East Jerusalem, Bubbling Over With Despair
East Jerusalem, long the emotional heart of Palestinian life, is now the fiery soul of its discontent.
It is not just that most of the young people suspected in this month’s spate of stabbing attacks came from within the city borders, like the 18-year-old college student whose residency is being revoked by Israel after the police said she stabbed a Jewish man in the back.
It is that her neighborhood of 18,000, Sur Baher, is also home to people like Fuad Abu Hamed, a successful businessman who condemns the wave of violence but shares the frustration and alienation underlying this new uprising.
Mr. Abu Hamed, 44, is a lecturer at Hebrew University who runs two clinics in Israel’s health system, and lives in a comfortable home among Sur Baher’s tangle of crowded hills. The view from his balcony is of sprawling Jewish enclaves that he said were “built on our lands,” and the ugly barrier Israel erected that splits Sur Baher from the occupied West Bank.
Source: mobile.nytimes.com