CLOSE-UP Jerusalem Re-Divided The wall around the Old City is, once again, a wall. It protects the differences that the unification of Jerusalem — which occurred 21 years ago Sunday — was supposed to have overcome. LEON WIESELTIER Special to The Jewish News J - erusalem — The first thing you feel, in Jerusalem in the period of the Palestinian up- rising, is the new role of the wall. Not the Western Wall; its odd position as the most direct access to the Jewish godhead is probably set, well, in stone, except that Jews are not streaming toward it anymore, because the Palestinians have come, once again, between the Jews and their sacred geography. No, I refer to the wall around the Old City. It has been transformed ut- terly. It was, since June 1967, no wall at all. It spoke not of politics, but of history, of a distant, florid past that was a kind of resort area for Jewish historical consciousness. The wall held the Jewish treasure (and not on- ly the Jewish treasure) in its un- breachable embrace. The monstrously durable rock seemed to be doing our work, protect- ing our riches. No more. The wall is, since December 1987, once again a wall. It keeps you out, it wards you off, it bars passage between peoples, cultures, traditions. It protects the dif- ferences that the unification of Jerusalem was supposed to have over- come. As I stare at the Old City across Gehenna, it seems to have turned its back On me. From afar, the silence of the precincts within the wall is deafening. The din that used to be heard from far away, that seemed to signify a happy, anarchic, congested mingling of Israelis and Palestinians, a noisy fac- similie of peace created by commerce, is gone. I was advised by acquaintances Leon Wieseltier is the literary editor of The New Republic. 24 FRIDAY, MAY 13, 1988 not to venture inside the wall, but after a week of fear I rejected the ad- vice. I strode, on an appropriately cloudy afternoon, with a nervous Israeli friend, through the Jaffa Gate. The streets and alleys of the Old City were deserted, except for some deter- mined haredim, befuddled tourists, vigilant soldiers. The casbah may as well have been under curfew. The shops were all shuttered, ex- cept a few hours a day, so that Palesti- nians will not be forced by their own economic boycott to buy their basic commodities from Israelis. The hours are determined by the clandestine leadership of the intifada, as the Palestinian uprising is called, which changes the schedule as it wills. The new schedule travels swiftly through the Palestinian community: only one of the many signs of the unprece- dented self-discipline of that community. A few old Arab women hawk a few small pieces of Arab embroidery on the low steps leading into the market. Israeli soldiers patrol in pairs, and Israeli security officers walk alone, in smart leather jackets just tight enough to betray the outlines of a pistol. I struck up a conversation with one such security officer. He surprised me with his insistence that we discuss contemporary Israeli literature. I'm afraid I was a little too rattled by the ghostly surroundings to stick to the subject. I was struck by the weird, ex- traordinary cultivation of Israeli society; I don't imagine that a securi- ty officer in, say, Chile would care for my views on Neruda, or have any of his own. But I was not allowed to bask long in my admiration. I was becoming too animated, he warned, and Hebrew heard in the Muslim quarter was an invitation to trouble. He suggested that I repair to the Jewish quarter, or better still to the lush safety of Yemin Moshe, where I was lodged. Before I traveled to Jerusalem last month, a friend who had recently re- turned tried to re-assure me that in Jerusalem "you wouldn't know" what was happening in the West Bank. She seemed to consider the absence of that knowledge to be some sort of consola- tion. I failed to see the consolation in the denial. My friend was wrong. It took only a few days in Jerusalem to grasp that the city has been effective- ly, existentially, re-divided. This is not to say that life does not carry on "as normal." Ben Yehuda Street on a Friday afternoon is brim- ming with life, with drink, with flir- tation, with youth. The spirit of Jewish Jerusalem has not been defeated. Still, it has been profound- ly vexed. There is anxiety everywhere. For example: the intifada has penetrated every Jewish home that houses a teenager. If the teenager is a boy, the talk in the kitchen is about the morality of the son's inevitable service as a soldier in the territories. If the teenager is a girl, the talk in the kit- chen is about the morality of the boyfriend's inevitable service in the territories. Ethical theory has become a family activity in Israel. (There is a kind of renaissance of left-wing political activity in Jerusalem now, a sincere, impotent renewal of middle- class protest against the govern- ment's policies in the territories.) Or consider the predicament of B., one of Israel's most prominent men of letters. B. lives in Abu Tbr, in an old Arab house that he rescued from rot in 1965, when Abu Tor was a no- man's land between Israel and Jor- dan, and you had to be crazy to settle there. (As I said, B. is a man of letters.) B.'s house is the first Jewish house in the Arab village. In his little cor- ner of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he IS the border. Abu Tor is a placid village, facing the placid defile of Mt. Zion. Its goats graze listlessly be- neath the gaze of B. and his family. He has lived in friendship with the people of Abu Tor for more than 20 years. A few months ago, he began to build a garage beneath his garden, the work of a handyman called Ara- fat. But the work of this Arafat was interrupted by the work of the other Arafat. One night in March, B.'s car was torched; and a few nights later, it was torched again. His wife now lives in fear for her small children. She insists that they get out. B. is himself not immune to fear; he sleeps lightly now But he loves his house, and he stands on his right to live where he lives, and on the decency he has demonstrated in his conduct with his neighbors. He has chosen to continue work on the garage for the car that was the victim. Life goes on. And he has chosen to take advantage of the work on the garage to move his family away from the front line of the uprising. Life does not. Many Israelis in Jerusalem exist in precisely this sort of suspension between the normal and the abnor- mal. There is a new geography of fear. The roads through East Jerusalem are no longer used on the way to the university on Mt. Scopus. Families rise earlier in the morning, because the short cuts to school are out of the question. The Saturday afternoons on Saladin Street, whither secular Israelis used to flee from the restricting sanctity of Sabbath in Jerusalem, are over. The favorite hummus joint is Jewish again. The black market is Jewish again. The Jews have been forced back on themselves.