From Jerusalem, the Holy City
On 6 September, the first Friday of Ramadan
Lieber Jürgen,
Thank you for your encouraging words for my discharge from the Holy City. You put the Holy City in quotation marks and write in brackets, still you held fast to this title. I had given you my hand but never encouraged. But now I want to respond to them.
First I owe you thanks! You saw me through this year are true, I followed in my ways and to the encounters in Bethlehem and its surrounding villages and in Yanoun, a small mountain village. You helped me, the little horrors of everyday life and great horror at the consequences of the occupation of Palestine for both occupied and occupier, to reflect on and endure. So you were with me in Bethlehem and in Yanoun. And we were always in between in Jerusalem, is where our office and where I was also used when no one else was there. That was often an additional burden, especially for the soul. Imagine, then, because you so about the "Holy City", went to Jerusalem.
"The carrier of Jerusalem", photo by Sliman Mansour had to accompany me in Jerusalem house demolitions and displacement of families. But I also had time for me to move through the city to sit and wait for someone to be part of the people who live in Jerusalem or experience it as a travel destination, as businessmen, tourists or pilgrims. And then again the observation of house demolitions, of occupation and plunder of the houses by Jewish settlers and expulsions. What a horrible task! And what a goodbye now, to see that in the three years that I perceive this problem, nothing changed, nothing has improved and that the courage to believe in a just solution that has sunk, especially Palestinians. They understand that time is working against them. The world looks and sees it , but she gets used to the situation in Palestine and Israel. And they can give the evil. This is what the Palestinians this and still hold firmly that their holy city of Jerusalem and Palestine is their land, a magical land created for dreams and visions .
"A woman with Jerusalem", photo by Sliman Mansour
I'm standing on the roof terrace of the hotel where I spent the last two nights. The city is known only by their lights, close the so-called Tower of David, all around the old fortress wall from the heyday of the Ottoman Empire, the Old Town with its towers and domes, in the west, the new Jewish town and on to the edges of the settlements, which have placed the winners of the recent wars in the former surroundings. There were once the villages of the Palestinians. Whatever you see, determines that night and all night here, it is the traumatic scenario: The winner take all around the Palestinian city and country to country in the middle of their house by house. It is their Holy City, the city under the Holy Zion. You have a law and then Jerusalem is the undivided capital of Israel forever.
Today is the first Friday of the fasting month. has started four days ago of Ramadan. A Friday in the month of fasting to all Muslims in the country offers the opportunity to fulfill their duty and in the Al Aqsa mosque or on the large square in front of her, pray to the Haram as-Sharif. Many have their festive robes, white robes and white Keffiyas
of the men who have made the hajj, or pilgrimage to Mecca. The women wear festive, colorful embroidered dresses and beautiful wide head scarves. It is a holiday. No seller of pastries, coffee and cigarettes are here today. Food odors, water bottles, cigarette packs are banned. All the bright day fast. Prayer this Friday and utterly this Friday or in the front of the Al Aqsa Mosque is the culmination of the Lenten week, it means a thousand times more than an ordinary prayer at home. From around the country they come from. Early in the morning at five in the first clock are at the gates - not just outside the city, if not all are - but the checkpoints. Military and border police here have prepared themselves and have built a barrier in front of the barrier, here the 12-meter high wall. There are the soldiers on surrounding rooftops, their snipers and machine guns are stationed. Jeeps are parked in such that the narrow entrances between the concrete block by the men and women separately and individually passed through to be able to be closed. The soldiers can only men over 50 and the younger only by special permission for religious purposes. Inside, in the checkpoint, the men are still controlled again to life and luggage and on their papers. The pious men take the up, the waiting and checking 
take sometimes up to two hours, but it was much better than last year, say observers. The women over 45 and between 35 and 45 with the "religious license" may use the newly created entrance, the third goal through the wall, whose construction we have observed in recent months with the worry that the only tourists or for Women, children and the sick will be opened. The women must not enter into the terminal. They are only once "manually" controlled by soldiers and then at the terminal by road led to where the buses are back, that they had traveled. There they are, troubled, most do not know this business at the checkpoints. They are waiting for their husbands who are left ... hopefully by then they leave for Al Quds, "The Far," as the city is in the Muslim tradition. It is the third of the Holy Cities, Mecca and Medina. Al Quds, where the Prophet Mohammed had been placed in one of his nocturnal visions, and where it had the angel Gabriel brought directly into the open sky. Al Quds is the natural capital for the Palestinians and all Arabs and all Muslims, the inviolable holy city. 
