Jerusalem — AS a young paratrooper 40 years ago, Moshe Amirav felt the unmistakable touch of history.
Ignoring a minor head wound suffered in the capture of East Jerusalem from Jordanian forces, Amirav raced through the winding lanes of the Old City to join jubilant fellow soldiers at the Western Wall.
It was June 7, 1967. Overcome with the sense that God had finally brought the Jews home, he scribbled "Shalom," or peace, on a slip of paper and tucked it between the iconic stones.
"I said to myself, 'No matter what happens to you in your life, you'll never have such a moment of ecstasy again,' " recalled Amirav, now a 61-year-old scholar.
Just over a mile from the Western Wall that day, Ibrahim Dakkak, a Palestinian builder, also felt the tug of history. Shocked and bewildered, he huddled with his family under their kitchen table and listened to the sound of combat. Fearful of being discovered by Israeli troops, Dakkak's wife muffled the cries of their year-old son by cramming a tomato into his mouth.
Dakkak emerged to a region transformed. Israel had captured the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights and the Sinai peninsula.
After 19 years in which the city they call Al Quds had lain sharply divided -- Jews on the west, Arabs on the east -- Palestinians faced the prospect of Israeli rule.
"I felt defeated," said Dakkak, now 78.
Jerusalem was totally under Jewish control for the first time in 2,000 years. Israeli leaders vowed that the city holy to Jews, Christians and Muslims would remain the "eternal and undivided" capital of the Jewish state.
Forty years later, Israel's vision of a unified Jerusalem under its control remains illusory. Long after the removal of the barbed-wire fences that bisected it in 1967, the city remains bitterly divided between Jews and Arabs. The war has evolved into a battle of attrition over land and identity.
In daily life, Jews and Arabs inhabit side-by-side worlds. Palestinians feel hemmed in by Israeli rule over their East Jerusalem neighborhoods. Jews in West Jerusalem, though victimized by numerous suicide bombings, in quiet times maintain the rhythms of a normal existence: schools, shopping and trips to the park. Disparities in living conditions are glaring. The two sides also have separate professional associations and cultural institutions, and contrasting visions of the future.
