Jerusalem Post: ‘East Jerusalem is Israeli, open the city’
Amid some ambivalence, the government moved speedily toward annexation immediately after 1967 Six Day War The barriers separating the two halves of Jerusalem, he said, would be removed in the morning, and residents – Arabs as well as Jews – would be free to cross over. Almost everybody at the meeting, including Kollek, protested that it was too soon. Enemies who had just fought a war could not become peaceful neighbors overnight. Pent-up passions would inevitably explode – murder, rape. Dayan was unmoved. “East Jerusalem is Israeli,” he said. “Open the city.”
The next morning, Arabs and Jews, often in family groups, passed through the crossing points with profound curiosity to explore streets they had not seen for two decades.
Couples walked hand in hand. Many of the Arabs went to see homes they had formerly lived in and sometimes were invited in… It took a prominent Jewish businessman two hours to proceed through the shuk to the Chamber of Commerce because of old acquaintances stopping to embrace him and inviting him for coffee. Police headquarters in Jerusalem did not register a single complaint this day from either Jews or Arabs. It might have been the most peaceful day the city would know in the 20th century. And since.
