| Nowhere else is the vexed relationship between Arab and Jew more evident than in the capital of Jerusalem - the Holy City - within whose medieval walls like both the hopes for peace and the seeds of war... |
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Palestine/Wailing wall | FX: Call to prayer/ church bells/ chanting at western wall Music | 00+00 |
| Male voice: The air above Jerusalem is filled with prayers and dreams Like the air above cities with heavy industry - hard to breathe From time to time a new shipment of history arrives |
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Bomb attacks in Jerusalem | Music | 00+48 |
| Schwartz: History is both a blessing and a curse for Jerusalem, a city steeped in religious and nationalistic yearnings. Poets such as Israel's Yehuda Amichai have sought to catch its spirit ... while empires have fought to control its holy ground Everyone wants a piece of Jerusalem, none more so than those who live here. |
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Map | Music | 01+12 |
| FX: Call to prayer |
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Al-Haram a-Sharif/Temple Mount | Schwartz: When Palestinian and Israeli politicians demand sovereignty over Jerusalem, they're demanding control of this place. Muslims call it Al-Haram a-Sharif. It's Islam's third holiest site - the place where the Prophet Mohamed ascended to heaven. Jews know it as the Temple Mount. Their most sacred shrine is the Western Wall - all that remains of the ancient Second Temple which they believe must be rebuilt before the Messiah can come. But Jerusalem is much more than this hallowed hilltop. Or the one square kilometre of winding alleyways which make up the Old City. Jerusalem today is a 128-square-kilometre municipality - as big as Paris. But it's not the population which pushes the city limits here. It's politics. | 01+33 |
Super: Ehud Olmert Mayor of Jerusalem | EHUD OLMERT: I am absolutely firmly holding the opinion that Israel should have complete and comprehensive sovereignty over Jerusalem. | 02+25 |
Super: Khalil Tufakji Palestinian Geographer | KHALIL TUFAKJI: Olmert he is not suffering occupation. I was 18 when the occupation started, and now I am 50. | 02+34 |
Archive footage Arab-Israeli war | FX: Fighting | 02+43 |
| Schwartz: Israeli troops seized East Jerusalem from Jordan during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. This reunited the city for the first time in almost two decades. But the world has never recognised Israel's military occupation of East Jerusalem. And Palestinians say the divide between the city's Arab and Jewish residents is as wide as ever. |
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Tufakji points to map | KHALIL TUFAKJI: When you look for the map you see it's united, but you go deeply and see it's divided. See this is how Israel surrounds Arab Palestinian built-up areas - like a sandwich with settlements east and west. | 03+11 |
| Schwartz: So if we look at East Jerusalem then, the blue shaded areas are the Jewish areas? |
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| KHALIL TUFAKJI: Yes, the blue area. So they built around 15 settlements inside East Jerusalem. |
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East Jerusalem | Schwartz: Khalil Tufakji is the geographer at Orient House - the defacto town hall in Palestinian-populated East Jerusalem. | 03+38 |
| He says Israel's aim is to create a predominantly Jewish Jerusalem to strengthen its claim on the city. |
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| Since 1967, Israel has trebled the size of the municipality, he says, encouraged Jewish settlement and used discriminatory policies to drive Palestinians out of the city. |
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TUFAKJI | KHALIL TUFAKJI: Their aim, or their goal forever, is Jerusalem under Israeli control - forever. | 04+07 |
| Schwartz: For Palestinians, the question of who controls Jerusalem can be a life-or-death matter. |
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| Two years ago, at the age of 16, Yasser Abu Khalaf's life changed dramatically. |
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YASSER in hospital bed | YASSER: There was a lump on my head. I went to the doctor... He examined it. I had trouble standing, so they brought me here to Hadassah hospital where they did tests and found I had cancer. | 04+27 |
| Schwartz: Yasser had advanced neuroblastoma - a cancer often fatal in young children. It was a devastating blow - but not the end of the bad news, as Yasser's mother Faiza was to discover. | 04+45 |
FAIZA | FAIZA: I went to get the medical form and they told me his insurance was cancelled. We were in utter despair. I could not see the light because his insurance was out. We felt we'd lost everything. How would he continue receiving medical treatment? | 05+00 |
