Israel’s first tram: Schleichzug through the Holy City
News from today’s issue of Germany’s spiegel.de.
Please pardon the translation …
, the ride attendant call into the crowd. At the Jerusalem tram stop at the “Mahane Yehuda market,” they try to get the chaos under control. The message does not arrive. Some who previously sat peacefully and studied the Torah, mutates into a selfish when it comes to disembarking goes. And the impatient crowd at the bus stops waiting inside.
Two American tourists, mother and daughter struggling, in vain to escape the official “Jerusalem Light Rail Transit” to train as mentioned. With a buzzing sound as the door closes in front of their noses. “Then we just get out on the next stop,” she said somewhat forced in the face of Oriental recklessness.
tram passengers in Israel’s capital must be trained in things tram etiquette still, the train is still young and the line L1 is the first of its kind in the country – the middle of August this year, the silvery low-floor trains started on their journey. By early December, the use of nothing, now it costs the equivalent of about 1.30 € for a 90-minute trip, including switching to buses. Lasted eight years of construction. Again and again delayed the completion – with mixed archaeologists, as well as exaggerated political bickering and bad planning costs up to a height of around 780 million €
.
The voices of the critics were numerous. While arguing the city administration and the French-Israeli operator of City Pass with an appreciation of the areas through which runs the course, and like the phrase used by an improved urban transport infrastructure. She also called upon the railway, the Jerusalem closer together. But the construction site made especially in the center adjacent businesses almost to ruin.
Crawling towards work
The trip begins at the Mount Herzl in the west, passes through the middle of the Arab neighborhood Schuafat and ends after 13.8 kilometers and 21 other stations in the northeast of the controversial Israeli settlement of Pisgat Ze’ev. Each station will be announced in three languages ??on a band of light in the car – in Hebrew, Arabic, English. Nudging the game of “Mahane Yehuda market” is repeated until the stop on Jaffa road at the “Jaffa Center” and goes on “Town Hall” in the extension. Except that here still want to get off the many tourists and it’s like a little bolder.
left and right of the track joins business to business, restaurant to restaurant. If you managed to get a seat, can be explained by the large panoramic windows to enjoy the bustle of the promenade: Palestinian families inspect the goods on display in shop windows. Orthodox Jewish parents and children licking ice stroll across the sidewalk. Tourists try to orient themselves to the folding map.
The low speed of the modern railway, which gives one time to observe excited the minds of others. “The journey to my job sometimes takes up to 30 minutes! By bus, there were seven,” says Abu Hamsi, a 57-year-old Palestinian, one stop before the Chords Bridge was entered. The bridge, which looks like a harp, was specially built for the web by the Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava.
Hamsi works in a workshop in West Jerusalem, the Jewish part of town. His boss was a Jew, who would usually pay better. At least he could ignore his seat on the wonderful crowd. He seems quite relaxed, he is practicing with his fingers the beads on his rosary. “It feels a bit like Europe,” says Hamsi, in the seventies, he went on tour before he married. Because he has an Israeli passport, he may enjoy this privilege.
rather than next to each other
policy moves in with the Jerusalem tram. This is where Palestinians, Muslims and Christians, to Jews, secularists to believers, temperate believers on Ultra-Orthodox, tourists to locals. Calls for a separation of passengers, according to Jews and Arabs, men and women, the Supreme Court slammed a decision from January: A gender segregation in public transportation was illegal
.
“Whether a shared ride brings people closer together? I do not believe,” said Avital, a Jewish Israeli woman, with hair concealed, a blouse up to the wrists, long skirt and tights. Her two sons, Yonatan and Daniel, seven and nine years old, wear curls and tilting the head covering for religious Jewish men. In Jerusalem, but rather to live alongside each other rather than together.
Avital and her boys are joined at the Damascus Gate, before the train was a few hundred meters on the wall of history and for the monotheistic world regions as significant driving along Old Town. Abu Hamsi got out, he lives right around the corner. Similarly, the American tourists who have this attraction anyway on their to-do list. Despite the chaos, they would not let her spoil the holiday mood, they say, is the new track: “Amazing!”
To the north is changing the cityscape. The Arab neighborhoods are poorer. Garbage lying on the streets, the facades are dingy. The stop in “Schuafat” is located opposite a mosque, the low sun casts a warm, reddish glow on the minaret. Boys take their bicycles up and down, older men are sitting by the roadside and watch the track during retraction. A group of Palestinian youth gets on. They are spread out on a four-seat group, loud laugh. One pulls out his cell phone and oriental pop music playing over the speakers.
Avital casts a wary glance over his shoulder: “I’m a little worried about our safety.” Settlers are not popular here.
terminus in Israeli settlement
The route to the northeast from the center out is controversial. The Palestinians claim the railway serving the manifestation of Israel’s claim to East Jerusalem. The Israelis in turn explaining all of Jerusalem to the eternally indivisible capital, should be built in anywhere, from Jews and Arabs. Extensions to the existing line are planned – but whether they will come in the near future is questionable
.
From the rear end of the car approached two security guards in black and gray uniforms and bulletproof vests. They were at the station before the switch from one car to another. The Arab guys are a little quieter, take their feet off the seats opposite.
A few weeks ago, two teenagers prompted a ride attendant to do so, not after. He called the security people, and then sprayed pepper spray and threw the culprit out of the path. Stones flew in mid-October already, where the panoramic windows were shattered. And after stones had been deposited on the tracks, a nationalist background was suspected. Appeals, unstoppable at the three stations in Arab neighborhoods, came to – which should lead to additional stresses in a reaction
.
“Beit Hanina” get off most Palestinian passengers. On the train it is quiet. The remaining passengers are almost exclusively Jewish residents of Pisgat Ze’ev – only two Palestinian women and their children will continue to travel. The young women in headscarves and dark, tight fitting, but long clothes, sit and talk, their offspring using the car as a playground.
In the settlement
leave almost all the railway, and the two Palestinian women. Opposite the station there is a large, air-conditioned shopping mall. “It’s so simple to achieve, since we have the car, and not as crowded as those in the center,” says one of the two and makes his way toward the security gate at the entrance.
The tram drives off, followed by the Moshe Dayan-road and will make a stop twice. At the stop “Chel HaAvir” too German “Luftwaffe”, is terminal. A few hundred meters from the wall separating Israel from the West Bank.
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