Last week I got an email from a friend of a friend. He’s coming to Jerusalem. First time. Among other things, he’s heard that the Old City of Jerusalem isn’t safe. Is it? Is the Old City safe?
I’m asked that question by nearly every single visitor I encounter.
The question makes me contort my face as if I’m being offered fried cow organs by someone I really don’t want to offend.
I posed the question to a friend of mine who just got her master’s degree in Jerusalem Studies. Her eyes rolled to the right as if she’d told her son four thousand times that his shirt is hanging in the closet but he just asked again where it is.
Is the Old City safe?
What do you think? Is the Old City safe? (I’ll post my answer soon.)
For me, the question is not about whether the old city is safe or not for or or a few, but whether or not the Old City is a happy place for its Palestinian residents.
That’s a very deep question. What do you all think?
In answer to “Is Jerusalem’s Old City safe?” I would ask: safe for whom? and safe from what?
Yes! Yes! Yes! That’s exactly the question. Another friend of mine asked it on Facebook. The Old City is definitely more safe for some than for others. My friend’s son (a Palestinian) was shot in the foot by an Israeli settler who occupied (by force) the house next door. I doubt that he, or the owner of the house that was occupied, feel quite as safe as I do walking through with my American passport.
The Old City is as safe as any crowded place. There are probably less pick pockets than there are in London or New York perhaps because of the large number of “security” forces always visible. The chance of being “mugged” is absolutely is somewhere between minimal and zero.
The only real danger is from the motorised garbage collection vehicles that squeeze past people with a millimeter to spare.
I would certainly let my children go alone through the Old City before I’d let them go along through London or New York — that’s for sure.