MIFTAH VISION: An independent, democratic and sovereign Palestinian state, which grants Palestinians their basic rights, preserves their dignity, and enjoys international recognition and respect.| Date posted: October 06, 2010 By Michael Khaled for MIFTAH | |
| Living in Jerusalem has been a rollercoaster. On one hand, its extraordinary history and status can make anyone’s time here surreal. On the other, since it’s the geographical and emotional center of the conflict, people have become hardened and suspicious. Palestinian-Arab neighborhoods exhibit this perhaps the worst of all, since every aspect of the city’s supposedly legitimate system seems to be against the Palestinians living there creating a vacuum of authority. Some of the avenues of oppression include tenuous residency status, evictions, house demolitions, lack of basic services like trash collection or land registry, discriminatory zoning, police brutality, and settler harassment. With no avenue to voice their concerns to the ‘proper’ authorities, the only vehicle to establish order is an array of social customs and the influence of strong arms who enforce them. The day before yesterday I became a victim of the Jerusalem mentality while visiting some friends in one of those neighborhoods: Al-Issawiya. Notorious for its closed society and frequent violence, I was told many times by residents that the people here don’t like outsiders. My friends live in a two-bedroom apartment near the edge of the neighborhood, thinking that would be the safest place for three college girls to live. At first there wasn’t a problem, they only had to deal with a few catcalls. As they got more comfortable and started inviting people to visit, including some males, the catcalls turned to cursing and pranks. These young men knew that in conservative Palestinian society, women who hang out with men are often looked down upon and no one would stop them if they upped the ante from being an irritation to harassment. Derogatory jokes turned to late night bangs on the door and vandalized cars and seemed to culminate one night when a rooftop prankster dumped a bucket of water on us outside their building. Then two nights ago, I met them at their apartment and brought my briefcase with my laptop and cell phones in so I could get some work done before we went out. Around 9 o’clock we locked up to go and when we returned two hours later, the whole two-bedroom apartment was torn apart. Three computers, cell phones and all their gold jewelry was gone. On the table the burglars left a lock of brown hair, a message that this wasn’t a random incident. We thought to call the Israeli police but the neighbors warned against it saying that even if the police did come (which was unlikely), the neighborhood would mobilize and protect their own from the authorities. What’s more, bringing the police may even put whoever called them in danger to set an example. They said the best thing was to leave it to the neighborhood leaders to find the culprit and reclaim the stolen items quietly. The thieves would likely get away with it but we may get our things back. Once news of the burglary spread, the whole street began filling with the men of the neighborhood shouting and arguing. Some were sympathetic to the burglars saying the girls had no business being in the neighborhood, while others were incensed that anyone would violate the safety of their neighborhood regardless of who the target was. They may not have known whether they could get away with it completely, but the burglars were certainly emboldened by the knowledge that even if the authorities came to investigate, no one in the neighborhood would cooperate. The only thing they had to fear was the court of the neighborhood’s opinion, and on that count, they already knew the girls' standing there would work against them. In the end, the judgment of the street seemed to have fallen with the thieves. Everyone claimed ignorance and our things are still missing. The next day the girls began packing their things and left the neighborhood behind looking to find a place less than a kilometer away on the Hebrew University campus which butts right up to the edge of the neighborhood. In the mainly Jewish areas at the top of the hill (on land that was confiscated from Al-Issawiya immediately after the 1967 war), order is kept by the Israeli-run municipal authorities which is responsive to the Jewish residents there. Just three kilometers northeast of Jerusalem’s center, the Issawiyeh neighborhood has been subject to years of abuse by the municipality. It is surrounded on all sides by the enveloping university campus and Hadassah Hospital to the west and south, Jewish settlements to the north the separation barrier to the east. It once took up more than 10,000 dunam (2,471 acres). Then when Israel annexed east Jerusalem it split 7,000 dunam (1,729 acres) away making it part of the occupied West Bank and leaving only 3,000 dunam (741 acres) within Jerusalem’s new boundaries. During the 2008-2009 war on Gaza, Israel closed the most convenient entrance for residents on the way to or from central Jerusalem in an effort to keep the residents separated and invisible to the nearby Jewish Israeli population. Authorities tore up the road and blocked it with cement and dirt piled high so only foot traffic could pass through. The stated reason was to quell unrest from demonstrators in the neighborhood and enhance “security”, yet all it did was make the residents coming and going take a longer rout, giving them another reason to be agitated. Perhaps the most unsettling, if not unexpected, tool Israel uses to keep the Palestinian residents of Al-Issawiya cowed is the overwhelming force used by riot police which I saw firsthand during the recent unrest that spread across the city after two Jerusalem Palestinians were killed by an Israeli security guard. More than a dozen police officers with full riot gear would descend on the main remaining entry to the neighborhood to square off with masked young men. In the first days, the demonstrators began the clashes by closing the entrance with stones and setting trash on fire to block passage. But after a few days the demonstrators stopped showing up and so when the police arrived to quell a non-existent riot, they began throwing dozens of stun grenades to wake up the neighborhood and start the clashes. Crowd control police were so liberal with their “non-lethal” weapons last week that they used so much tear gas within the dense neighborhood, a 14-month-old infant in his home actually suffocated from inhaling too much. As the subjects of so much authoritarian abuse it makes me understand a little about why the people in the neighborhood dislike outsiders. The police have no presence inside the neighborhood other than quelling the discontented outbursts that come every now and then when residents feel they must do something to voice their anger at the system. The authorities in charge in the neighborhood are the influential elders and tough guys who keep their own brand of order in place, and anyone who tries to bring anything new or alien is seen as a threat. If the people are left to find justice for themselves within this essentially lawless bubble, how can the community ever move beyond enforcing simple social taboos? Michael Khaled is a Writer for the Media and Information Department at the Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy (MIFTAH). He can be contacted at mid@miftah.org. | |
No comments:
Post a Comment