Daily Life in Jerusalem? ‘Difficult’ and ‘Intense’ for Arab and Jew<br />You hear it in the way people talk — "The Arabs," "The Jews" — about people with whom they have been sentenced to share a tiny patch of soil atop a ridge with no strategic value, over which the world has been battling for thousands of years,<br />and negotiating on and off for decades, with no end in sight.<br />Once there’s a little bit of balagan" — chaos — "between Jews and Arabs, Jews won’t go in my taxi, and Arabs won’t go to the mall.<br />Back on the light rail, Rina Pure, who grew up in Acre, on the Israeli coast, said she bought her apartment in the French Hill neighborhood<br />of Jerusalem years ago, "but now half the people are religious," and it was getting to be too much for her to stay.<br />There’s no difference — we’re one country — but it’s Israeli Arabs, or Palestinians,<br />or Israeli Jews." For Jerusalemites, stress is something to learn to live with.<br />It builds up, day by day, culminating in the release and rest of the Sabbath — a one-day weekend<br />that religious Jews build their lives around, and secular Jews and Arabs make the most of.<br />Tomer Aser said that We all believe there’s something sacred in this city, but it’s too difficult,<br />The Red Line — the city’s only line, so far — begins in West Jerusalem at Mount Herzl, a monument<br />to Israel’s origins, home of Yad Vashem and of Israel’s national and military cemeteries.<br />And if I go into a religious neighborhood and they find out I’m Arab, they’ll stone my car." Mr. Ziada drives past a vacant property he says his family owns,<br />but where he says the Israeli authorities have barred him from building.
