The Explosive Plurality

"I'm really not safe, and before leaving the house I think twice."
"We are not calm, and we hope there is going to be an end to this and that it is not just a beginning."
Sara Levi, 22, Jerusalem mother

"Business is weak today. It was worse yesterday."
"People are afraid. Can you blame them?"
Itzik Shimon, vegetable vendor, Mahane Yehuda market, Jerusalem

An ultra-Orthodox Jewish worshipper prays at the scene of an attack -- by two Palestinians on Israeli worshippers -- at a synagogue in the Har Nof neighbourhood of Jerusalem, on November 18, 2014 (AFP Photo/Jack Guez)

 

"We are angry because we feel lost."
"What has happened in the Al-Aqsa Mosque is just the explosion of years of suffering."
Mahmoud Ammouri, teacher, Arab Shuafat, east Jerusalem

"Palestinians in the city feel that the Palestinian Authority, the Arabs and the Muslims are neglecting them, while Israel is targeting them."
"They don't know to whom they belong."
Zakaria Qak, national security teacher, Al-Quds University

A masked Palestinian hands out sweets as he celebrates an attack on a Jerusalem synagogue during a rally in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, on November 18, 2014 (AFP Photo/Said Khatib)

The latter two represent the educated among the Israeli-Arab population of Jerusalem, a city divided in its fundamental trust and belief in their rights and obligations toward the Arab sector by the Israeli government, in the Jewish sector by the Arab demographic. Between both is the government, from the municipal to the state level, attempting to serve both while juggling the security issues that continue to plague a society unable to gain cohesion in a common unit of achieving social unity.

After the recent spate of attacks on Israelis representing the Jewish majority by Israelis representing the Arab minority -- spurred on by the apparatus of the Palestinian leaders' propaganda arms and the inciting messages of the leadership itself, the forever-aggravating issues of victimhood and aggression, one spawning the other interchangeably in role reversals and reruns of atrocities and justice feeding on the pathology of 'suffering' -- all is quiet.

If one discounts the episodic after-Friday worship gatherings of young Palestinians hurtling rocks and incendiaries at police attempting to restore order, that is. But in the open air marketplaces and on the streets, at the train stations and bus stops there is quiet, vigilant silence. The cautionary vigilance of expectation and fear does have a habit of riveting the mind, excluding the necessity of chatter.

Palestinians seethe with anger, because this is their usual state of aggrievement, in a population that suffers the effect of broad-based limitations imposed upon them as a result of the disequilibrium that rises when a minority among them succumb to the psychotic allure of committing violence against Jews because authorities they trust tell them that all Jews are the 'enemy' who oppress and disadvantage Palestinians.

Waiting at light-rail train stops has become an exercise in frantic suspense. Eyes look about feverishly to detect cars veering off where they should not be expected to, in a normal society. The generally shared rage over limitations placed on the younger demographic of Israeli Palestinians permitted to pray at the Noble Sanctuary because of their penchant of throwing rocks at any Jews who dare to ascend the Temple Mount convinces that a plot is afoot to rob them of their sacred place of worship.

Palestinian youths and Israeli police engage in those provocative theatres of taunt and response. Israel would dearly love to preserve their ancient city of Jerusalem undivided, making it accessible to all for whom it represents a holy site regardless of their religion. Palestinians are intent on carving it into two; for themselves the ancient Judaic sanctuary of the Temples of Solomon, to be approached only by Muslims, unavailable to Jews, whose presence desecrates the Noble Sanctuary.