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Standing atop Mount Scopus and surveying Jerusalem below, Michal Shohat cannot help but fixate on the boundary between the eastern and western halves of the city.

There is no longer a wall, but east of the boundary, streets narrow and sidewalks disappear.

"You can actually see a line" between the two sides, says Shohat, a Jerusalem City Council member. "It's the dirt. When you go onto the street in East Jerusalem, you think that you are in a village, not a great city."

Shohat wants to change that image — and she's decided to find outside support to create common ground from the two Jerusalems. The council member and two other Jerusalemites, a Muslim and a Christian, will share their perspectives of a broken city during a 10-city U.S. tour.

Partners for Peace, a U.S.-based nongovernmental organization, is sponsoring their visit. The three women were selected because they represent ordinary citizens who are working toward peace.

Claudette Habesch, the head of a Jerusalem Catholic relief agency; Nahla Asali, a lecturer at Birzeit University; and Shohat together will speak at the World Affairs Council in San Francisco on Friday, Jan. 16.

Shohat's mission is twofold: to shed some light on the religious and political affairs in Jerusalem, and to improve understanding with her Palestinian contemporaries.

"We are going to spend more than two weeks together. Maybe we can find a little project that the three of us can do together toward peace when we return," she said by phone from her New York hotel.

The kibbutz-born Israeli has become frustrated with the limits of municipal governance as national leaders vie to control the fate of Jerusalem.

City services such as education, street cleaning and maintenance are distributed to favor the western, or Jewish, sector. Daily living is fraught with the threat of terrorism.

"You don't sleep when you live in Jerusalem," she said. "We are not searching for the next bomb. We live. We go on the buses and walk on the streets."

Consensus on the city council is as elusive as peace in the region.

The 31 council members represent their political parties rather than the city districts. Consequently, the same divisions that plague national policy cut to the heart of local affairs, said Shohat, who represents the far-left Meretz Party.

When Shohat met her traveling companions just a week before their tour, it was the first time she had encountered a Palestinian Muslim and Christian together.

She was struck by the women's pain about the failed peace process and the loss of their family homes in 1948.

The Israeli contends that lost Palestinian properties should be part of future peace negotiations. However, the Palestinian women are not optimistic.

Said Shohat, "When we were talking, the women were in despair. It's a big issue of trust now. They don't believe."

Shohat urges Israeli national leaders to show good faith by signing such an agreement, which can be fine-tuned later.

"It's a small place," she conceded, "but we must find a space for the two nations there."