 So guys welcome back to my youtube channel going for a walk today around The Damascus Gate area in East Jerusalem. This is what's called the southern bus station I don't know what the official name is the blue and white buses, which are informally called Arab buses Those go to the south to the best of my knowledge. So the bus I just took was coming from Somewhere in the south so those buses go to Bethlehem Bejala, then there's another bus station Which I will also go to that is green and white those buses go to the places in the north. So like Ramallah Jeannine anywhere north of Jerusalem. That's the my understanding of it anyway could be could be flawed, but there's two separate Very colloquially known as Arab bus stations, and there are different bus companies than Egid Which is like the Jewish bus company. So this is one of the streets outside the Damascus Gate Which I will go by too. I'm just opening my GPS because I Don't always know the names of these streets. I call this Niveem Street. I also have a different Applation in Arabic and it goes up to about here before kind of Goes into Moos Rara You can see there's some vegetable. I'm going to do a turnaround. There's a plaleat here Plaleat is one of the health funds. So this is a street which has a market on Saturdays. The good thing about this area for non-Jewish people living in the city is that When Jerusalem closes down There's some stuff here open. So these monites Should I share taxis go to Tel Aviv you can see the Doma the Rock in the distance. That's the big Golden Structure just visible over the walls So you've got some like falafel places here You can buy coffee you can buy I used to buy spices here sometimes and This isn't the market in progress is just like what it looks like on a regular day today's Thursday. I'm taking a lunch break here Friday is usually the day that this is busy It's Yomal Juma, which is the holy day for Muslims so on Friday, you'll see lots and lots of buses arriving in this area with people going into Damascus Gate to visit Al Aqsa Mosque quite a number of tourists here today and Just getting to the end of it. Let me open Google Maps take a look at the names Turning on my GPS. I Wish there was a phone that did everything had a gimbal built into it, too. There probably is For the meantime, I'm using two devices Our and by is what's given on Google Maps. I'm not sure that's actually I use much Here you have some more shops This is the Al Ayid restaurant Pretty well known place You'll hear kind of the share taxis yelling ice destinations like in Khalil, which is a Hebron or Ramallah or Bethlehem, so it's common to take you can also take Arab taxis Arab taxi driver citizens of East Jerusalem Will drive you to Ramallah and back they go through a checkpoint called Hisma So if you are able to go into area A So you're not Israeli citizens. There's also services here share taxis leaving to Al Ambi Bridge, which is a crossing land border into Jordan Palestinians can go through their Israelis cannot So this is a Sultan Suleiman Street, here's a guy was about to drive into me. Thank you. That didn't happen We're now going towards the Damascus gate Plaza, so this is the there's a pretty intense Military presence here because as I mentioned or as I wrote in the description. I should say there's been many Attacks here over the years. It's kind of a flashpoint, but right now it's pretty chill That's the weird thing about Israel as you know people think this is like such a crazy conflict zone to live in and it's not that it Isn't it's just that the conflict when it happens tends to be very localized both in time and in place so right now you can see it's just people pretty much enjoying relaxing in front of the Damascus gate. This is called a Baba Lahmahud in Arabic In Hebrew, it's called Shah Shem and English just Damascus gate. This is a great big plaza I think I'll come down in here in a bit For right now. We'll just continue checking out some of the streets around here. So this Is a shopping street that I think if memory serves will lead up to the northern bus station I'll show people where that is. No, sorry. That's a little bit further up, but there's a few Kind of shops and stuff on that street here Nablus Road is what I'm getting on Google Maps for this street enemy I think that's correct. We'll see if you can see a street sign or maybe even ask somebody So you can see this is East Jerusalem the temperament of the street here. You can hear Arabic music playing. It's very different than West Jerusalem Coffee here is really really good. I might actually kick some up some bread too Probably pick up a copyright strike now for some random Random music. It's all good This youtube channel is a monitor. I don't have really any plans to I don't know become like a big youtuber. I'm just doing this Um, because the thing about here we go Derek Shchem. So that means Nablus Road Thing about living in Jerusalem is my day-to-day existence is pretty minus the minus the fact that I've been self-employed for Three years now, which is why I can do this to begin with. It's pretty mundane so it's kind of easy to live here and just have like a really ordinary day-to-day life so Doing this has actually been really good