When we arrived at the checkpoint, they told me that my eleven-year-old son could not accompany me. I insisted, and does he know that he called me, the policeman?: either he leaves or I shoot him in front of you", explains Omar - fictitious name -, 53 years old, when he leaves the prayer one in front of the esplanade of the Mosques of Jerusalem.
The cell phone rings. It's his son. It's waiting nearby. Omar breathes. Can history be invented, at the exit of prayer, under strict police control in the old city of Jerusalem, desolate, with closed trade and no tourists? It's possible. If the journalist - veteran, but not infallible - believed it, he would not include the testimony in the chronicle.
- What has he done?
- My son is gone. They make you feel miserable. I was born in Jerusalem, I was born here and I will die here. Hope? none
The Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock are symbols of Arab Jerusalem, which is increasingly minority. Like everything here, it is sacred ground. And yesterday, Friday, was a day to gauge how far the anger of some and others reaches. Muslims were able to pray in front of Al-Aqsa on one condition: the controls only allowed those over fifty to pass.
At the end of the prayer, up the hill along Bab al-Silsila street, the Muslims parade without making a single procession. Jerusalem could have burned down today, but this time no one wanted it to be like that. Not these Arabs – there are two million in Israel, 20% of the population – who feel humiliated in their city, Jerusalem.
- I said to the soldier at the checkpoint: what would he think if someone prevented him from entering the synagogue? -explains Taisir, 70 years old-. Today there were not even five hundred of us, in normal times there are thousands.
Jerusalem, the thrice holy city, accuses the war. The atmosphere is tense, tourism has disappeared and even the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, where the body of Jesus Christ rested, is empty. Few, but very faithful, yes. And without the religious who compete for their plot in another temple that is as symbolic as it is fragmented.
A cat, who thinks he's handsome, guards the entrance. Even the felines seem hidden, they, who roam around ancient Jerusalem like princes.
"This time is different. There had never been so many deaths. I came from Moscow 29 years ago and I assure you that no Israeli soldier would kill children in cold blood as happened on October 7", says Igor, 58, in the historic street.
There is only life in the market of Mahane Yehuda, a day before the Sabbath. There, an octogenarian approaches. She is Sephardic, born in Turkey, and speaks Judeo-Castilian, intelligible and beautiful. "I have a pension and I don't lack anything", he says, don't think badly. Ben Sion wants to sing a song. Like everything, it drags history, the lost Sefarad. He says: "Open your closed door, I curse your beauty."
- And how do you see the situation?
-There are always massacres here, always.
