I had a silly half asleep, half awake dream that morning that one day my husband and I would be able to live in the beautiful city of Jerusalem. Stupid, because I am a non-Jewish foreigner with Palestinian friends, and he is an Egyptian Arab. How naïve to think that this could be a normal country where any nationality could apply for a work permit and stay for a while in the beautiful land of Palestine.

I was awoken by shouting in the street outside. I stumbled blinking on to the balcony to see a bunch of settlers shaking the metal gates of the Israeli courthouse; that ugly building placed in central East Jerusalem by the occupiers as a warning to the natives.

However on this occasion it was a Jewish “militant” who was being taken into the courthouse. Salim, working in reception, sighed wearily when I inquired what was going on. Apparently it is happening everyday at the moment. A trial for some rabid settler who started to irritate the Israeli authorities. Unlike friends and relatives of Palestinian prisoners, his friends are of course allowed to stand outside with their massive guns strapped across their backs. For this reason there is no picture of them here for you to see. I tried to get closer to snap one for you, but I was wary. Last time I got too close to soldiers interrogating Palestinians, the commander ripped out my film and threatened to smash my camera and confiscate my passport. And we all know that settlers are even more ready with their weapons than soldiers.

Fully awake now, I decided to take a wander through downtown East Jerusalem towards the Old City. For sure I know that in the five months since I was last here, nothing has changed, but perhaps it is human nature to set hope against hope.

Today is Friday, so the busy market usually sprawled across the worn stone steps down to Damascus Gate is non-existent. I walk under the gate, thinking what a short period of time the last fifty years must seem to these ancient walls, those today built under Suleyman the Magnificent half a millennium ago, on the site of yet older boundaries. Just through the gate (a poor word in English for such a noble structure), I curl left into the “Gate Café” that is now the place where I sit to read and stare into space. I only discovered this café after my first three favorite haunts were closed over the four years since I first came here to wander in the souks of the Old City. I used to sit in two at the junction of the Via Dolorosa, revered by Christian pilgrims and locals alike as the street of suffering walked by Jesus on the way to his crucifixion. An ancient thoroughfare through the Holy City that crosses both Muslim and Christian quarters, where people of the Old City, whatever their religion, over generations have made a good living from feeding and selling souvenirs to seething crowds of tourists.

Salim’s father owned a café close to the Austrian Hospice; the formidable building used as Jordanian headquarters between ’48 and ’67 and is now a smart guesthouse run by the Austrian church. Abu Salim spoke around eight European languages, mostly learnt from the tourists, and had a rather fine Cockney (London slang) accent which astonished me. I sometimes stop and chat with Salim, but now there is no falafel house, but a small shop selling cheap plastic goods to the locals. There is no living to be made in the tourist trade these days.

Further down the road the larger café had been a pizza restaurant for close on a century. When Abu Salim closed, I moved to drink my coffee and gather my thoughts in the little plaza in front of the café. From here I could watch the soldiers who would always be loitering on the steps of the Austrian Hospice.

It is difficult to describe the way Israeli soldiers are imposed onto the life of the Old City.

It is difficult to describe the way that Israeli soldiers are imposed onto the life of the Old City in Jerusalem. For those who have not traveled to the Holy City, or have been lucky enough not to live under occupation in their own land, the interaction between occupier and occupied people and space is hard to describe. As a foreigner with the protection of my foreign passport and my home abroad, I cannot claim to be able to really describe to you how it feels. I once asked Hani, after I had watched him serve shawarma to a soldier who had come to his café, how he felt, how he could bring himself to do it. He shrugged. This is the life people have to live with. Refusing a soldier a sharwarma is not worth the energy. Why cause a fuss that would only end in arrest and further repercussions for family and friends?

For those readers who have never seen an Israeli soldier, who have never lived under occupation, the idea of handing him or her their lunch in the khaki olive Israeli uniform that you associate with Sharon and Sabra and Shatila might seem unbelievable. But Israeli soldiers are a part of the life of the Old City. From the soldiers wandering on the ramparts of the old city walls to those bored ones sitting flicking fruit in the souks – a part of life not just in the last few years of the Intifada, but since 1967, and soldiers of other occupying armies before that.

And throughout it all the call of the muezzin carries on. The church bells keep ringing. They say that every occupation has an end. This one certainly has a while to go, but it will end. Through purely demographic law it will end. Within a decade there will be more Palestinians in the 1967 and 1948 territories than there are Israelis. A few decades later there will be more Palestinians inside the Jewish state (1948 areas) alone, than Israelis. Israeli policy has so decimated the West Bank and Gaza that an independent Palestinian state alongside a Jewish state is no longer viable. Israelis and Palestinians from many ideological backgrounds are coming to the conclusion that Israel has finally destroyed the possibility of a two state solution, and that the next stage of the struggle will not be a demand for an independent Palestinian state, but for a vote and rights for all in a new multicultural entity. A state in which it will become increasingly impossible to insist on Jewish domination, simply through sheer lack of numbers.

And the Palestinians of the Old City of Jerusalem will still be there. Israel failed to put Jerusalem on the negotiating table, and for this, and many other crimes, three years into a depressing Intifada, the bell slowly tolls louder for the end of the Zionist dream.

Isabelle Humphries is conducting Ph.D. research at St. Mary's College, University of Surrey, on the situation for Palestinian refugees living inside the 1948 borders. She has worked for three years with Palestinian NGOs, and as a freelance writer, on both sides of the 1967 border. You can reach her at innazareth@yahoo.co.uk

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