Jerusalem for maybe the last time

I stood this evening for a while at the top of the steps into Bab al Amud – Damascus Gate into the Old City of Jerusalem. This gate is at the heart of the crazy, energetic whirlpool that is old Arab Jerusalem, seething with stalls selling everything from shoes to green almonds, strawberries to designer knock-offs, crockery, tarty underwear and various weird household items of indeterminate use. For all its vice, violence, confusion and dirty underbelly (see this post), I love this place with a painful sensation like a hook in the belly.
The great pain this time is in knowing that I may never see East Jerusalem and the Old City like this again. I don't know when I'll be back, and with some of the plans Marc and I have for the next few years it could be four or five years, easily. And with Israel's Judaisation policies for Jerusalem – settlements in Palestinian East Jerusalem, toleration of the kind of psycho settlers who took over another house in the old city a couple of days ago and then place huge Israeli flags on them, and persecution of any Palestinian who they can possibly cook up an excuse to send off to the West Bank, I may never see the wonderful, energetic Jerusalem that I love again, and that is devastating to me.