Word: jerusalem
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...city, the divisions have exacerbated the bitterness of 40 years of Israeli rule. Through a combination of purposeful neglect by Israelis and a refusal by Arabs to deal with municipal authorities (doing so might compromise the phantom sovereignty of Palestine, Arab leaders say), the eastern side of Jerusalem is withering like an unhealthy Siamese twin...
Arab refusal to cooperate with the Israeli authorities has some odd consequences. In a Jerusalem telephone book, for example, maps of Arab neighborhoods are blank, like unexplored parts of the Amazon in the 19th century. That's because no Arab sits on the municipal committee that chooses street names. On the rare occasion when the committee bothers with East Jerusalem, it is to irritate the Arabs by naming a few streets after Israeli war heroes. Mail is seldom delivered there, and having no street names adds to the Arabs' perception that in Israeli society they are either invisible, nonexistent...
Arabs might stand a better chance of improving East Jerusalem if they ran for office in local elections. They don't. Palestinian leaders in the West Bank warn that casting ballots is like collaborating with the enemy. So when the city council elections were last held, in 2003, only 4,000 of 125,000 Arabs voted. As a result, East Jerusalem's residents pay 30% of total municipal taxes, but they get back services worth only 5% of the city's budget. Israeli courts have said the municipality should add 1,400 new classrooms in the East...
...Arabs, it is axiomatic that their schools would be better--and their health services, their street-cleaning, their roads--if they had greater control over their own part of the city. At the same time, nobody wants to see barbed wire cutting Jerusalem in two, as was the case from 1948 to 1967. Those in East Jerusalem look to the Israeli side for work opportunities and health care. The mere rumor that Israelis and Palestinians might reach an accord in Annapolis prompted a flood of applicants for Israeli citizenship, but only a lucky few will get it; most East Jerusalem...
...city is ever to be legally divided--while maintaining its identity as a shared space--there are lessons to be learned from the thousands of Arabs who have figured out how to weave their way through Jerusalem's web of invisible barriers. They often dress like trendy young Israelis and, at army checkpoints, switch the car radio to Israeli music and speak a few words of Hebrew to soldiers. "I live in two different worlds," says Ammar Obaidat, who rose from gardener to head elephant keeper at the Tisch Family Zoological Gardens, "and I have to keep a balance between...