A Changing Mind-Set Among Jerusalem's Palestinians

In his small grocery store just off Sultan Suleiman Street, which runs past the Old City's Damascus Gate and through the Arab side of downtown Jerusalem, a Palestinian merchant grumbles about the hardships and indignities under Israeli rule. His complaints are long-standing among Palestinians here, yet the reality for him and others is shifting in response to the violence and economic hopelessness of Palestinian Authority rule in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. "There is no safety there," he says.

As a result, the merchant has given up on what has long been the dream and demand of Jerusalem's Palestinians: to see the city redivided, with the Arab side—which Israel seized from Jordan in the 1967 Six-Day War—becoming the capital of a Palestinian state. "Gaza should be for Palestine, the West Bank should be for Palestine," he says, "but Jerusalem should stay like it is." On this, he is not alone.

Local Palestinians, by deed if not by declaration, are increasingly opting for the status quo, for life under Israeli sovereignty. Jerusalem is by no means happily unified, but it is becoming grudgingly unified. "It's not that the Palestinians here have become Zionists; it's not that they've fallen in love with the State of Israel. They haven't," says an Arab attorney in Jerusalem who, like the merchant, requests anonymity because of the political sensitivity of the issue. "They just want to live normal lives, with security, with a little money in their wallets. They want their kids to be able to go to school. They want what everybody wants."