In Jerusalem, daily life is interrupted by a “strange war” where fear divides East and West once again. The city lives in a present suspended between nighttime alarms and the memory of past trenches. The internal front protection system is sophisticated: the first warning is given on every cell phone in the country, marking the start of an alert. Missiles have been launched from Iranian territory. A few minutes later, once the direction of the ordnance is identified, the real alarm sirens go off, a sinister sound ordering everyone to run to shelters or fortified rooms, called “mamad,” an Hebrew acronym for “Residential Protected Space.” In more modern buildings, the mamad is present on every floor, sometimes in every apartment. The sirens sound only in the areas about to be hit. Therefore, the other night in Jerusalem, only the phone alert was given, without the siren alarm. According to Home Front calculations, the city would have been spared from the two waves of Iranian missiles, which instead caused deaths and destruction in Bat Yam, south of Tel Aviv, and Haifa, to the north.
The phone alert does not allow one to return to sleep peacefully. The night before, the sirens had sounded and the dark sky over Jerusalem was illuminated by a battle of missiles and anti-missile rockets. However, Jerusalem is not considered the front line of this war, like Tel Aviv. The reason is that Jerusalem is divided into two cities: the Jewish one to the West and the Palestinian one to the East, separated by an unmarked but concrete and deep border. As long as possible, both Hamas from Gaza and Hezbollah from Lebanon tried to avoid hitting Jerusalem to avoid harming the Palestinian population and the holy sites of Islam. Now, even the Iranians follow this practice. However, this is not a physical rule, but a strategic choice. The Jews should be grateful to their Arab fellow citizens for this, but such gratitude is insufficient to mitigate the mutual hatred. Forced to coexist, the maximum effort they can make is to ignore each other.
The time spent on the beach in Tel Aviv, the Jerusalemites spend praying in the synagogue, mosque, and church. Living among them is interesting but not entirely healthy. Looking at this new war from Jerusalem is unusual: you are not at the front but a bit yes; the missiles do not arrive but some fall; there is hatred, an essential component of every belligerence. Here, the war is between two enemy peoples for another dispute. But the conflicts are now so many and interconnected – Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, now Iran, Israel’s security, the Palestinian cause – that they overlap. The French called the first months of World War II the “Phony War,” awaiting the Nazi attack. This one in Jerusalem is also a strange war. Since it began, the two communities, intolerant of each other, have been living in the same way, experiencing the same uncertainties about the future. Perhaps for the first time since the medieval sieges, the authorities have closed the Old City. The entrances that still retain the great ancient doors have been barred; in the others, the police only allow those who prove to live inside the walled city to enter.
Impact on Daily Life
On Salah ed-Din and Jaffa, the main streets of the Palestinian city and the Jewish one, there is the same number of closed and open shops; the scant presence of passersby and buyers; the same anomalous silence in two usually chaotic streets. Where Salah ed-Din merges with Nablus Road, one had to wait a long time in front of the small counter of the best shawarma in Palestine, at least in Jerusalem. Yesterday it was quick to be served. In the other city, at the Jewish market of Mahane Yehuda, at the end of Jaffa, Oz did not even open his prized fishmonger. His son Tomer, right arm at the counter and reserve soldier, was called up again. These are signs of a daily life interrupted, replaced by the fear of the inhabitants and the uncertainty of not knowing what might happen tonight.
It took only two days of war to understand that even the advanced Israeli anti-missile system is not entirely impenetrable. If the Iranians launch hundreds of missiles simultaneously, some inevitably get through. Therefore, even Jerusalem, both East and West, can end up on the front line. It is, however, a composed fear. The city has a historical familiarity with these moments of danger: first the Arab-Israeli wars, then the first and second Palestinian Intifadas. Once trenches were dug in the squares. And now the new arrival, Iran, which in reality is a guest of stone: as long as the Shah was there, it supported Israel’s wars; since the ayatollahs have been in power, it has always supported the enemies of the Jewish state. It is difficult to find something truly new among the things that happen in Jerusalem.
Yesterday afternoon, the alarm went off on cell phones again, then the sirens sounded. Somewhere, the anti-missile missiles went into action. The best synthesis of this day that will repeat tomorrow and then again is from an old friend born in the ghetto of Rome and emigrated to Jerusalem a long time ago: “It’s war.”
