Source: The Guardian:
In the Holy City, Jews are buying up Arab properties, aiming to ‘reclaim’ its ancient Muslim Quarter. Harriet Sherwood meets one family determined not to be moved
In the heart of Jerusalem’s ancient Old City, the Via Dolorosa – the route that Jesus took, burdened by a wooden cross, on the way to his public execution almost two millennia ago – straddles the busy El-Wad thoroughfare. This is where the Najib family encounters an obstruction almost every time one of them climbs the worn stone steps to their home of three generations.
The obstruction is an Israeli security guard with a weapon slung across his body, a baseball cap shadowing his face and an uncompromising attitude written on his features. He stands, according to members of the Palestinian family, in the middle of the gloomy staircase, his body almost filling the narrow passage to the upper floors.
The Najib family patriarch bought the first-floor apartment on El-Wad street decades ago.
He doesn’t move, they say. Sometimes they edge past, eyes averted, wanting to avoid any confrontation. Sometimes they stand their ground, argue even: “Let us pass, this is our home, move out of our way.” Such encounters may bring a fleeting triumph, but rarely do they last longer than a second or two. In reality, the Najibs fear that they and others like them are fighting a battle that may already be lost.
The setting for this battle is the historic Old City: a small walled enclave of less than one square kilometre within the sprawling city that is Jerusalem, divided into loose quarters for Muslims, Jews, Christians and Armenians. It is the heart of the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the centre for the world’s three great monotheistic religions, and a magnet for pilgrims and tourists from all over the world. In this crucible of faith, priests, rabbis and imams brush past bare-limbed backpackers as they make their way over the treacherously smooth flagstones of its narrow alleyways. Gaggles of pilgrims from Eastern Europe, West Africa and Latin America jostle with ultra-orthodox Jews and devout Muslims on their way to pray at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the Western Wall or the Al-Aqsa mosque.
Via Dolorosa and El Wad intersection Jerusalem where Police watches Arab women
Categories: Arab World, Asia, Israel, Middle East