Same Street, Different Fireworks

Well, I was sitting in my room, happily working my way through some practice GMAT questions today - shabbat. Usually the jewish sections of Jerusalem and even the arab parts are much quieter than any other day of the week on Shabbat. It's the day of rest, and usually the lazy man inside of me, although not shomer shabbos, happily conforms to the prevailing mood.

Over the last week, there have been intermittent fireworks going off around the old city. I guess Jerusalem day was a couple weeks ago and Shavuot was a week ago, but I'm still not exactly sure why these stupid fireworks keep going off. The first couple times I heard them I thought they were automatic gun fire and made a point to stay inside my room. One night I went to a barbeque with some friends and heard the same noise as I was looking out over the rooftop where we were perched to see some very colorful fireworks exploding over the Jewish quarter of Jerusalem. Ok, I thought, it's just fireworks. No more rubber bullets, no more light rounds, not more flying rocks.

Today was a little different, however. During my study session I heard the same firework noise and didn't think too much of it - in fact I barely noticed it because I was so concentrated on studying. But a minute later, the fireworks sounded about twice as loud. Within 30 seconds I heard non-stop honking and police sirens blasting away from a distant part of Jerusalem, getting closer. There were people yelling on the street below me and the loud fireworks continued. I decided to get up and see what the hell was happening, so I walked into the main lobby area of the hotel only to see that one of the windows looking out over the street had been broken. Within a couple of seconds I started to smell what I thought initially was gunpowder, but as my throat and eyes began to burn, I realized that it was indeed some tear gas that had wafted into the lobby. The other guys in the room, some arabs and some tourists, were bent over coughing and, well, crying. We all retreated to an adjacent area to the lobby to try to recover, and I went over to another smaller lobby to get some water. I decided to look out of the lobby window into the square where all of this noise was coming from, and saw Israeli SWAT officers firing light rounds into the air with handguns and rifles. There was pandemonium on the street, bloody faces and, most surprisingly, arabs fighting arabs.

Apparently, two arab families, one of whom owns the falafal/kebab shop that I eat at frequently, have a history of violent quarrels. By the time the Israeli police had moved in to disperse the families and the crowd that had gathered, the falafel shop was wrecked - windows smashed, signs destroyed, frying oil vat tipped over and blood over the ground. The Israeli police had arrested the offenders and had created a perimeter around the scene.

Anyway, I'm holed up in my room, listening to more fire fights that are happening around the corner wondering when I can get safely leave the hotel. I'm not sure it's in my interest to stay in this volatile of an area of Jerusalem for much longer... I think I'll move soon. In the meantime, where will I get my felafel?