A lot has happened in the past two and a half weeks, but this post will cover Sunday the 13th, a day on which I skipped class to take care of some bureacracy. I then decided that it's a beautiful day and the Arabs aren't likely to stab me, so, after eating some felafel in the courtyard of the Jerusalem municipality building, I walked along the Old City Walls eastward and into the Bab A-Zahra neighborhood. This is basically an Arab village and like all Arab villages/neighborhoods it is dominated by a hamulla (clan) that has an agreement with the Israeli authorities to behave well and keep their people in control. Generally, Arabs abide by the decisions of the elders of the hamullah, so if there's a good established relationship with the Municipality, the police and the border guards, there are rarely problems. Bab A-Zahra was interesting. Like all Arab areas, it has plenty of wealthy homes and plenty of poorer areas, but most of the crappy appearances have to do with people littering and not taking care of public areas than with lack of money. Also, like all Arab areas I visited that day, I was the only non-Arab there. I guess I am "crazy", but I think most people are being stupid by being afraid of the Arabs. Granted, they give you dirty looks, but as Arabs with Jerusalem residency, they have very little reason to piss off the government. The police and border guards are always close enough to show up and crack skulls. Although I guess if you've just been stabbed, it really doesn't matter what happens five minutes later.

After I got tired of the dirt and skaniness I walked back to the Old City walls, towards the northeastern corner. Right there is, randomly, the Rockefeller Museum. I don't know what it's doing there or what's inside, but I'll have to check it out at some point. I turned the corner and started walking southward along the eastern wall of the city. There's a cemetary there that serves the Moslem quarter of the Old City. It's not well-cared for and full of stray cats digging through mounds of trash. There's a real problem with the Moslem quarter, as the residents are fond of dumping trash wherever it suits them, inside or outside the walls. I entered the Moslem quarter through the Shaar Ha'Arayot, which meant I found myself on Via Dolorosa. Back in Roman times, when the city was just Jewish, it was a main road built by the Roman administration, and Jesus, along with thousands of criminals, carried his cross down this road to Golgotha. Today, this road runs through the middle of the Moslem quarter, but it is lined with stalls where enterprising Arabs sell Christian symbolica to fat American and German tourists. Along this road, there are a bunch of stations where Jesus is supposed to have stopped. One of the first ones is a place currently occupied by St. Anne's cathedral. It's a Catholic church of the Order of the White Fathers. Aside from the cathedral, there is some open ground, some nice gardens, and excavations. The latter show cisterns from the Roman period, remnants of Byzantine and Crusader churches, and the place of Bethesda, the pool where Jesus healed some people back when he was playing doctor. There was no one there as it was 11am on a weekday (sunday is a weekday in Israel), so I explored the digs by myself. I then walked around the cathedral, checked out the crypt area. Kind of cool, especially considering that it was an oasis of cleanliness in the middle of a crowded and unpleasant, or shally I say "colorful", neighborhood.

Moving on, I walked down Via Dolorosa and observed a group of Polish and German tourists wearing stupid hats and listening to a starry-eyed guide. Tourist groups are the funniest and most out of place people in the Old City, and yet they at least as common as groups of loud Arab kids with clearly unwashed faces. I am not being racist here, but it's objectively clear that Arabs, at least those living a very Arabic lifestyle in the Middle East, need to shower. I walked off the beaten tourist track and explored the side streets and alleyways. Dirty, but kind of interesting with regard to old buildings and colorful drawing of the Temple of Rock mosque everywhere. I walked into a door that led to a courtyard, adorned with lots of drying laundry and a few Arab families who gave me that now familiar look that combines confusion, hate, fear, maybe some other emotions I can't decipher. I also observed how Arab teenagers throw glass bottles at each other. I guess it's a fun thing to do. There are some entrances to the Temple Mount from the Moslem quarter, but when I attempted to enter via said entrances, the Israeli border guards there told me that only Moslem can use those entrances and that all others must use the entrance near the Kotel.

The Temple Mount is, while under sovereignty of the Israeli government, a bit unique. Despite the fact that it is within Israeli territory, and has been since it was conquered from Jordan in 1967, the Israeli government decided that, even though it won in a massive way in a defensive war, it was wise to show the world that Jews care about their Moslem neighbors. So the decision was made to allow the Wakf, a Moslem religious council to control the Temple Mount. That means that non-Moslems are not particularly welcome and can only come at certain times, in and out of certain entrances, and are prohibited from bringing any non-Moslem objects/literature with them. If the visitors wonder into a part of the Temple Mount where the Wakf doesn't like having non-Moslems, someone will come up to you and ask you to move along. The golden-domed mosque that is built over the rock which all three religions consider sacred is off limits to non-Moslems as is the Al-Aqsa mosque (the one with the homelier looking grey dome). I tested all of these rules when I came out of the Moslem quarter, into the Jewish quarter, out of the Kotel area (access to which is security controlled but not limited to any group of people), and then entered the Har Ha'Bayit (Temple Mount) via the internationally accepted gate for infidels. Once on the hill, known as Mt Moria geographically, I walked around what is basically a compound of parks with Moslem families picknicking, madrassas, the campus of Al-Quds University, and the two aforementioned mosques. I was definitely barred from entry into the mosques, which is annoying. No one disallows Moslems from entering Christian or Jewish holy sites, so it's a double standard that they should reserve for themselves sites that are holy to them, and especially sites that are holy to all three monotheistic religions. At some point, I will have to pretend I am an American convert to Islam and gain entrance. I need to see that rock. Do your own research as to why that rock is so central to Judaism.

