Sarah, and a Trip to Ramallah

Sarah is a woman in her forties who comes to clean our flat. Claire, one of the volunteers also gives her English lessons. Her son is a bus driver who I give English lessons to. She comes from the village of Sawaheh, near here on the other side of the university. The separation wall goes through the village. Sarah has a blue id which means that she can live in Jerusalem and also travel in the Palestinian territories; her husband has a green id which means that he can only live in the Palestinian territories. In order to be together Sarah has to live on the Palestinian side of the separation wall at Sawaheh, because her husband, even though he is married to her, cannot change his status from green to blue. But if the Israelis find out that Sarah is living in the Palestinian territories she is in danger of losing her blue id. So she has to play a hide and seek game with the authorities, keeping a house going in Jerusalem, paying tax there, so that they think she is living in Jerusalem. Many marriages have broken up because the two partners have had different kinds of id.
The fact that Palestinians can lose their right to live in Jerusalem by marrying someone from the territories and moving there, but there is no reciprocal right of someone to gain the right to live in Jerusalem, seems to indicate that there is a deliberate policy by the Israelis to reduce the number of Palestinians living in Jerusalem, a policy of ethnic exclusion. Certainly the UN thinks this is what is happening.
Sarah also told me a story about her father-in-law's family who own property in Jerusalem at Jebel Mukaber. They are consistently refused permission to build on their land because it is overlooking a settlement, and poses a 'security risk' to it. She also tells me of attempts by settler organisations to get possession of properties in the Moslem quarter of the old city of Jerusalem by trickery. She says that people come to an owner offering to restore and repair it. They produce a contract in Hebrew, that the owner is not able to understand. Hidden in the contract is a clause making over the property to the organisation after the death of the owner. So when the owner dies, the descendants discover that they no longer own the property.
It is difficult for me to decide how much of these stories are truth and how much are rumours. There are so many things that happen here, unreported in the west, that I think that some of these things do happen. One thing that happens in Sheikh Jarrah in Jerusalem where there is a demonstration every week, is that settler organisations turn up at the door of a Palestinian house claiming that it had been lived in by Jews prior to 1948. Sometimes they have a court order, sometimes not. But of course this is not reciprocal either. Palestinians have never been able to make similar claims in the Israeli courts.
I decided to find out more by going to speak to someone from the human rights organisation Al Haq in Ramallah. It is an organisation famous for the accuracy of its research and publications, and its advocacy work. It has just won an international prize. I fix up an appointment to talk to one of the researchers there. I take a taxi from Abu Dis, which normally takes 45 minutes, and I arrive there in just over an hour because of a hold-up at a checkpoint. Ramallah is lively, bustling, and there seems to be more money there, there is certainly a lot of building.
Wissam spends a lot of time with me answering my questions. He thinks that all the things that are going on: the wall, the passes, the settlements, are a systematic attempt to make life as hard as possible for Palestinians, so that in the end they will just pack up and go. I ask him about international law, the Geneva Convention concerning occupied territories. 'The Geneva Convention doesn't count for anything as long as it's not enforced. The International Court issued an advisory (opinion) about the separation wall, but it could not proceed because that is considered a political matter. As long as America uses its veto on the security council, nothing can be done. In practical terms Israel is not stopped from doing what it does, and as a result it is encouraged to continue'.
I read an Al Haq report written in 1990 which detail issues: imprisonment under administrative detention, torture, attacks by settlers, beatings, which are still current now. 'Since then the pressure has grown'. I ask him about how settlements are established.
'It can be done in a number of ways. Sometimes an area is declared Area C, military zone, 'for security reasons', and Palestinians can no longer go there. Then settlers unofficially appear in one or two caravans. Then within a few weeks they have access to electricty and water, all with the co-operation of the military, and the settlement starts to grow.'
He tells me that sometimes Palestinians don't have written documents proving their land ownership, even though they have been farming it for generations. Sometimes they have documents going back to Ottoman times, but they hadn't registered the full extent of their ownership then in order to minimise the amount of taxes they had had to pay. So it is open for the Israeli administration to claim that their ownership only amounts to what is in the document. Sometimes a piece of land is declared 'unoccupied' (but is only unoccupied because it is now in a military zone or on the other side of the separation wall and the villagers can't go there).
We discuss prisoners. Wissam told me that since 1967, 400,000 Palestinians had been in Israeli jails.
Is there any chance of a two-state solution at the moment. Wissam thinks not. 'Something could be set up in the territories that calls itself a state. But if it has no control over its borders, who comes in and out, what comes in and out, it is not a state in any meaningful sense'. It would be more like a local council. Netanyahu has a concept called 'Economic Peace', which means that Israel might be prepared to reduce the number of checkpoints in the territories, allow some movement of Palestinians from Israel into the West Bank and allow the Palestinian economy to develop. 'This would appeal to some of the business class, who care more about their bottom-line than having a state. It would also be a way of control the people. "If you behave and not be too much trouble, we will give you some prosperity"'. It would also maintain Palestine as an economic colony of Israel.
It is a gloomy picture. We agree that the most positive actions at the moment are non-violent demonstrations such as the ones at Sheikh Jarrah, which are attracting increasing amounts of international attention. 'Every time there is a demonstration or reaction in the west', Wissam says, 'it is encouraging for us, because we feel that we are not entirely alone'.
After Ramallah, I decide to go to Jerusalem to visit Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial and museum. This involves going through a major checkpoint Kalandia. The experience, was stressful and humiliating, as it was last year. We have to get off the bus, crowd into pens and pass through turnstyles. There we have to put all our possessions in trays, take off our belts mobile phones etc, pass them through scanners, then walk through other scanners. Each time an alarm goes, we have to walk back, take off something else, and hope that we can pass through the scanner again without the alarm going off. I keep having to pass back and fore. I have bought a medallion in Ramallah which I struggle to take off. A soldier barks at me in Hebrew to show him my passport, not that page, the page with the visers in it. I am holding everyone up. The soldier gestures arrogantly, screams at me in Hebrew. I feel like shouting back at him that I don't want to be in his f...... country anyway. When I emerge from the checkpoint, I feel bruised. Also glad that I have tasted a little bit of what Palestinians have to experience every day of their lives.

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