Jerusalem's Unseen Eyes

In the bazaar of Jerusalem's Old City, the Israeli police have cameras, hundreds of them, hidden throughout this labyrinth of stone and faith. The cameras were put there during the Intifada in 2000 because Palestinians would fall on Jewish students with knives and escape into the alleys.

It was the most medieval of assassination techniques; for centuries, this was how murder was carried out in the Old City, the slash of a blade, a scream or two, and the fading sound of the assassin's footfalls on the stone.

The cameras don't always stop the killing, but it makes it easier for the Israeli police to catch the escaping murderers.

A few days ago, I was invited into Jerusalem's police control center, a darkened, high-tech room with banks of TV screens. Many of these invisible eyes are trained on the Temple Mount and Western Wall. A sensible precaution; all it would take is some fanatic --he (or she) could be Jewish, Muslim or Christian-- to set off a bomb and trigger World War III.

It was the ultimate reality TV show. Tourists streamed along the Via Dolorosa, pursued by souvenir vendors with holy oil and rosaries. A trio of veiled Muslim women peered at a glittering necklace in a goldsmith's display. A baker's apprentice weaved through the crowd like an acrobat, balancing a plank of sesame-flecked bagels in his up-stretched hands.

Watching these scenes, I began to understand the voyeur's fascination. It's the power of invisibility. That middle-aged woman at the spice market, the one adjusting her skirt… could she feel on the back of her neck that she was being watched?

A policewoman showed us a few tapes from the closed-circuit cameras: a knife fight between feuding Arab families, police busting carjackers. “Would you like to see a funny one?” the policewoman asked, mischievously.

Of course, I replied.

I wish that I could have grabbed a copy of the tape and posted it online. Shot from a camera high in the vaulted ceiling of Jaffa Gate, it shows three workers hefting a giant painting. It's heavy work, so they prop the huge canvas against the ancient wall and stroll off for a cigarette break. But they didn't stand the painting steady. Slowly, it tipped over, just as a black-hatted ultra-orthodox student was hurrying by. The Yeshiva student's head was too full of the Talmud, or the thought of lunch, to notice this slow-mo calamity. Sure enough, the painting fell on top of him, knocking off his hat and squashing him to the pavement. At that moment, while the student lay there stunned, perhaps wondering what he had done to offend the Almighty, a woman bustled past.

What was extraordinary was that she paid him no notice, as if it were the most commonplace occurrence on a trip to the Old City to see an ultra-orthodox student pinned like a bug under a giant canvas. The painting was wrapped, so I couldn't see it. But I like to think that the painting had a religious theme, with thunderbolts and a bit of Biblical wrath.

Chuckling, we left the command center. But over my shoulder, I looked back and saw that the sharp-eyed watchers had gone back to their TV surveillance screens, scanning the humdrum scenes of bazaar life and trying to decipher whether that youth bounding up the steps of the Via Dolorosa carrying a sports bag is on his way to the gym or to blow up a holy shrine and start World War III. It's not that far-fetched, sadly.

---by Tim McGirk/Jerusalem