Jerusalem to Ramallah

According to international treaties West Jerusalem is Israeli and East Jerusalem is Palestinian. In reality, there is no border for Israeli citizens between West and East Jerusalem. For Palestinians it is altogether different. Most of them have not citizenship whatsoever; they may have a Palestinian passport but if they want to use it to travel to Israel or abroad, they need a special permission from the Israeli authorities, and these may grant it or not, arbitrarily. They also have to ask for a special permission to travel to East Jerusalem, the part of Jerusalem that the international community in their treaties granted to a future state of Palestine. When the Israeli authorities give this permission, it needs to be renewed periodically if the Palestinian person in question wants to travel to Jerusalem again after the permission expires.

Jerusalem II

First Tuesday

Says A. that the whole of the Old City falls inside what the mass media calls “East Jerusalem”, as opposed to West Jerusalem, which, according to some international treaties, would correspond to Israel, while East Jerusalem would correspond to Palestine. “East Jerusalem” would be the part that the Palestinians would have as their capital if the Israeli State respected the treaties it has signed. It would be a situation of a divided Jerusalem between Israel and Palestine once Palestine is recognised as a Country, or State. So it looks like most tourists are staying in ‘East Jerusalem’, the ‘bad part’ of the city.