Jerusalem – Aroma Espresso Bar, a stylish cafe, straddled between the Hebrew College campus and a sprawling hospital advanced and perched 834 metres above sea degree, is often a hub of exercise.
Hospital employees, professors, lecturers, and native and worldwide college students typically mingle as they seize a fast snack or espresso.
For 20 years, the cafe has provided a singular environment in a deeply divided metropolis, a haven the place Palestinian and Israeli medical employees and college students might coexist.
Rania Abu al-Hawa, a soft-spoken maths lecturer, says it’s a place the place everybody goes to “calm down, no matter the place they’re from”.
“We overlook the whole lot right here; we are able to don’t have any politics for an hour, then we head out and face the actual world.”
That was till current occasions.
After Hamas launched a shock assault on southern Israel on October 7, killing greater than 1,400 folks, Israel responded with a near-constant aerial bombardment of the Gaza Strip, which has included the focusing on of faculties, hospitals and the enclave’s oldest church the place Palestinians have been in search of shelter. Greater than 4,100 Palestinians have been killed in the bombing.
On the Aroma counter, Palestinian employees put together espresso for purchasers. Ahmad*, a mild-mannered Palestinian, takes an order in Arabic, earlier than trying up and seamlessly switching to Hebrew as a towering Israeli soldier approaches the counter.
Ahmad says he has each Palestinian and Israeli buddies at work. It’s regular to chit-chat each morning with one another – the cafe has been a bubble, he explains, the place tensions could be put apart.
Now, Ahmad says he speaks much less with the Israeli buddies he had made at work. “It’s dangerous,” he says, selecting his phrases rigorously.
There’s solely a trickle of shoppers utilizing the cafe now in contrast with earlier than. Chairs which are often full of college students, who take footage of fancy drinks and put up them on social media, are propped up towards the tables.
To make sure, many regulars on the cafe nonetheless view it as a uncommon area the place Jerusalem’s combined inhabitants can go to.
Danny, a 44-year-old Israeli working in actual property, strides out of a close-by constructing, a darkish pair of sun shades shielding him from the morning gentle. He says he has all the time loved the cafe as a result of he prefers “to remain out of politics”, and it’s a place the place “each Arabs and Jews wish to go”.
He says that individuals are centered on their jobs within the space, and there are all the time good relations between Palestinians and Israelis within the hospital and college.
Ahmad says the cafe can solely cater to everybody because of the “particular dynamic” of the world. He provides that the menu isn’t kosher, which implies that Israelis who go to are extra secular and, due to this fact, extra “open-minded” to mixing with non-Jews.
Regardless of a lot of the employees being Palestinian, the possession of the cafe, which is a part of a series with greater than 200 shops, is Israeli, and a number of the earnings, he says, go in the direction of the military.
It has left some Palestinians conflicted about working on the cafe.
“Some folks requested me why are you serving to to present to the military?” Ahmad says, “However it’s not simply us; virtually each enterprise does now, simply take McDonald’s, for instance”.
McDonald’s Israel had just lately introduced on its social media accounts that it had handed out 1000’s of free meals to the Israeli navy.
The Aroma Espresso Bar had beforehand tried to open in a Palestinian neighbourhood, however Ahmad says it needed to shut after being attacked.
The current tensions have affected the work setting; employees are keen to not talk about any of the current occasions.
Many Palestinians who work for Israeli corporations who spoke to Al Jazeera had been warned about expressing any pro-Palestinian sentiment. Rights teams and legal professionals have famous dozens of cases the place Palestinian staff have been suspended from work after allegedly expressing help for Hamas.
Mount Scopus, the place the cafe sits, has a Hebrew and an Arabic title: The previous interprets to the “Mount of the Watchmen” and the latter to “Mount Lookout”. Each names are a nod to the spectacular view of the traditional metropolis from the cafe.
Within the distance, monolithic concrete partitions minimize off dense Palestinian neighbourhoods.
Wad Sub Laban, a shy pupil in her twenties, climbs up a steep pathway from Issawiya, a Palestinian neighbourhood on the rocky japanese slopes of the mountain.
She passes two giant boulders that separate the world from the college automobile park; a few Israeli troopers sit in a car, eyeing everybody who comes and goes.
She likes to go to the cafe in between her lessons and decide up a sizzling chocolate, however her view of the cafe as a haven, the place either side can coexist has been jaded, and he or she suggests it’s extra a matter of comfort.
She says that politics isn’t mentioned solely as a result of “principally Arabs work on the cafe, however a lot of the college students who go to are Israelis” — so an influence dynamic is at play the place Palestinians know to not rock the boat.
*Names of some people have been modified to guard their identification