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 The gathering is the latest in a series of events organized
by Double Yerushalmi, a group trying to build closer ties
between Arabs and Jews through cultural activities like singing,
dancing and the increasingly popular shesh besh championship.
To the strains of Arabic Dabke music - not usually heard in the
western, mainly Jewish side of Jerusalem - around 50 players
turned up on Monday, sitting hunched over the backgammon tables,
shaking dice and clicking the counters like pros.
Cigarette smoke hung heavy in the air, beers and energy drinks
were consumed and shouts of "yalla" and "kadima" - Arabic and
Hebrew for "come on" - rang out. Tables were bashed.
"You want to win, but it's friendly too," said Karem Joubran, a
27-year-old from Shuafat camp, a Palestinian refugee
neighborhood in north Jerusalem, who had to cross checkpoints to
get to the event. "It's good, it brings people together."
Joubran said he usually speaks Hebrew to his Jewish opponents,
but sometimes comes across a Jewish player who speaks decent
Arabic and they chat and joke. They tend to avoid politics or
the intricacies of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - their
common ground is backgammon.
"FROM THE GROUND UP"
Zaki Djemal, an Israeli of Syrian Jewish descent, is one of the
organizers of the gathering, which has met six times in recent
months - half in Arab neighborhoods, half in Jewish ones - and
has seen its popularity grow steadily.
"The city is segregated in many ways, so we wanted to create
some crossover between neighborhoods," he said. "Politics is not
at the center of this, but it's around."
With a history that some trace back 5,000 years to the ancient
Iraqi city of Ur, backgammon is a mainstay in the Middle East,
the clatter of the counters ringing out in the souks of Cairo,
Istanbul, Casablanca and Damascus for centuries.
Jerusalem has also long been a center for the game and Djemal is
hoping to reinforce that by organizing a Mediterranean
championship later this year, with players coming from Morocco,
Turkey, Egypt, Jordan and across Europe.
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On Monday evening a group of Palestinian women in hijab came to
cheer on husbands and friends, while their children played
backgammon at a nearby table. Across the cobbled alleyway, Orthodox
Jewish locals listened, fascinated, to the Dabke music.
On the next street, a group of ultra-Orthodox Jews and Palestinians
from Shuafat jointly practiced the Brazilian martial art of capoeira.
"There aren't many mediums to meet people from the other side of the
fence," said Binny Zupnick, 22, who moved from New York to Israel
eight years ago.
An Arabic speaker who wears a Kippah, Zupnick said lighthearted
interaction over backgammon was a good way of building
understanding.
"There's an automatic topic of conversation," he said, mentioning
that he had been to other Jewish-Arab co-existence events that were
almost too serious and stilted.
"Shesh besh is a simple way to break down barriers. It's important
to do these things from the ground up."
In Monday's competition, two Jews and two Arabs reached the
semi-finals, then, after hard-fought matches, it was an all-Jewish
final.
But by the end of the night, everyone was dancing Dabke in the
streets together, a small but symbolic act of unity at a time when
the city's divisions are as acute as ever.
(Additional reporting by Sabreen Taha; Editing by Gareth Jones)
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