Paul Calvert spoke with the Deputy Mayor

Paul: Does tourism need to become more environmentally friendly?

Naomi: That is one of the reasons why we are going this route of green pilgrimage because there is no doubt about it for world travel not to have an entirely negative impact on some of the most precious resources throughout the world. Jerusalem is one of them where pilgrims have to tread lightly, as do all tourists and we have taken the slogan that we ask our visitors to leave a positive footprint. Leaving a positive footprint is not an easy thing to do; you have to think how you plan your travel; how you conduct your journey with humility and leaving a positive footprint even implies you will leave the place you are visiting more beautiful than it was; you are not only not going to do any damage, but you are going to improve it.

Paul: There are a lot of Christians in Jerusalem, how important is the Christian community?

Naomi: In my opinion there aren't enough Christians in Jerusalem. I believe that in the last few decades and it's happened gradually, that the Christian community is largely among the Arab population. That is made up of course of a majority of Moslems and I don't think the Christian community is comfortable in Moslem societies. I think the population of Christians has dwindled. It's only a few meagre thousand compared to about 300,000 Moslems in the city, so it's a very small representation. We have representation of all the Christian communities; a couple of dozen of different kinds of churches and centres representing the different Christian communities of the world, but they are not supported by a sufficiently large local population. I would like to see many more Christians living in the city of Jerusalem serving and working in the faith communities.

Paul: You have both Arab and Jews living in Jerusalem, do you have projects of reconciliation bringing the two sides together?

Naomi: You have to take in the context of the city of Jews and Moslems working side by side in the Israeli hospitals; they are studying side by side in university. We have a deaf school for Jewish and Moslem children who use the same sign language. We have a bi-lingual school attended by Israeli and Palestinian kids. Things aren't as bad as they seem from the outside, not to mention the entire youth of the public domain if you go down town. If you go to a shopping mall, if you go to a clinic in a hospital, or a zoo, you'll find all the different populations of Jerusalem doing things together.

We are trying to do special projects; I would say for instance that the symposium we are holding on green and accessible pilgrimage will bring together the different faith communities of the city to pledge to work together. They may not agree on theology, but they can all agree that they want their city to be greener and cleaner and they all want more pilgrims and visitors that bring livelihood to the community. Most of the Christian communities run guest houses and hostels of different kinds. We want those to be full to over flowing. We want them to need more hotel rooms. We are hoping to add thousands of additional hotel rooms and accommodation space in the city of Jerusalem for those guests and pilgrims that we want to welcome in the years to come.

Paul: How significant was 1967 to the Jewish people, having Jerusalem back again after many years?

Naomi: I think that in 1967 the city was unified. I know that at that time it was my first year in Israel. It was a very exiting time and I think the world at that time very much identified with the concept of a unified Jerusalem. I believe that the way things are now with all the new Jewish and Arab neighbourhoods and housing developments that have been added in the city, we are no longer an apple that can be cut in half and if when the then Prime Minister Eshkol held out his hand in a request for peace from the then Jordanian government, there was no Palestinian Authority at that time; it was a Jordanian government and there was no-one to negotiate with and no-one to talk to.

Things have evolved. We are nearly half a century on and cities can't live in limbo during a time like that. People who say we have to go back to the way we were in 1967 are again not thinking of the city as it really is, because it is not an apple that can be cut in half. Even apples that are cut in half cannot survive; we mustn't become a Nicosia and we mustn't become a Berlin as it was before the unification of the two Germany's.

Although 1967 presented a tremendous opportunity for Jerusalem, we've got to prove our worth; we've got to prove our capacity to be a city that is shared by all the different populations in it. I think more than being a divided city we need to be a shared city. I think that could be the secret to Jerusalem's future and that was the opportunity we had in 1967. One of our neighbourhoods, Beit Safafa, has been in the news quite a lot because its being plagued by a highway development as have many neighbourhoods in Jerusalem, but if you go to the village of Beit Safafa, which is in the municipal boundary of Jerusalem, the main street there is called "The Street of Unification of the Village". Village Unification Street and what does it mark? That in 1948 the armistice line between Israel and Jordan cut Beit Safafa in half and 1967 brought the two halves of the village together. It wasn't only Jerusalem as a city that was re-united, there were whole neighbourhoods that had been cut in half and re-united.

We have to take the good from that and we have to make our city a place shared by all its population; loved by all its population and a city that knows how to give its message to the world as a very positive and comfortable place to be. That is the message I would give to journalists all over the world. Perhaps, if like we do who are running the city, if everyone in the world got up every day and thought, "What are we going to do today to help Jerusalem be a more peaceful and harmonious city"? Maybe we could all achieve that result together. I would like to invite all the people who are reading this to get up and come and be pilgrims. Share the city and go back home and be ambassadors for Jerusalem.

Paul: You came originally from the United Kingdom. Why did you come to live here in Jerusalem?

Naomi: I came to live in Jerusalem because I believed Israel was the appropriate place for Jews to live. It was established as a State for the Jewish people after the recommendations of the Balfour Declaration and after approval of the United Nations and after thousands of years of being a nation without a home and being scattered around the world and persecuted horribly and nearly annihilated in the Second World War by the holocaust. There was every reason to want to be part of this immense new nation building. The positive energy that has gone into the building development of the State of Israel, I think against all odds, is something I think everyone would want to be part of. It's been my privilege to marry here, raise my family here, see grandchildren born here and that is a wonderful privilege.