The Israeli capital hears from all perspectives on the day that formerly offered a singular view
For the Jews of Jerusalem, June, 1967, was a miraculous moment. After months of threats and fear, war broke out: Jordanian forces attacked Jerusalem, pockmarking buildings, wounding citizens, sending women with small infants scurrying into basements with formula in their hands.
The much feared battle lasted only six days, and at the end of it the border that cut through Jerusalem for nineteen of its 3,000 year history, from 1948, when Israel was established, until 1967, vanished. Arabs from east Jerusalem wandered, dazed, from the Old City’s Jaffa Gate up Jaffa Road and stood, staring, at the traffic lights on the corner of King George V Street, itself a memento of an earlier Mandatory era.
Reuven Abergil, who in 1967 was a young social rebel in west Jerusalem struggling for the rights of Sephardic Jews, recalled how “in 1967, when the borders stopped existing, the first thing we did—all of us—we raced to the neighborhoods of east Jerusalem and to the Old City, not out of curiosity or nostalgia.”
Speaking with The Media Line at one of a wave of over 50 “alternative” events that sprung up throughout the city this year, and referring to the group of friends and activists he ran with at that time, Abergil said, “In a very short time we became friends with them, we played with them, we worked with them, we joined with them. That was for me Jerusalem. I didn’t see it from side of a conqueror. I still have a lot of trouble with the concept of sovereignty. I don’t know how to describe it accurately. Our leaders mumble and stumble every time they try to describe it. But I know many Jerusalemites who have not stepped foot in east Jerusalem.”
Jerusalem was not the only place transformed by the so-called “Six Day War of 1967.” At the same time Israeli forces took east Jerusalem and the Old City, the Israel Defense Forces also conquered the West Bank of the Jordan River, in what many still refer to as “the Israeli occupation.”
The two conquests that came together as the joyful, apolitical commemorations that characterized the first years of Jerusalem Day celebrations turned more victorious, lost the citizens of Jerusalem and were taken over by groups of youths from Israeli communities located on West Bank land claimed for statehood by the Palestinians. In recent years some of the more rowdy elements were reported to have whom were alleged to have carried out acts of violence and vandalism that Arab residents of the Muslim Quarter of the Old City termed “terrifying.”
In 2015, women wearing Muslim headscarves were hit by rocks hurled by marchers racing down the Old City road closest to the Muslim holy sites and shop keepers who had not shuttered their stalls were beaten or hit by glue bombs.
This year, to heighten matters, Sunday June 5th fell on the eve of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Morning rose with police lining each of the city’s main arteries and tension tangible in the burning sun. The moment Ramadan begins is determined at the last minute by Saudi religious authorities who examine the stage of the moon’s cycle. Nir Hasson, the Jerusalem correspondent for the left-wing Israeli daily Haaretz, commented that “never has the Israeli police prayed for the outcome of an incidental decision in Saudi Arabia.”
In the end, the Saudi seers came through, and at about 7pm, as the formal march was winding down, it was determined that Ramadan will start on Monday night.
After years of stunned embarrassment, liberal Jerusalem flexed its muscles this year, with a menu of alternative celebrations: a group of civic bodies having organized dozens of events marking Jerusalem Day in a manner inclusive of all Jews (secular, religious, and more religious), Muslims, Christians, refugees, visitors and others. Members of a movement called “Jerusalemites” participated in a “march of families” ahead of the strictly policed “parade of flags.”
Lily Halperin, a Jerusalem resident outraged by the nationalist march through the Muslim Quarter, took Nevo Erlich, the eight-year-old son of a friend of hers, and joined an alternative march through the Muslim Old City, distributing flowers and smiles.
Shmuel Drilman, who participated in an evening panel in a west Jerusalem coffee house, said that although Jerusalem-born, “I’ve only lived in ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods, one of Jerusalem’s cantons, that’s all I know.”
“I really detest Yom Yerushalayim,” Evan Kent told The Media Line, using the Hebrew name for Jerusalem Day. “Not as a celebration of Jerusalem and the reunification and liberation of the city. But I hate what the day has become: a day of blatant racism, of sloganeering, jingoism, brutality, and incitement instead of just sitting in the house with loud music playing and eating a bag of chips,” Kent, a Los Angeles cantor who immigrated to Israel three years ago with his husband, Rabbi Don Goor, said “I’m seeking out alternative events this week that express Jerusalem as a city of tolerance, pluralism, and hope.”
Ahmed, a young man from the Mount of Olives area of Jerusalem, who declined to state his full name, said that “without blaming anyone, people think it’s a unified city but the contrary is true. We are separated. On the Palestinian side, we need the desire to change. We have to change our politics and the one who lays down the rules is the ruler, not us, so I’d ask you,” he said, speaking to The Media Line but addressing Israeli Jews, “to take the hand of he who does want the change on Palestinian side. We can’t change things alone because we are not in power.”
Brachi Weinstein, the producer of the multi-cultural commemoration of Jerusalem Day on behalf of the Jerusalem Intercultural Community Center, told The Media Line she was surprised by the response rate of groups she approached. “We expected to be running 15, maybe 20 events today, definitely not 50,” she said. “Kol Ohaveha, a group of artists in town, got together with professionals and posted a video calling on all artists to join in. Religious youth groups joined us. City Hall’s youth wing. People were calling us with private initiatives, wanting to join in, until the last few days.”
Mazen Shweiki, the mukhtar of the mixed Jerusalem neighborhood of Abu Tur, spoke at a west Jerusalem gathering at a popular café, Carousella. “We are considered a minority in our own city,” he said, listing a long line of discriminatory practices east Jerusalemites claim to suffer. “I’m a resident here but not a citizen. I have an ID card but if I move, I lose the right to live in my own city.”
“Everything is political here,” he told The Media Line. “Municipal services are lacking, the education ministry doesn’t respond to us, the government doesn’t see us. If you look back to 1967, there has been no progress, no growth in Abu Tor, a single school built. The neighborhood used to have 2,000 residents and today it has 20,000, but we receive no building permits. When we wanted to expand into an empty lot the city declared it untouchable ‘green land.’”
“You have to understand that the Palestinians here need things to be made easier for them, not harder. Try standing on line at the Ministry of Interior if you have an Arab name and see how you are treated.”
“Still, he said, I remain optimistic. I hope and think that things can improve. I don’t want to talk politics or about our aspirations for a Palestinian East Jerusalem, but optimism between people.”