More Restrictions & Less Privacy

Ibrahim, age 13, needed to go to a hospital in Jerusalem for a badly broken leg. He lives in the West Bank, so his parents had to apply to the Israeli authorities for a permit to get into Jerusalem, using the doctor's order as proof of their need. But such permits are granted for only one day. Ibrahim needed 3 days of hospital treatment. His parents could not legally stay with him, nor legally come back to pick him up upon discharge.

My friend Iyad Bournat, an activist in the village of Bil'in (bilah-een), was denied such a medical permit for his 16 year old son, who had suffered nerve damage in his thigh from an Israeli bullet wound, received during a non-violent demonstration against the Wall. But the necessary treatment was not available in West Bank hospitals, so Iyad smuggled his son into an East Jerusalem hospital that was willing to accept the risks involved. However, as I have explained, Iyad could not stay with his son, but had to leave him to face the surgery alone.

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Israel is trying to ethnically cleanse the city of Jerusalem of all its Palestinian inhabitants, bit by bit (so as not to be so noticable by the international community) either through new laws and regulations, or by injecting Jewish settlers into Palestinian neighborhoods, or by evicting Palestinian families and demolishing their homes. One of the laws controls who can carry a Jerusalem ID, which makes a Palestinian a legal "resident" (not a citizen) of the city. The Jerusalem ID gives a Palestinian the right to travel into the West Bank and to anywhere inside Israel, so no one wants to give it up. This ID can be revoked if the Palestinian is absent from the city for more than 3 years, or has a residence somewhere outside of the city and can't prove that his main home is in Jerusalem, or if he gets a foreign passport. If one owner-member of an extended family lives abroad, he loses ownership of his share of the Jerusalem home, which then gives settler organizations a foothold to take over that share of the home.

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The ciricculum in public schools in the West Bank and E. Jerusalem has been occupied as well. Israel just imposed a cirriculum change on Palestinian schools to eliminate any reference to the "Nakba", Palestine's holocaust. What for Israel was the "War of Independence", for Palestine was the " Disaster." Not to mention it is to deny an essential part of history that has shaped the life of a whole people. If a school principle refuses to comply with the change, his or her school is made into a private Israeli school employing Palestinian teachers. Thereafter, the school cannot use any textbooks published by the Palestinian Ministry of Education, nor any book carrying the Palestinian flag in its logo.

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During our tour of the Old City, we could see Israeli flags flying from rooftops. One of those rooves also had a surveilance camera. Our guide, Daoud, told us that the camera includes a microphone of such high sensitivity that it can hear private conversations in surrounding homes. How do they know this? Because men have reported that they were arrested and charged with something they had told only to a friend or relative in the privacy of their home. The offense might be the violation of one of the many regulations I have been telling you about, such as traveling without a permit. The purpose of such surveilance is not to break a crime ring, but to find pretext for expelling another Palestinian from East Jerusalem.

Daoud took us into a cramped apartment building which had twelve tiny apartments consisting of one room and one window each, facing onto a narrow passage or central staircase. Settlers had occupied 6 of these apartments, placing young males in each one, and rotating them out every three months - revealing that their purpose was to establish a Jewish presence, not to live peacefully with their Muslim neighbors. The young males behave in ways that purposely disrespect and disrupt the customs and routines of the Palestinians.. We came upon a charred area, where the Palestinian residents had set fire to one of the apartments. An old woman had died without anyone to inherit her apartment. This was the only way they had of keeping it out of the hands of the settlers. I could understand why a Palestinian family might accept selling their apartment to Israeli Jewish settlers in order to escape the severe overcrowding and extremely unpleasant environment. Yet many people resist this seduction in order to protect their neighborhood and city from the settlers.

Next Daoud took us to see something no tourist will even learn about. It was a section of the Muslim Quarter where the building foundations were so badly cracked that the residents of 27 apartments had to be evacuated. The cause of the damage is the on-going digging Israel is doing underneath the Old City without warning nor telling anyone why they are doing it. However, well-informed people like Daoud think it is in part for archeological exploration and in part to build tunnels "for security", i.e. to control the population. I don't know what happened to the 27 displaced families.

Putting settler activity in perspective, Daoud explained that before '48 only 30 out of 3000 properties in the Old City belonged to Jews - Jews who spoke Arabic and were integrated into the society.