Henry Weil was walking once again on the rough stones that line his favorite daily route, a winding promenade that cuts through a refreshing stretch of greenery amid the dry Judean hills.
The desert stretched out below this ancient city. Jews prayed at the Western Wall. The Dome of the Rock, a sacred Muslim shine, basked in the sunshine. And beyond, on the hillside of the Mt. of Olives, one could see the belfry of the Church of the Ascension.
A week earlier, in this stunning setting, Weil had become another victim of the turmoil that torments Arabs and Jews. Now he was back, to walk for peace.
Weil, 64, who came to Israel years ago from France, recalled the day he was attacked.
The weather was miserable. He was alone. Three masked Arab youths approached, sprayed him with tear gas and began stabbing him.
“They stabbed me in my thighs, chest, legs and back, and then they left me, thinking I was going to bleed to death,” he said with no emotion. He struggled home, found help and spent five days in a hospital.
He returned to the promenade soon after, he said, partly “to show that we shouldn’t give up, that we have to keep walking here.”
Weil was joined by several dozen Jews and a handful of Arabs, mostly neighbors from the nearby Abu Tor neighborhood. They were walking as a memorial to Moran Amit, a 25-year-old law school student stabbed to death the week before. According to police, she was attacked by Arab youths as she strolled along the promenade with her boyfriend.
Fearing for their lives, the two had separated. Amit, who was born in a kibbutz founded mostly by British Jews, raced from the promenade to a thick, green stretch known as the Peace Forest.
There, police say, she was repeatedly stabbed and died soon after. Alerted by witnesses, police began chasing the youths.
One of the alleged attackers, a 14-year-old, was shot to death. Police said the youths who killed Amit also attacked Weil.
Frustration, not anger
As Weil walked with the others, Weil said he felt no anger toward his Arab neighbors.
“I feel frustration,” he said. “I think we have to overcome this and try to live together. It is not easy, not easy at all. But we have no option.”
While he talked, Ronny Pearlman, 57, a neighbor and a mental health counselor, listened closely.
An organizer of the march, Pearlman is a longtime resident of Abu Tor, a rare Jerusalem neighborhood where Arabs and Jews live side by side. She said she didn’t want anyone using the occasion for political purposes. All she wanted, she said, was to keep the peace among neighbors.
“I came from Czechoslovakia, where I was afraid of communism, and I am a person who doesn’t want to be afraid,” she said. “And so, I want this to be a place where we all have peace.”
Abdel Nasser Mohammad, a 33-year-old Palestinian businessman from the Old City, came along with two Arab friends. It struck him, he said, that the walk honored only the Israeli victim. It should have marked the death of the Arab youth too, he said.
“You have blood here, blood from human beings,” he said.
Nonetheless, he believed in the message of peace. “This bloodshed should stop,” he said. “It will only lead us to hell. Violence is not justified from both of us.”
Nearly all of the walkers had left by the time Sari Levy Almog meandered by. She had lingered for a while at the top of the promenade, taking in the view and thinking. She grew up on the kibbutz with Moran Amit and wanted to honor her friend. She also came, she said, because of her own belief in peace.
Almog said her friend’s family had passed the word that once their mourning was over, they intended to visit the family of the slain young Arab as a gesture of peace.
Stabbing victim was pro-Arab
“It is so strange,” she said, looking away toward the trees below. “Moran was so pro-Arab. She was left-wing, and that this should happen to her.”
Then the walkers were gone. A call to prayer from a mosque echoed across the valley, and no one was left to admire the trees and bushes that had been planted over the years along the walkway.
There were only police on guard, clutching their guns and staring out from behind sunglasses.