Yasser in hospital | Schwartz: Yasser's health insurance - his right as a Jerusalem resident - had been cancelled because investigators said his family had moved outside the city borders. | 05+17 |
| Were it not for Dr Nili Ramu's fund-raising efforts, Yasser's family would never have been able to pay for his treatment - chemotherapy, radiation and surgery. |
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| While grateful for the hospital's help, Yasser's father Azmi is angry with the Israeli government. |
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AZMI | AZMI: Even if a Jew is 70 or 80 kilometres away he receives all his rights. A Jew receives everything. | 05+47 |
Damascus Gate/ Schwartz walks with Fawaz | Schwartz: Damascus Gate is the main thoroughfare from East Jerusalem into the Old City. | 06+00 |
| The Abu Khalafs consider this their backyard. Fawaz: I was born here, and my father is and my grandfather is born here, and Yasser was born here - all the family is born in the old city. |
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| Schwartz: Fawaz is Yasser's cousin. He's spearheaded a two and a half year campaign to have the family's residency rights reinstated. |
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| More than 32-thousand people live shoulder-to-shoulder within these medieval walls. In greater Jerusalem, Palestinians are the minority. Here, they're the bulk of the population. But Israel still rules the roost. |
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| At the very least, Palestinians want sovereignty over Islam's holy sites, and the three Arab-dominated areas of the Old City - the Armenian, Christian and Muslim quarters. | 06+50 |
Greetings at door |
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| Schwartz: It's not hard to see why Yasser's family decided to move. Thirteen people live here - there's no space for fourteen more. The house is a series of rooms connected by covered exterior stairways. Schwartz: The kitchen looks quite new. Schwartz: Extensions are often built illegally. Residents say they have little choice. They either can't afford permits or simply can't comply with them. | 07+19 |
Fawaz' house | The difficulties of life in the Old City have left some Palestinian families open to selling. And in the Muslim Quarter, there's always a ready buyer. Often Jewish. | 07+48 |
| Fawaz' grandmother says Jewish prospectors offered her 50-thousand dollars and a new house if she'd leave. |
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Fawaz' grandmother | GRANDMOTHER: They came asking me to sell my house and I said I would not sell -- this is my house. I will never leave it until death. And when I die, my daughter will take over. I will never sell. | 08+11 |
Jews looking at house | Schwartz: But some Palestinians do sell. | 08+22 |
| Fawaz: Example you see here - ten Palestinian families and see one or two Jewish inside - why? Why his coming here - what to you want to do here? |
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SCHWARTZ | AVITAL SCHWARTZ: Jerusalem is the capital of Israel- that's how it should be and our goal is to fill it out with Jews who live in it normally, comfortably. | 08+37 |
Schwartz makes coffee | Schwartz: Avital Schwartz feels right at home in the Muslim quarter. Her daughter Shirel more so - it's the only home she's known. They moved in two years ago - part of the Ateret Cohanim settler movement - which seeks to reclaim this neighbourhood for Jews. | 08+50 |
Super: Avital Schwartz "Ateret Cohanim" | AVITAL: We have here people that want to kill us just for living here. That's a problem I have as Jews. So the solution we found is just living here and letting the Arabs know, "Listen, this is our country we live here. You want to come along, please come. You want to kill me for living here, you can't do that. This is my country. | 09+13 |
| Schwartz: Avital's compound has four apartments. Jewish settlers live in three of them, Christian Arabs in the other. Avital says relations are cool, but cordial. | 09+33 |
File footage of Sharon | The building itself gained notoriety in the mid 1980s, when Ariel Sharon - now Israel's right-wing opposition leader - bought one of the flats. Not so much as a residence, but a political statement. | 09+47 |
SHARON | SHARON: The solution for coexistence in Jerusalem - all the other places in the land of Israel - is a massive Jewish presence. | 10+02 |
| Schwartz: Left-wing Israelis took to the streets in protest - while settlers continued their quiet march on the Muslim Quarter. | 10+22 |