goes from an exercise standpoint Um and from just like getting a little bit more adventurous. So yeah, this is um Nablus Road. We'll see what we can find up here Deutchen, Viren, Varm, Hellingen, Lander. I'm not sure what that means in German I'm shooting these videos on the Femi Femi Pam too. I usually put that in the description shoots well in daytime And stabilizes video nicely It doesn't do very well in low light conditions at night time So in East Jerusalem, there is some neighborhoods being into them on a couple of videos like Schechtjarra Schechtjarra Ah, sorry. Here's an northern bus station. So the northern buses are the green and white buses So if I wanted to take a bus to Ramallah I forget the number of bus to Ramallah, but I can ask someone and It would be from here. So this is a separate bus terminal. So it's obviously at the end of Nablus Road for anybody looking to do excursion There's also a car company car rental company up here That will do rentals That are authorized to go into area A So that's just a tip for anybody looking who again if Israeli citizens can't go into area A, but uh, some people Some people can internationals and want always want to find most Israeli rental companies will not So you can see this bus here has Kalandia written Which is the checkpoint into Ramallah So that's where that one is going I thought I think I remember I took it before I just got dropped off in Uh, Mansara square master square. I forget the name. This anyway the main square in Ramallah So I'll go back here next Place on the itinerary So the street continues Sultan Sultan Suleiman continues over And then goes on to Salat al-Din Which is like one of the main streets here in East Jerusalem So I'll go on to that street next Then maybe go into the uh Muslim quarter the old city. I did a video yesterday a walk from Damascus gate through to uh the little western wall And I did mention in that video that I think Izzyman's coffee is the best coffee in Jerusalem That was visible there just inside the old city I'll point out where that is again It was also at Wad Street, which is on the other side Everything else is interesting about this place. You'll see the Jordanian dina are used To an extent. It's not legal tender in Israel, of course. You'll see signs because a lot of Uh, Jordanians a lot of Palestinians effectively holds Jordanian citizenship And there's a strong relationship between Palestinians and Jordanians So you'll see a lot of signs for foreign currency. There you see look the sign here has atm Dollar sign British Pines sign Euro sign and at the bottom you see j.dinar. That's the Jordanian dinar Today is a nice sunny day, which is why I decided to do this video today because It's winter time in Israel now and it's been days of Sun and then days of rain There's an expression in Arabic Which means the day of Onions and a day of honey, I believe So this is one of the days of honey. So I said I take advantage of it to go and do this video These are workers for the Jerusalem municipality. I'm kind of walking in the middle of the street right now Whatever All right So we're just coming up on the other side of the road here Are the walls of the old city of Jerusalem And as I said, we'll go to Damascus gate Shortly. This is a really interesting exposed section of the wall So you see the buses here almost entirely The Blue and white buses. This is actually another bus terminus. I think some of them come into here So it's not that you won't see the agate buses here in This part of Jerusalem. There are some lines separately, they're not really used much by the Jewish So this is why east Jerusalem is such an interesting city because I think the best way to think about it is three cities This area east Jerusalem Kind of functions as a stone city. You'll see for instance discount and Israeli bank and I mentioned this when I was in Ras al-Amoud the other day You'll see stuff like this that you wouldn't see and let's say Ramallah. You wouldn't see It's really helpful because it's fully under the autonomy of the Palestinian Authority the PA whereas here it's kind of a mixture of effectively Arabic, but you'll still see all the kind of Israeli post offices and etc Golden malls tell us here. You'll see a lot of border police here In this part of tain. That's what that vehicle is. So these are Jean-Dar-Marie, I think is the official description So you'll see them You'll see them here You're gonna keep walking sort of on the road just to get around The pedestrians a lot of people like today These things are really big. You'll see them in Ramallah as well these corn stands Not exactly sure why Sweet shops are also really big. They love their sweets And What else You see a lot of here So things are generally cheaper. So some people historically Israeli Jews would go into these areas to do stuff like shopping Um Going around again Looks like a school group or something I'm gonna put the camera down slightly because I don't want to be freaking people out, but I'm Filming them intentionally. I do try in these videos to not film police because I don't want to create Autocations, I don't think it's actually legal, but I just kind of do that anyway. You may have noticed So let's see what else we