Jerusalem Unbound by Dumper Michael;

Author:Dumper, Michael; [Dumper, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2014-09-29T04:00:00+00:00

5

JERUSALEM IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

WHAT PROSPECT OF PEACE?

RUNNING AND DIVIDED cities are not an obvious mix. However, during the course of my research for the Conflict in Cities project, I have had the chance to run round and through the cities of Belfast, Brussels, Mostar, Nicosia, Beirut, and Jerusalem. I tend to run early in the morning, and it is remarkable what a different kind of city you see at that time from the one you encounter later in the day. In the first place, at that time of the day the city is a city of cleaners and garbage collectors, noisily loading trucks and dustbins sweeping piles of litter into even bigger mounds, focused on the job, and indifferent to a runner in shorts dodging between them. It is also a city of laborers and the working class. Professionals and schoolchildren both seem to rise later, and during that period just after dawn, but before the shops, offices, and schools open, you see the raw face of the city, the city of the informal economy. This is a side of the city that fades into the background later in the day amidst the hubbub of the city at full throttle with its busy private cars and taxis shooting past, stirring up dust, and confining pedestrians to the pavements. Before this, roughly clad men (it is mostly men) spill out of dirty battered buses; they move quietly across empty streets clutching their lunch in plastic bags; some group together in small clusters at street corners waiting for small vans and pickup trucks to come by, and tense negotiations over a day rate are conducted with the driver. Street vendors appear laden with small farm produce or secondhand clothing and goods and discretely pick a key spot beside a shady shop or road junction. You can often tell who is “up” and who is “down” in the city by the sellers of secondhand shoes. It is usually the new immigrants who are still struggling to get onto the first rung of regular employment and who have resorted to scavenging garbage cans ditto and rubbish tips to resell worn and discarded footwear—poor Russians in Jerusalem, North Africans in Greek Cypriot Nicosia, and Egyptians or Yemenis in Beirut.

So far these scenarios play out in most cities. What of occupied or divided cities? What similarities or differences have I noted on my early morning runs between occupied or divided cities and other cities? In the first place, while occupied or divided cities are generally much tenser, in the early morning, this is not always the case. In fact, like other cities, occupied or divided cities also have a different feel to them at that time than later; differences seem to emerge more later in the day. This is simply by virtue of the fact that in the early morning there are often fewer soldiers and border police in evidence or the ones who are in view are more relaxed and calmer. The reasons for

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