The passion in the air

Four thousand years of intense political and religious wrangling (see History) are impossible to hide. Wherever you go — in Jewish parts in the city centre or within the walls of the ancient old city — people are zealously fighting to protect and maintain what they see as their piece of land, their endangered culture or their right for a certain way of life. More often than not, this is pretty ugly. Intolerance and trampling over other people’s basic rights are routine in this city. Currently, the Palestinian minority bears the brunt with no sign of it regaining control over its destiny, while the secular Jews are seeing their way of life being gradually marginalized by a growing Orthodox population.