have here We're coming now on to Salah-e-Din street walls of the old city or over there Here's a fried chicken established. Sorry. It's warm establishment Okay, we're coming now on to Salah-e-Din. So as you said, this is like the one of the shopping streets And this will lead into Sheikh Jarrah. I think the strawberry season is so produce is very seasonal here And uh Right now you're seeing strawberries from Gaza being sold. This is the other rival in the Jerusalem Arab coffee scene is a place called Sanduka You see these kind of old ladies selling Um Zaatar Which is a wild thai. It's already pretty popular. You probably don't need to explain what it is Also mint also parsley So this is Salah-e-Din streets, which is Saladin in in English And this goes on for a little bit as he said up till Sheikh Jarrah, which is a more actually affluent I've been in the news a lot recently, but it's actually one of traditionally the more affluent neighborhoods of east Jerusalem Um and you'll see there a lot of Not embassies, but they're like consulates. I've talked about this before. It's not super interesting for most people, but the Jerusalem has a number of consulates And most of them are actually officially to the city of Jerusalem It doesn't really kind of mean much because the city of Jerusalem, you know, clearly isn't a state um So they're effectively kind of liaisons with the pa. You also find some there are embassies in uh, Ramallah And those ambassadors usually the head of the mission gets a residence So you'll find residences of heads of mission to the pa In Jerusalem and they tend to be in Sheikh Jarrah. I don't know why I guess it's just kind of more affluent nice So I think those are guys in strawberries What we're walking back now in the direction of The old city in Damascus gate I'm trying to think there's a way to get across, you know, I'm just going to cross the road Make this more very I guess and footage of the uh walls of the old city too so Coming back to my earlier point about Jerusalem being three cities because this really It's just a curious mixture. I mean if you look at what's on the ground here, it's got its own bus network It's got its own hospital network And the rest is kind of Israel, but the people the cultural identity Of the people here is, you know, uh, Palestinians and It's Arabic is the language here's another gate to the old city here a little bit further down You should probably put on a mask before going into one of these Heads gates according to google that was a little gate back there There you go. You're doing something every day I think there's like seven or eight gates to the old city One it's one of them is sealed off. I was at an iron gate yesterday So just inside of Damascus gate There is a plaza which I sort of went up to for a second and then turned back and then it bifurcates into two streets and what's on the inside is the Muslim quarter of the old city so them all cities divided into quarters. This is a pretty nice garden here The Jerusalem municipality does try to put on some events that's a for the local area population so Around, you know, events like Eid al-Fitr. You'll see Eid Mubarak signs going up and stuff like that, but I think the best thing to say I don't I don't want to say things I can't back up with statistics. So Just say that the relationship between the city of Jerusalem Which is basically a Jewish municipality And the population here is probably very tense So I think that's uncontroversial to say that much anyway Zidkiah who's cave is here apparently not open So you'll see here coming where I'm approaching to there's this big observation point for the Israeli army. There's one on both sides of the plaza to Damascus gate And also just before we go into the old city itself, you'll see another observation post So these were installed The last couple of years there was some kind of controversy about it at the time and that's kind of the nature of Jerusalem is it's so It's so kind of tense that all these fairly inconsequential things like someone puts up an observation tower attract international media coverage sometimes. So here's anyway the back to Damascus gate I'm gonna be quiet because I really love the look at this plaza just for a couple of moments Let the scenery speak for itself I'm gonna put on my mask now so I'm gonna get a little bit more mouthful I just think whenever there's a lot of people it's a good idea these days Just coming up I know from Google is Hamid Falafel. Good place to get Falafel in the old city Left here is El Wad Street where I was yesterday. We'll go right this time for Variety Is that possible? It's a sweet one of the sweet establishments All right, I think that's enough in this dark. So I'm gonna do a 360 Oh Change of plan. I'll do that some other day. I kind of want to just get some lunch at this point so I'll go outside of the massive gate and wrap up the video for the day. We're going to come back here for a second to Damascus Gate. Another deal city. I'm not sure what's going on over there. A lot of guys shading. Can't get around the guard booth. Probably a good idea to move in the other direction. But I'm saying this is a volatile territory. Alright guys, any video? Thanks for watching.