Machmud is a Palestinian. He is 40 years old, and lives with his wife and children in the village of Silwan.

Sitting outside the Damascus Gate entrance to the Old City, Machmud remembers the Six Day War. "I was a child of about ten years something like this, It was not a big battle . . . it took about five days, six days, ya'ani, we stayed at home ya'ani. Most of the battles were not in the city, they were around Jerusalem, on the borders between Jordan and Israel, between Egypt and Israel, and Syria and Israel."

"I was just a child. We were little boys, and it seemed as if it was a play we were acting. We sat, you know, together at home, we went down to the shelter in our house, and we were there about three or four days. Then after about a week or two weeks, when it was a little like a war with curfews and all these things, our fathers and grandfathers heard on the radio that it was okay, and that we could go out as there was no curfew. They went out, and they started buying their things and the food, and everything was okay, ya'ani. We went into the streets and we saw the Israeli soldiers."

"After a while the Israeli people began to enter the [Arab section of the] city and walk through the streets of the city. And also I remember after maybe a month, our fathers took us to the Israeli side, as it was called. We entered the place and we visited the places like Jaffa road. There was no longer a buffer zone on the border of the two sides. We saw the places, and by and by everything was okay. Not all the people went, some of the people were a little afraid, so they didn't go. The feeling is still ya'ani, we used to be enemies, you know still in our hearts maybe the Arabs don't like the Israelis, and the Israelis don't like the Arabs, it's still young. But a little by little, ya'ani. And now everything is okay, I go to Tel Aviv and they come here.'

"We hope that real peace will come one day, and everyone will get ya'ani what is his ya'ani, his rights. Now the Palestinians want a Palestinian state, and I think it is the only solution ya'ani, to have a real Palestinian state and to find a solution for Jerusalem also. It must be divided but at the same time remain open. Till now if you go the Israeli side you see that you are in an Israeli community, if you go to the Arab side you see that you are in an Arab community ya'ani, in reality we have two Jerusalems. The solution, my friend, is to divide the city as it was in Germany in Berlin. Keep Jerusalem open like this, ya'ani, so that Palestinians can go there and Israelis can go here ya'ani divided between the two, like it is now."

"The Palestinians want to have Jerusalem as a capital, and the Israelis want to have it as a capital. It can be ya'ani, Jerusalem a capital for two cities, I think that is the solution for Jerusalem ya'ani, we can solve this problem. That is the only solution because the Palestinians and the Arabs and the Moslems won't accept that Jerusalem must remain under the Israelis control, they want to have Arab Jerusalem as it was during the Jordanian times before the '67 War. That is the solution, the Arabs take East Jerusalem and the Israelis take West Jerusalem."

***The Arabic word "ya'ani" is roughly equivalent to the "like" -- of colloquial Southern Californian.