A divided house, and divided lives, in Jerusalem

JERUSALEM, Nov 1 (Reuters) If they look out of their windows, Fawzia al-Kurd and Bryna Segal share the same view from the same house across the rooftops of East Jerusalem.

But that's where their shared vision ends.

Kurd, a 54-year-old Palestinian, raised her five children inthe house, which sits half-way up a hill in Sheikh Jarrah, one of the oldest neighbourhoods of Arab East Jerusalem.

Segal, a 25-year-old Jewish settler born in Israel to parents from New York, moved in nearly four months ago.

The large home, built of cream-coloured Jerusalem stone, has been in Kurd's family since 1952, when she says her father-in-law was granted permission by the Jordanian authorities, which then controlled East Jerusalem, to build it.

For decades, including the years that followed the 1967 W Asia war, when Israeli forces defeated the Jordanian army and captured the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, Kurd and her family lived in the house without particular problems.

Then in 1998, hoping to move her eldest son in with her, she renovated half the house to create a separate unit -- a two-bedroom home for her son and his family.

Because the work was a renovation rather than an extension, she says the Jerusalem municipality told her she did not need a building permit, and so the changes went ahead unchecked.

Then the problems began.

Eight years on, the person living next door to Kurd and her husband is Segal, with her husband and two young children. A third is on the way.

''It's hard, every day it's so hard,'' says Kurd, a mild-mannered, religious woman who keeps her hair covered with a traditional hijab headdress. ''I cannot bear it.'' For Segal, a simply dressed woman who also keeps her hair covered for religious reasons, it's equally odd.

''We don't talk to one another,'' she says, playing with one of her sons at a playground near the house. ''We don't bother them and they don't bother us.'' RISKY RENOVATION Property disputes are not uncommon in Jerusalem, a city that both Palestinians and Israelis want as their capital. But the one between Kurd and Segal is notably quirky.

Since 1967, when Israel annexed East Jerusalem in a move not recognised internationally, the Jewish population in the traditionally Arab area has grown rapidly, with wealthy Jewish organisations buying up properties and moving settlers in.

There are now estimated to be about 200,000 Jews living in East Jerusalem, alongside about 250,000 Palestinians.

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