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It is Easter in Jerusalem. Newspaper pictures show scenes of Christians
from all over the world celebrating and commemorating this holy
occasion, with processions, special services and prayers.
While
most come freely with passports and tourist visas, the indigenous
Christian population, many of them coming from towns and villages within
a few kilometers of the Old City, require special permits to visit
their holy sites. The majority of these Christians do not receive the
necessary permits and so are prevented from participating in the Easter
celebrations of Jerusalem.
This year witnessed a particularly
heated debate over the question of permits for Palestinian Christians
wanting to worship in Jerusalem during Easter. Just days ago, Michael
Oren, the Israeli ambassador to the US, made the grand claim that 20,000
permits had been issued this year and stated, “The army and security
services have created a situation where virtually any Christian in the
West Bank can visit the Holy Places in Jerusalem on Good Friday and
Easter.” The situation as described by Palestinian Christians is quite
different.
Israel will continue to vary the numbers of permits
issued at every holy occasion at whim, and Palestinians will continue to
say what they see: that the vast majority of our people have not been
able to reach their holy places in Occupied East Jerusalem. The
disagreement over numbers will undoubtedly continue.
But with
its continuation, what is often overlooked is that this debate
fundamentally misses the point. We should not be questioning how many
permits Israel, the occupying power, does or does not issue to
Christians or Muslims for their religious holidays: we should be
questioning the very existence of such permits at all.
Since
1967, Israel has illegally occupied what is internationally known as the
Occupied Palestinian Territory, including Occupied East Jerusalem. This
is not a matter of opinion but a matter of fact according to
international law. Repeated UN Security Council Resolutions (including
242, 252 and 476) have called on Israel to withdraw its forces from
territories occupied in 1967, and regard any actions taken to change the
character and status of Jerusalem as invalid.
These actions
include both the physical, and illegal, annexation of the city to the
State of Israel and the maintenance of a significant Jewish majority,
through such measures as the construction of the illegal Wall, the
revocation of residency rights, demolition of houses and denial of
building permits for Palestinians Jerusalemites, in flagrant disregard
of international law.
The fact of the matter is that Occupied
East Jerusalem remains the socio-economic, cultural and spiritual heart
of Palestine: there can be no viable, independent State of Palestine
without it. It is an illegally occupied area and the capital of the
Palestinian State. Therefore, the very idea that any Palestinian should
need a permit to visit the city at any time of year, for any reason, is
simply absurd.
If we entertain this absurdity, we might as well
ask the State of Israel how many permits it issues to its Jewish
citizens during the celebration of Passover. The answer? Not a single
one. Jews from all over the world do not require permits to visit
Jerusalem. And neither should Palestinians, regardless of their
religious affiliation.
Nevertheless, the focus of the argument
continues to be about numbers of permits. The reason is that as long as
Israel persists in its illegal occupation of East Jerusalem and the rest
of the Palestinian Territory occupied in 1967, the Palestinians have
little choice but to accept the permit system. In the meantime, the
international community firmly maintains that Israel must end its
occupation and accept that it has no right to obstruct Palestinian
access to any part of their occupied homeland.
Unfortunately, to
date, no real international action has been taken to prevent this
flagrant Israeli violation of Palestinian freedom of worship as well as
the deliberate distortion of the cultural and demographic character of
this Palestinian city. Israeli policies relating to Occupied East
Jerusalem and the imposition of the permit regime are destroying the
social fabric of Palestinian life in addition to its historical
integrity and economic viability.
Israel attempts to defend its
claims of granting freedom of worship in Jerusalem through pictures of
foreign Christians, who are incidentally also significant contributors
to the Israeli economy, touring the Old City, while Palestinian
Christians are slowly being evicted from the core of their spiritual
identity.
This weekend, for example, while Israeli security will
be setting up barriers to prevent Palestinian Christians from Jerusalem
and the rest of Palestine from reaching their prayers in the occupied
Old City of Jerusalem, they will be providing facilities for all Jews to
reach the Wailing Wall for Pesach prayers.
This reflects
Israel’s policy of exclusion and control, a policy of turning Occupied
East Jerusalem into part of the “eternal and undivided capital of the
Jewish people.” In other words, the permit regime is just one aspect of
Israel’s strategy to erase the Palestinian Christian and Muslim identity
of Occupied East Jerusalem. And the international community, as called
on by the 2012 EU Heads of Missions Report on Occupied East Jerusalem,
should act, and act soon.
Until this happens, ordinary Christian
and Muslim Palestinians who want to worship at their holy sites in
Jerusalem will continue to apply for permits. They will continue to
endure this denial of their basic human rights to worship freely, and
more essentially, to move freely, within their own land. Crossing from
Bethlehem or Ramallah to Occupied East Jerusalem is not crossing an
international border but a humiliating checkpoint dividing Palestinians
from Palestinians within the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
What
Palestinians need is not a selective permits regime from the occupying
power, that illegally besieges Jerusalem, but the freedom and
independence to exercise their right to access East Jerusalem, their
capital, throughout the year. In short, we need independence.
Hanan Ashrawi is a member of the PLO Executive Committee and head of the PLO Department of Culture and Information