Avital goes out/Archival footage | Schwartz: Avital Schwartz rarely ventures out without a security escort. The Jewish and Muslim communities here co-exist, but there's no mutual trust. This was a mixed neighbourhood early this century. But many Jews left in the 1920s and thirties when Arab riots erupted across Palestine in protest against the influx of Jewish migrants. | 10+41 |
| British Newsreel: In just over a month nearly 40 people have been killed in the disturbances. At the Wailing Wall refugees under British protection leave their quarters where terrorists have instituted the rule of force. | 11+16 |
Avital at kindergarten | Schwartz: Today the Jewish community is growing again. So is Palestinian disquiet. There are more than sixty settler families in the Muslim Quarter. And apparently, a waiting list. | 11+36 |
| AVITAL : There's something very natural just coming back to the place that is belonged to us for 1000 of years and now it's possible for us to come back. |
11+50 |
| It says in the Bible that the streets in Jerusalem will be full of children playing in it. |
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| Schwartz: Do you think there'll come a day when Shirel might be able to play in the streets without security, happily with her Palestinian neighbours. |
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AVITAL | AVITAL: I don't know - I'm not thinking about it, it's not a thing that you wake up in the morning and you say would my child play with a Palestinian child. Schwartz: In your ideal world, what is the future of Jerusalem? | 12+13
12+23 |
| AVITAL: The capital of Israel filled with Jews, and Jews just living everywhere and their children playing around - that's how I would want to see it and believe it will be. |
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Rabbinical school | Schwartz: The driving force behind Ateret Cohanim is a belief in the divine right of Jews to live and rule in Jerusalem. Avital's husband Moshe is one of more than 200 students at the movement's yeshiva - a rabbinical school in the Muslim Quarter. Here they study Judaism's holy texts - and their application in the modern world. |
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Yossi at school | Executive Director Yossi Baumol, says history shows that giving ground - literally or figuratively - has never helped the Jewish cause. | 13+06 |
Super: Yossi Baumol "Ateret Cohanim" | YOSSI BAUMOL: The path to peace is rather to absolve our Arab neighbours of the commandment of jihad. Which means that we have to be strong, that we have to be forceful. We have to be fair but we have to be strong. For example if every time a Jew was killed in the old city three buildings would go up for Jews in the Muslim quarter. Then they would stop to kill the Jews because it's counterproductive to carry out the Jihad here. And that's the beginning of the path to peace. | 13+17 |
Demonstration in Muslim quarter | Schwartz: But that's not how the neighbours see it. Two years ago, settlers moved onto this land in the Muslim Quarter to avenge the murder of a fellow yeshiva student - stabbed to death by a Palestinian. | 13+51 |
| Police endeavoured to restrain angry Palestinian legislators and protestors who tore down one of the illegal structures. The city council ordered settlers to remove the rest. |
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| Schwartz: Do Palestinians have any claim to sovereignty on any part of Jerusalem? |
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BAUMOL | BAUMOL: No. Don't get me wrong. My Palestinian neighbours here are people with human political rights, with civil rights, I'm not saying they're not equal to anybody else, what I am saying is that there is no greater claim than the Jewish claim to Jerusalem. | 14+25 |
Nahla on balcony | Schwartz: But in this city of layered history, everyone has a claim. Including Nahla Assali. | 14+52 |
| A Professor of Literature, she also helps run a Palestinian community centre in the Old City |
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| She comes from one of Jerusalem's oldest and most prestigious Muslim families. But most of their wealth, she says, is now in Israeli hands. |
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| We drive out of the Old City through Jaffa Gate. This is West Jerusalem. Greener and more affluent than the East. | 15+18 |
| Nahla; This is a German colony. |
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| Schwartz: The neighbourhoods we pass are nearly all Jewish. It wasn't always that way. |
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| Nahla: I don't remember. On one of these streets, we used to go to the ? school in one of these streets. |
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| Schwartz: This is where Professor Assali spent the first 10 years of her life. Many of the old Arab houses remain. They've made this area a real estate agent's dream. |
