How should Jerusalem be divided? - Watch & Poll

How should Jerusalem be divided? This is a question that amateur videographer Corey Gil Shuster asked in his most recent video, which went up on YouTube this week. Shuster polled a handful of Israelis throughout the country from Tel Aviv to Rosh HaAyin to the Holy City itself, to find out how people feel.

“The eastern side to the Palestinians and the western side for us,” is how Yair from Tel Aviv responded. 

Itsik from Holon said he feels similarly: “Wherever they lived, they should continue to live - the Palestinians,” he told the interviewer. 

But not everyone agreed. 

David and Michal, a secular couple from Rosh HaAyin, said that Jerusalem should remain intact and in Jewish hands.

“It’s ours,” Michal said. “It is the Holy City forever and always."

David said the Palestinians have enough countries of their own and, “we’ll never have peace anyway… They should find another place to live.”

Others, in contrast, said it is time to give peace a chance.

“A person lives until he is 70 or 80 years old,” Itsik continued. “I am fed up with war; the time has come for peace.”

He said Israel and the rest of the world should open their borders.

Nir from Ra’anana felt similarly. He told the interviewer that the question of division is not relevant. What matters is that human beings focus on “money and technology” instead of “bloodshed and war."

“But that is a utopian world that I don’t think will ever exist,” he added. 

A dream? asked David from Rishon Lezion.

“You don’t need to divide it,” he said. “Jerusalem can be a city for everyone.”

He said the root of the conflict is security.

“As soon as there is security for everyone who comes and who goes, it doesn’t matter anymore,” he said. “When we have security, all options are open.”Israel unified Jerusalem in 1967 with its victory in the Six Day War.  The Trump administration has a new peace plan that it hopes to roll out after Israel forms a government. No one is clear about the status of Jerusalem in that plan. One report indicated that the Old City of Jerusalem would be divided in half: the Arab and Christian quarters would go to the Palestinian Authority, while the Jewish and Armenian quarters would fall under Israeli control. However, those reports have not been confirmed.