Today, I had no breakfast because I had to leave early on the hotel. But yesterday I was at the Knights Palace. My counterpart at the breakfast table, I easily recognized as pilgrims from Down Under, Queensland in Australia, he then explained, told of his pilgrimage in the Holy Land. But he was without to make this clear, was only in Israel. For 2 hours, his pilgrimage by bus across the border traveled to Bethlehem. It was quite easy, not 5 minutes we had to wait, and the soldiers were very polite, he said. He also asked what am I doing here and listened to short, but understood he does not. The Holy Land was simple and accessible to him: the Via Dolorosa, the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem's Old City, Nazareth, Mount of Transfiguration, the Sea of Galilee - all he had seen in a few days. Palestinian Christians, he was hardly meet 
et, was the leader of an Israeli and the priests who worship the pilgrims had thought they were, English spoken, he recalled. He had seen the Holy Land Christian, Islam and Judaism his tour group was not met. For this particular book would be a long journey, "he admitted. But the main thing, the holy places which they had yet seen. Tonight I will visit a friend in West Jerusalem. In the synagogue not far from her house I have been twice, it is Orthodox, while politically minded, but men and women still sit separately. Our hostess is like in another, very small synagogue, where is this
separation is removed. Together with a colleague from our social program, we will take with her the Sabbath meal. We will speak German, because she is German, many years ago came into the country and to Judaism converted. After the visit will be time to experience the night of the Sabbath at the Wailing Wall, where thousands of faithful from Jerusalem, especially from Mea Shearim, the quarter of the "religious" as they are mostly full-called dressed in black from their secular compatriots, to hasten. Single men, families, groups of young people who 
pull the still or singing and dancing through the gates of the Old Town. The Muslims and Christians withdraw then. This night between Friday and Saturday are the Jews . The old town is filled with her crush. Tourists and pilgrims, then, if not already in their Hotels are jostled or pushed to the edge if it does not take place. At the Western Wall, there is a solemn mood. Jerusalem, the city of David, the city of the First and Second Temples is focused on their Jewish center, the Wailing Wall. had between my morning at the checkpoint and use my visit to the Jewish Jerusalem I have time - not only to start this letter - but for a walk in the old town. I attended a workshop for artists ceramic . It's nice to look at the big bowls and vases, small objects and tiles. Unlike the stores, everywhere in the souks memory offer and utility ceramics featuring Jerusalem, is here to see old Armenian art.
Bold colors and ancient motifs that had brought the Armenians, as they did hundreds years ago in this province of the Ottoman Empire came the bowls, vases and tiles decorate. A tile I liked it because it is the skyline of Jerusalem, in my opinion, is excessive mystic: the Hurva Synagogue (still in ruins), Church of the Sepulchre and Church of the Redeemer, the minaret between the two and the Dome of the Rock with its golden dome. You get the otherwise cheesy in all forms. Here I liked that the Armenian colors all in an unreal, heavenly plane moved. The City of God he will descend from heaven. Christmas they will be where people still desecrate their own story, their pain and their dreams. Where do they follow with boots, sneakers or sandals with her wishes and ways. The sanctity of such a vision of how the Armenian on the tile, I can take you. It shows the city of God , not the people it claims as God and how they could contact the doings of the people for good. This vision helps me, hope for an end to the fear that a bomber could mingle with the prayer, an end to fear, the walls and sniper needs an end of impotence, with the losers of the war Israel here raise their claims and an end to ignorance, worship with the Christian pilgrims dead stones in this country and an end to tenure - it helps me to keep hope alive on an end to this hopeless time .
So, my dear friend, you're still in the coming week birthday. And this is my greeting for you. The tile I take with me on my way home. We will soon see, but you shall know that you have accompanied me on my last walk through the city. I will take a few pictures and you enclose - from the "holy city" as you can not leave to say.
Salaam maleikum! And Shabbat Shalom! how to say this evening is here! Peace be with you, as the beginnings of our Christian faith have yet hello and goodbye! Your
Gottfried
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