Even the Walls and building in Jerusalem are not safe from the occupation

Architecture in Jerusalem is a very important thing to preserve. It is full of beauty, history, and stories. Walking down the old alleys of Jerusalem and looking around at the walls, floor and arches allows you to feel that time has moved back and your living in different stages of the history. Every time I went to Jerusalem and visited the Aqsa mosque I had the same feeling as if it was my first time to visit it. The Golden Dom of the Dom of the Rock stuns me every time and the beauty of the interior of the mosque and the Arabic scripts from the Quran are just amazing.

One of my friends lives in the old city in Jerusalem. His family is one of the oldest families in Jerusalem and owned many houses and buildings which most of them where took in 1967 by the occupation. I visited him in his current house which is inside the city near the Damascus Gate. The house made me feel that I was in one of the Arabic Syrian shows speaking about stories during the Ottoman and even earlier periods.

Preserving the architecture of Jerusalem is very important in order to preserve its identity and history. The occupation continues to work on changing the features of the city and the Arab or Islamic architecture in order to disconnect the city’s history and culture from its surroundings.

Face-to-Face in Jerusalem

http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/check/worldservice/programmes/outlook/meta/dps/2007/04/070405_mazenboaz_israel?size=au&bgc=003399&lang=en-ws&nbram=1&nbwm=1

Face-to-Face in Jerusalem

Last December Outlook featured a heated discussion between students from Israel and the West Bank and now two of those students have actually met face-to-face.

Boaz from the Charles E Smith High School in Jerusalem and Mazen from the Friends Boys' School in Ramallah had taken part in the original discussion in which the students had been in different studios in their respective cities.

Broadcast on December 6 2006 as part of the BBC World Service Schoolday24, it transpired that Boaz had never actually met a Palestinian and Mazen had only met one Israeli.

This was despite the fact that their schools were only about ten miles apart.

But it was easy to see why meetings hadn't taken place once Outlook embarked on trying to bring the two students together.

Between Ramallah and Jerusalem lie numerous heavily-guarded security checkpoints and Mazen had to spend eight hours queueing for the required permit to get through them.

	Mazen said that he could not see Boaz as 'an enemy'.

Meanwhile, the BBC had to provide the Israeli authorities with an official letter confirming that Mazen was indeed travelling to Jerusalem to take part in this BBC Radio programme - only then was he given security clearance for 24 hours.

The face-to-face meeting was much more calm than the first, and this time Boaz and Mazen focussed on the unusual nature of the meeting and what's likely to happen in the future.

Mazen was keen to talk to Boaz about the time that he'd spent at the checkpoints in order for the meeting to take place.

"Are you willing to wait 8 hours to get a permit for 24 hours to visit a city that's supposed to belong to you and to meet someone from the other side?" he asked.

"I think the obvious answer to that is no," said Boaz, "I wouldn't do it. And I understand it's a very hard way to live your life - especially as you honestly believe, and I don't object to that belief, that this city belongs to you and your people."

	The schools are only 10 miles apart

Mazen welcomed these words but doubted whether there were many in Israel that shared them and pointed out that the conflict had deep roots in the hearts of the people.

But he too was conciliatory towards Boaz.

"I don't see him as an enemy," he told Outlook reporter Joanna Chen, "Maybe his country is our enemies and the army is our enemy, but I see him as a student in a school like me. An Israeli student but a student like me."

Both Mazen and Boaz felt that there should be more meetings between individual students across the Israeli-Palestinian divide.

"I think that what we're doing right now is important," said Boaz, "If more teens spent time and tried to communicate with the teens from the other side, that might help.

"It won't help the whole country but it will help people personally... Even if we don't agree on anything, just the communication might help."

"I agree with that," said Mazen, "Maybe if both sides get a chance to communicate with each other, they will find a solution."

Mazen and Boaz didn't think there was any point in meeting again unless there were changes at political level.

However, they agreed that the route forward was in recognising each other's rights to co-exist.

"I believe that coexisting might be an option," said Boaz, "And I didn't believe that before I walked in this afternoon."

"I do believe that on both sides there are people who are willing to share this land with each other," said Mazen, "I do believe there are other Israelis who are willing to give Palestinians this right to live freely, the same way that they live."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/programmes/outlook/news/story/2007/04/070405_boazmazen_israel.shtml

The Israeli Apartheid Wall

Since the construction of the Wall, Graffiti has been a very interesting and new experience for the Palestinians as well as international activists to express the feeling towards the wall and send messages to the world by drawing and writing on it. In December 2006, Christmas and Eid Al-Adha (A Muslim holiday) came at the same time. So, a group of my friends and I decided to send our schools holiday greetings to the Alumni and supporters of our school (The Friends School) with a political message about the wall. We decided to go to the Wall separating Ramallah from Jerusalem and draw on it. It was a great experience, the Israeli soldiers were less than half a mile away from us and shouting on the loud speaker for us to go back and not get near the wall. But we decided to continue and not fear anything. Our message was sent, and many American and European friends from the Quakers came the following summer to Ramallah to witness the crime committed against humans in their land.

I would like to share some basic information about the wall which could help draw an image about it and how it is destroying the lives of the Palestinian people in the West Bank:

Length: 736 Km

Heights: It is 8 meters high - twice the height of the Berlin Wall - with armed watchtowers and a “buffer zone” 30-100 meters wide for electric fences, trenches, cameras, sensors, and military patrol.

The wall is not built on the 1967 green line, but rather cuts deep into the west bank

The Palestinian population in the west bank and Gaza strip will be living on only 12% of historic Palestine.

The apartheid wall costs some $3.4 billion, approximately $4.7 million per kilometer (most of the funds from the USA)

343,000 inhabitants will be between the wall and the green line

103320 trees already uprooted

Completely surround 100,000 people in 42 towns

Reduce the available water supply by 1 billion gallons

Confiscate hundreds of thousands of acres of land

Severely restrict travel to jobs, hospitals and schools

Adversely affect 4 out of 10 Palestinians

Constrains on movement of goods and people

In July 9th 2004, The International Court of Justice (ICJ) in Hague, despite intense pressure from Israel, the US and EU Governments, confirms what Palestinians and the world have known since the beginning of its planning and construction – THE WALL IS ILLEGAL!