July 9, 2003
Following classes today, nearly all of the students in Birzeit's Palestine and Arabic Studies Program made our way to Ramallah together, through the crowds migrating home through Surda, and back to the Popular Arts Center for a lecture that had been arranged especially for us.
Dr. Salim Tamari is the director of the Institute of Jerusalem Studies and professor at Birzeit University. A social historian, he shared with us some of his research into Jerusalem's modernization over the past couple centuries. In particular, he contends that Jerusalem's religious segregation as we know it (particularly in the Old City quarters) is a relatively recent phenomenon, with its roots in modernization and gentrification under the Ottomans. Up to the 1850's, Jews and Christians and Muslims were living largely side by side within the Old City's walls. As economic, political and social forces of modernization began to take root in the Ottoman empire, and the middle classes grew, a movement of gentrification outside the city walls (first especially to the north and west) took place. (We'd note that it seems not unlike suburban sprawl, when people with the means leave "inner" cities). And, as today, it was the poorer residents who were left within the walls. The landscape of Jerusalem began to show a marked class separation between those within and without the city walls, and, as time went on, a religious separation took form among those remaining within the city walls.
Jerusalem’s Old City, looking east toward the Mount of Olives.
By the 1920s, especially under British Mandate rule, the Old City had largely taken the segregated form we are familiar with today: the Jewish Quarter, Muslim Quarter, Christian Quarter, and the Armenian Quarter. Those "boundaries" have been encroached recently, mostly through the selling of tenant rights. Tenants in the Old City have nearly as many rights as the property owners. Thus, they can sell the rights to live in an apartment, regardless of ownership. That's how folks like Ariel Sharon have come to live in the city's Muslim Quarter - not by buying the property, but by buying the right to be a tenant there!
We also learned that the official status of Jerusalemite (those with this status have different rights, and pay different taxes than those without it) was assigned to Palestinians in one night. Israel declared a curfew, and those who were on one side of a boundary (a virtual boundary - a line on a map, at the time not a visible boundary on the ground) were given Jerusalem IDs - the rest got West Bank IDs. Some Jerusalemites were on the wrong side that night and were made West Bankers, while some West Bankers ended up Jerusalemites. It was a fascinating lecture, and we felt privileged to have him speak to us.
Afterwards, Elizabeth went with some of the other students for drinks and dinner in Ramallah - a treat we don't get in Zababdeh, thus we are taking advantage of it. Another watering hole for the kit-kat young up-and-coming crowd (the term "kit-kat," for whatever reason, roughly translates to yuppie), this place had a wide selection of drinks (Elizabeth forewent anything stronger than a mint lemonade) and decent French onion soup.
Meanwhile, Marthame went down to Jerusalem for an errand. He passed through the Qalandia checkpoint and caught the shared taxi to Jerusalem. He swung by the Latin Patriarchate to pick up some of the paperwork for our Zababdeh student who is trying to get his visa ready to study in Chicago in the fall. By the time Marthame got to Qalandia, though, the Birzeit taxis had stopped running - it was about 6:00, so he went in to Ramallah and met up with friends at Stones' Restaurant for some beverages (iced mocha? In the West Bank!) before heading home via Surda.
Once on the other side, Marthame ran into some of our fellow students. Apparently the soldiers had been through a few minutes ago, one of them taking a taxi for a joyride then announcing that the checkpoint was going to be lengthened. Who knows what'll come next - you can never tell.