• by Pierre Klochendler (jerusalem)
• Sunday, February 20, 2011
• Inter Press Service

The apex of modern times for one of the world's oldest cities is when what looks like a silvery car glides by. A cruise on Jerusalem's first light rail is a dream of perfection promising to relieve traffic congestion in the city.

Scheduled to open to the public this spring, the train has just started test runs. All buses serving the Israeli city centre are now diverted to the nearby Mahane Yehuda market.

Pedestrians manoeuvre their way carefully. 'Look at the mess!' says a disgruntled shopper, 'I'll be dead this nightmare won't be over.' For others, the bell announcing the passing of a light train is a national hymn. 'This is Israel's first light train! God willing, Jerusalem will unify into one city,' another man exclaims cheerfully.

Serving both Israeli and Palestinian neighbourhoods, the new public transportation system would seem to be an auspicious project in a future drive to advance peace. Yet, in this city of competing political, historical and religious claims, the train is much more about who takes the driver's seat.

Officials of the CityPass group that won the tender prefer a more prosaic outlook. 'This service will carry 120,000 passengers a day. The aim is to develop the city's operational and regulatory setting, to encourage commercial initiatives,' says chief technical officer Alex Kroskin. 'Besides, it's quiet and clean. In all 300 regular buses will be taken out of service. And, it's safe.'

During the Palestinian Intifadah uprising, boarding a bus was a dire security hazard. Kroskin points out the security personnel posted at every station, and the 360-degree closed circuit cameras.

Touring Jerusalem aboard the light train might actually be a good way of getting to realize that, in a city sometimes too holy for its developers, urban projects are not only paved with good intentions; that roads, rather than religious sites, are now the be-all and end-all of authority.

Fasten your seat belt, the smooth ride is about to end up abruptly against pervasive walls of mistrust.

The controversy over the project starts along the Old City walls, on the seam between Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem and Israel's West Jerusalem.

From there, the 9-mile (14-km) rail runs along the no-man's-land that used to divide the city into Jewish and Arab sectors before Israel captured East Jerusalem in the 1967 war. Nowadays, the old ceasefire line is a major thoroughfare.

Then, at the end of Road No.1, the train turns further east into occupied territory. It will serve the large Pisgat Ze'ev settlement.

A billboard announcing the light rail ambiguously dedicates the line 'For the good of the capital city'. Yet, 'whose capital city?' is no small matter when sovereignty over East Jerusalem is a major dead-end on the road to peace. The line will serve only one Palestinian neighbourhood.

'This train is mostly for the Israelis,' bemoans a Palestinian passer-by, 'We're on the sidelines, as always.' 'I wish they'd invest in peace what they've invested in the train,' another Palestinian chimes in.

The train will stop at nine stations in East Jerusalem. It will serve only ten stations in the neighbourhoods located in the Israeli part of town. That's less than half the total number of stops (if one includes the four stations along the former no-man's-land). Yet, by and large, Israeli residents will be the ones to benefit from it.

Out of the 23 stations along the unique line, only three will serve Palestinian residents, albeit they constitute a third of a population of 750,000. That will hardly correct the decades of neglect. 'Proper roads, housing, schools, that's what's most needed here,' explains a resident of Shu'fat, the Palestinian neighbourhood that will enjoy the service.

In Jerusalem, as in the West Bank, roads are a neat way to identify and demarcate Israeli and Palestinian areas with new borders — of what they have, and don't have. Changes that have (or have not) taken place here for the past 40-plus years of Israeli occupation have left insignificant marks on the daily lives of the Palestinians, sustaining the inequalities between them and their Israeli neighbours.

After all, facts depend on who defines them and who creates them. No wonder Palestinians tried to 'derail' the light rail. They fear the billion dollar project will further entrench Israel's control over the part of the city they want as their capital.

Ziad Hamouri, head of the Palestinian Jerusalem Centre for Socio-Economic Rights, says the train is just another facet of Israel's annexation policy: 'Its purpose is to connect West Jerusalem with the settlements through East Jerusalem. The train is illegal; the settlements are illegal.'

Israelis living in East Jerusalem will be able to connect to the Israeli city centre within 20 minutes. 'The project will make the movement much easier than it was before, and not only for Muslims, Christians or Jews,' says Nadav Meroz, from the Israeli-run municipality.

Palestinians counter the light rail is just another ploy for Israel to create more facts on the ground, just as it has with its enclaves in East Jerusalem that are now home to over 180,000 Israelis. 'It won't unify the two nations — it will unify the two cities,' stresses Hamouri. 'It will create more obstacles on the way to a peaceful solution.' Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he won't give up any part of Jerusalem. It's a position supported by most Israelis. Yet, recent media leaks jointly published by Al-Jazeera and The Guardian suggest that the Israeli Prime Minister is taking a harder line than his predecessor Ehud Olmert.

The Palestinian Authority has tried to force two French multinationals, Veolia, the service operator, and Alstom, the contractor, out of the venture, urging Arab countries to threaten to cancel contracts with the two groups.

In November, Veolia pulled out — at least officially. In practice though, attesting to the group's work ethics that 'business is business, is work accomplished', maintenance teams can still be spotted wearing the vest bearing the corporation's name.

Both Israelis and Palestinians might still dream of a city without borders. Yet, their dreams are exclusive and rarely intersect — except for when they clash.

The light train won't bridge dreams of a universal embrace of the holy city. Meanwhile, peace will have to remain in suspension, like a train testing the lyre-shaped suspended bridge of strings designed by the Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava.

© Inter Press Service (2011) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service

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