Since I was already up there, I decided to check out the madrasses. I walked into one of them, and they teachers ran up to me and started to shoo me out. The kids were all sitting around studying what I guess was the Koran, just like you see on TV. I didn't want to be shooed out, so I told them I just want to observe. The teachers, dressed in sheets and looking angrier by the moment, starting waiving their hands and explaining that tourists can just enter their school. I told them I am not a tourist in fluent Hebrew and they got extremely agitated and one of them called the Israeli border guards who are in charge of keeping peace on the mount. I left before they showed up. It's kind of like that scene in the Big Lebowski when Walter, Donny and the Dude leaving the bowling alley just as the police are pulling up in response to call that Walter drew his gun. If you leave early, the authorities just don't track you down unless you've literallly killed somebody.

Following that fun exchange, I walked over to the eastern wall, with it's great view of the Kidron Valley and the Mt. of Olives. A better view than from the Jewish quarter, which is further back from the eastern wall. There are some nice looking churches on the Mt of Olives and some gardens where all sorts of things occured according to Christian theology. Mt. of Olives is also meaningful to Jews, again, do your own damn research. Today there's a Mormon university there, an Episcopal church, a Russian Orthodox Church, and a few biblical tombs, including Absalom's. After a five minutes on that wall, a Wakf officiall asked me to leave. Granted, I got to the top of the wall by climbing on top of some building and I knew I wasn't allowed there, but it was a good view while it lasted.

After all this fun with Arabs, I had a toasted bagel with lox and cream cheese in the Jewish quarter, while explaining to a black lady who came with some Christian group from Stamford, CT (yay connecticut) basic issues of Judaism. She was totally ignorant about politics as well. Why does one need a visa to go from Jerusalem to Bethlehem, what kind of a country are we? I told her we're not one country, but the complex Israel-Arab conflict and territorial issues where simply too much for her. I don't realize sometimes how for a person with little knowledge the conflict is basically totally confusing and makes little sense. One really needs a good base of knowledge before coming here if one wants to understand what the tour guides are talking about.

I then proceeded out of the Dung Gate (worst name ever) into the City of David, which is an excavation of a neighborhood of Jerusalem that King David built as an addition to the city in order to control the slope along which runs the water from Mt Zion and Mt Moria. Just an aside, the Old City is on Mt Zion, as is the most central part of the New City of Jerusalem, but the Temple Mount in on Mt Moria, which basically a bump in Mt Zion. The excavations of Ir David are limited but interesting, and from there we have a nice view across the Kidron Valley into the village of Silwan. This is an especially large Arab village, as far as Arab East Jerusalem villages go, and it has a history of being periodically violent towards Jews and the State of Israel. The village sits on top of the road that is one of only two ways to access the the Mt of Olives, so good relations need to be maintained so that they don't stone Israeli cars, tourist buses, and individual Jews who like to walk where they shouldn't. But, I had had enough Arabs for one day, and my gut told me that I shouldn't push my luck in a village where my chances of being stabbed are quite high. I stayed on the western side of the Kidron valley, and walked down the slope of Mt Zion. Most of the slope is an Arab neighborhood but it's small and is well patrolled by the police and border guards due to its proximity the City of David. I walked down to Brikhat Ha'Shiloah, the pool of Shiloah, where in ancient times the water running out of Mount Moriah and down the slope of Mt Zion and through David's City was gathered. Today it's a skanky area with some ancient stones and scary looking water, with a madrassa right next to it.

From there, I walked futher down and turned westward, walking along the southern slope of Mt Zion, with Gai Ben Hinom on my left. Gai Ben Hinom is the valley that borders Mt Zion on the south and is named after a pre-Jewish owner of that stretch of land. When the Jews conquered Jerusalem from the Jebusites about 3,100 years ago, the locals who lived in the valleys used to sacrifice their children to their various pagan gods. One of their biggest landlords was Gai Ben Hinom. The Jews were so terrified of their brutal practices that they started viewing the valley as a place where those "lower" than good Jews would end up. This discussion entered the Bible, and so the term Gai Ben Hinom then came to mean "hell" in Hebrew, and, in the Christian understanding hell is the place where humans go if they misbehave. Anways, across from where I was walking was view of yet another Jeruslem hill, on the slope of which is the Arab neighborhood of Abu Tor. This is a rich area, where the Arabs are loyal as all hell to the Jewish state that allows them to lead upper class lives. Jews have been moving into Abu Tor, but mainly the crazy artists types that always live where no else wants to. I walked up Mt Zion, the southern slope of which is beautifully undeveloped and green, towards a Christian cemetary and then into a Green Orthodox monastary, where, in typically absurd Jerusalem fashion, one can find both a resting place of Jesus's moms, and the Tomb of King David. I've got a soft spot for King David, like many Jews do, and for good reason.

So the 13th was a good day. At night, we had a Purim party at Ulpan Etzion, which was fun, but a bit restrained since our teachers and administrators were in attendance. Also, there's this one British girl whose is frighteningly ugly and her inapproprate dancing, although not in my vicinity, made me beyond uncomfortable. Monday the 14th was quiet but on Tuesday my dad came to Jerusalem and we commenced exploring and travelling. Next post will go into that. By the way, today are Israeli elections.