on the secular population. Subjectively, when the people on the streets, in the public places and in your neighbourhood start to look differently (as the Ultra-Orthodox do), it affects how you feel about your neighbourhood. It doesn’t matter how many Haredim [Ultra-Orthodox Jews] live in your neighbourhood, as a secular resident you just feel the changing character of the place.
Tom Teicholz: On the other hand there are more restaurants open on Friday and Saturday than ever before.
Nir Hasson: That’s right. Today there are more businesses that are open on Saturday than ever before. When I was young, there was no movie theater open on the Sabbath. I remember when the first cinema opened it was in the late 80s. Today, we have about 6 or 7 movie theaters. During August, a new movie center is going to open with 15 screens. All open on the Sabbath. We have more and more businesses, restaurants, and cafes that are open on Saturday. More than ever before because the secular population in Jerusalem feels safer. Since Mayor Barkat has been in office, the secular citizens feel more like it's our city again. The economy is improving and they are earning more.
Tom Teicholz: Mayor Barkat is very focused on increasing tourism.
Nir Hasson: Yes. We had very good tourism the last few years. Not last year, that was a disaster because of the murders in Jerusalem and the war in Gaza but 2012 and 2013 were very good years. Tourists want to eat on Saturday as well. It's become more economically viable – it makes sense for restaurants to be open on the Sabbath.
Tom Teicholz: Jerusalem is just such a bigger city. You used to be able to walk pretty much everywhere.
Nir Hasson: One of the big problems of Jerusalem is, as I see it, that the government built these new neighborhoods. Not because Jerusalem needed new neighborhoods but because the political understanding was that if they didn’t build them, Jerusalem will be divided and pulled apart. That otherwise the international pressure to give away half of Jerusalem would be greater. They built these new neighborhoods very fast without thinking about city planning, about what's good for Jerusalem and the Jerusalemites. It’s an urban disaster as I see it. Today, Jerusalem is almost 1 million residents. It's a really huge city. You are right. It's too big.
Tom Teicholz: It’s noticeable.
Nir Hasson: They build on the hills. I grew up in a green city when you had lots of open space in the hills.
Tom Teicholz: It used to be that when you drove from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, you saw the landscape evolving and changing in different seasons, and you really had this special feeling as you climbed up the hills to enter Jerusalem. Now it's just a highway.
Nir Hasson: Right. It’s going to be even worse. A new Tel Aviv-Jerusalem highway is about to open. I said it to the planners, I think the identity of Jerusalem is very important, and you are destroying it. You have to think about it. They will tell you that a city of a million people needs a good highway. Well, I guess they are right.
Tom Teicholz: Also once the new high speed train between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv,(scheduled to open in 2018) makes it a 20 minute trip that will change things too.
Nir Hasson: I don’t oppose the high speed train. It’s a good public transportation project and an important one for Jerusalem. I am not sure, however, that it will change things for the better. Many people in Jerusalem work in government and at the Hebrew University, but they actually don't want to live in Jerusalem. They want to live in Tel Aviv. Now when they have the train, they will leave Jerusalem and just spend their money in Tel Aviv. That's what happened to Beersheba. Beersheba, when they connected the train between Tel Aviv and Beersheba, all the professors from the university just left Beersheba.
If you come to Jerusalem only for work, or if you feel the best culture and the best food is elsewhere, you may prefer to live in Tel Aviv and to take the train to Jerusalem. So, in the end, Jerusalem will have to put up a stronger fight against the pull of living in Tel Aviv.
Tom Teicholz: Another thing I noticed on this visit is that even at the holy places like The Kotel (The Western Wall) and on The Temple Mount, everyone is louder about expressing their beliefs. There’s no longer any space for quiet contemplation or prayer.
Nir Hasson: Right, because the Western wall that stands between the Palestinians and Israel has became a religious wall. The political fight between us and the Palestinians has become a religious fight and it’s become very, very big issue in Jerusalem particularly regarding the Temple Mount. There is no doubt that the Temple Mount issue added fuel to the fire of the violence that we saw last year.
Tom Teicholz: Even going back to Ariel Sharon.
Nir Hasson: What happened in the Kotel is that the government has merged the secular and the national with the religious. I mean the Kotel had two identities, as a religious place, but also as a national place that we occupy... There's an Israeli flag there. This is where we do ceremonies with soldiers et cetera. However, the Kotel area has also been transformed into an Orthodox synagogue actually. I mean if you are a woman, you won't feel very comfortable there.
Tom Teicholz: People at the Kotel now feel compelled to say their prayers out loud, And take selfies. And have throngs of bar-mitzvahs. The whole experience was a really big disappointment from how things used to be at The Western Wall.
Nir Hasson: I cannot stand being in the Kotel during the summer because there's no trees there and the floor is so white. You cannot open your eyes there. It's so hot.
Tom Teicholz: And beyond that, the logistics of the parking lot with the tour buses, and the tunnel and traffic going by outside. It’s all a little much.
Nir Hasson: You're right. I don't like the Kotel at all.
Tom Teicholz: Mayor Barkat just released his five year plan that focuses on increasing culture as a driver of the economy and of tourism. Is that realistic?
Nir Hasson: It's realistic for West Jerusalem, as long as we don't have any terrible attacks in Jerusalem. But it's all built on very unstable land.
Tom Teicholz: Does that mean that you think West Jerusalem will remain Israeli, but East Jerusalem will be the capital of Palestine?
Nir Hasson: No. Mayor Barkat said his plan is for all Jerusalem… There's no scenario where East Jerusalem becomes a Palestinian capital separate from West Jerusalem. At the same time there is no scenario where the Palestians in East Jerusalem and the International Community will accept Israeli rule over East Jerusalem. After all, Jerusalem, is the only capital in the world that has no embassies in it.
Tom Teicholz: What will be the status of Jerusalem?
Nir Hasson: It's impossible because sovereignty is very, very problematic. It’s a logistical nightmare. If you have a car accident on the Number One Road [the road that traverses Jerusalem], who do you call? The Palestinian police or the Israeli police? Who will write the report? You have to be very clear about it.
If Jerusalem became one united city, under a special regime, where the police is actually like the United Nations police, what happens when l go to work in Tel Aviv? Do I have to take out my passport to leave Jerusalem? It's very, very problematic because there's all kinds of scenarios. On the one hand, I can't see a divided Jerusalem because by now it's reunited; on the other hand I can't see East and West Jerusalem staying together under full Israeli sovereignty. So, actually, I don't know.
Tom Teicholz: How do you see the future?
Nir Hasson: In two years, we will have the 50th year anniversary celebration of our reunited Jerusalem. But I don't think this situation is stable. It's changing. I don't know if I will live to see the day the city will be totally reunited. Yet, I don't think it will be redivided by war. Perhaps it will be divided by Palestinian sovereignty. Maybe only my children will see how Jerusalem resolves itself.
