Job~ma, Jen.
And thank you. I am very lucky and privileged to be able to live most of my life in the same 2-3 neighborhoods of Jerusalem that are riots free, and there are usually clear lines of where and it gets ugly and where and when it is "safe" to be (if you're a white woman. Well, at least since the buses stopped exploding. And I wasn't living here then). To be clear, lots of places and neighborhoods in this city are safe. I mean that I rarely have to go through the old city/neighborhoods where there are clashes.
What is very distracting is my frustration and anger over this. So much of this is unnecessary provocations and interventions in how this city usually regulates itself around Ramadan and holidays. This violence is fueled by politicians that are in the middle of a political negotiation to form a government (yes, we still don't have a stable government), by randoms on social media who are just seeing this as entertainment and are bloodthirsty, and by all of those who see this city just as a religious/national symbol, and not as a city with human beings who are living here. We can be so much better than this, in theory. In practice, I'm praying that this day (Jerusalem Unification Day) will not end up in casualties.
(And for those playing at home, the Arabs of the old city and some in East Jerusalem do consider themselves to be Palestinians and framing this as a Palestinian issue is a bit misleading. They are Maqdisi (Arabic for Jerusalemite). There are a few groups of Arabs in Israel/Palestine, they are one of them. Yes, it's all complicated).