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Nahla in car | Nahla: This is my aunt's house. We used to come and visit with my aunt. | 16+00 |
| Schwartz: There are three and a half million Palestinian refugees. Professor Assali doesn't fit the stereotype. But she fled her home during the Arab-Israeli war of 1948 - and has no better chance of moving back home, than a refugee sitting in Lebanon. |
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Outside house | Nahla: My grandmother lived upstairs. This is the house I was born in, in 1938. | 16+26 |
| Schwartz: Professor Assali didn't expect to come face to face with the man who moved into her home immediately after her family fled. |
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New occupants of house/Nahla fights with neighbour | Nahla: Does he or doesn't he know that this house belonged to an Arab? Does he or doesn't he?... Woman: He knows, he knows. He knows that. Listen, my dear lady, my parents are coming from Libya. They was born in Libya. In '51 they has been told to go away, to take their stuff and go away. So actually my family and my grandmother's family and my grandfather's family has a lot of houses in Libya which we never... Nahla: Dear lady, you go claim your rights in Libya. I have a right to claim my rights here... I don't want the money. I want this house... Woman: No, you cannot have this house. Sorry you ran away. You ran away. Nahla: I did not. Woman: Nobody told you take your stuff and run away. Nobody. You made us push. Nahla: When all our property disappeared... | 14+46 |
| Woman: Nobody wants to fight with you. We offered you to be a peace. You said no. You started the fight in '48, and then you come from us and asking this house. Nahla: I'm sorry. You can go back... You know your King Solomon about dividing the baby. You know the story it's in the old bible. Let's go please, and I can't stand any more of this... You live in my house. | 17+49 |
West Jerusalem | Schwartz: There are no easy ways to split control of Jerusalem. Someone will always feel cheated. The view from the mayoral office - in West Jerusalem - is that the political geography must remain the same | 11+23 |
Mayor Olmert | Suddenly, however, Mayor Ehud Olmert wants to offer East Jerusalem's 200-thousand Palestinian residents a sweetener - full Israeli citizenship with all its social welfare and economic benefits. | 18+37 |
| OLMERT: All lead to the inevitable conclusion that the Palestinians prefer to have Israeli sovereignty over all of the city, and I think that our obligation to offer them full Israeli citizenship immediately, immediately in the state of Israel as part and parcel of the state of Israel and I call on the Prime Minister to immediately move towards this. | 11+51 |
Sur Baher | Schwartz: Few Palestinians would dare publicly acknowledge such an offer. They'd be branded traitors. But in the Palestinian village of Sur Baher, within the Jerusalem municipality, the mayor has found some unlikely support - the call for a United Nations run referendum on East Jerusalem's future. | 19+17 |
Zuheir Hamdan | Resident Zuheir Hamdan doesn't want to live under what he terms, the Mafia rule of Yasser Arafat. Neither, he claims, do thousands of other East Jerusalem residents - though he won't reveal any names. | 19+42 |
| HAMDAN: There is real opposition here to them here. They won't take us on a gold platter. Even if the price is internal bloodshed. We will not hand power to them. Even over our dead bodies we will not hand it over to them. | 19+55 |
Queue of Arabs in East Jerusalem | Schwartz: It's true, many Palestinians worry about the viability of an independent Palestine - its economic strength, and democratic values. But Arab residents of East Jerusalem will not miss queuing for hours outside the Israeli government offices to justify their existence. | 20+12 |
| PERSON IN QUEUE: Neither Olmert not anybody else is doing anything that serves our interest -- Should they get a chance to get rid of us they would by all means. |
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Khalaf home | Schwartz: At the Abu Khalaf home, the mood is one of celebration. Yasser is back from hospital with a new Jerusalem identity card. His sister is home with a new baby. | 20+39 |
| Yasser doesn't yet have a clean bill of health, but his battle for national medical insurance is over. |
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| In two months he'll know his fate - Jerusalem's Palestinian residents may have to wait a little longer. |
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| Reporter: Dominique Schwartz Researcher: Guy Lynn Camera/Sound: Andrew Sadow Editor: Nissim Musak | 21+12 |