You know you're getting close to Mahaneh Yehuda when you notice the strong scent of cardamom and see the ultra-Orthodox Israeli men, in their black Homburg hats and long beards, scurrying home with their bags of vegetables. Then you spy the green-bereted Border Police, eyeing the noisy flow of customers from behind a barrier. And the once cheery mural now defaced with graffiti reading DEATH TO ARABS.
The 117-year-old market is the heartbeat of Jerusalem. Until spring, three years of the intifadeh had brought business to a near crawl as it stoked fears that the 90,000 people who crowd the narrow...