In the news...

I picked up a Newsweek yesterday morning in the Philadelphia airport as I was headed to Chicago and read perhaps the most honest and accurate description of what is actually going on in Jerusalem. Sometimes it is very hard to describe in facts and figures what is going on and how it affects people, and yet also to be sensitive at the same time.

Here are some bits and pieces of the article - however, I recommend picking it up. You can read the entire article here.

The article begins by describing the life of the man that recently delved his construction vehicle into innocent civilians in Jerusalem. Not too many months before, a similar event ensued. The first string of these recent incidents, which occurred in March, I remember hearing about from a student in the West Bank that night, that 8 Jews had been killed in Jerusalem at a seminary....

Sadly, I can understand why these happen.. why they are not random, and yet also why they are not organized (as much of the world thinks). These are normal men, sick of their situation, and desperate for positive outlets and opportunities.

While Palestinian "Jerusalemites" have a life better than their West Bank or Gaza fellow countrymen, things have quietly been getting worse:
"Since the summer of 1967, when East Jerusalem was annexed by Israel, the district has built close ties with both the Israeli economy and Palestinian culture. That combination has been a formula for relative stability, earning East Jerusalemites the trust of Israelis on the city's west side.
But in recent years Israel has dramatically altered the sector's landscape. In 2002, former prime minister Ariel Sharon began building a 460-mile barrier—in much of the city, a 20-foot-high concrete wall—that slices deep into Palestinian territory and divides neighbor from neighbor. A network of new access roads and checkpoints has further chopped the territory into a hodgepodge of Palestinian enclaves. Even as Israeli settlements proliferate in East Jerusalem, building permits for Palestinian homes are becoming a rarity."
As an Israeli rights lawyer said, "We're screwing them royally... We've cut them off from the West Bank without integrating them into Israel."


Another interesting fact is that while Israel reacts by targeting mosques and other Islamic centers as hotbeds for these kinds of "terrorists," they are undermining the very fabric of the majority of Palestinian life. One man interviewed in the article says that it is unsafe to go the mosque even three times a week, for fear of getting arrested. Unbeknownst to itself, Israel is playing a direct role in creating the kind of grassroots, radical Islamists that it fears...