Israeli without the Middle East

Recently, several friends and I accompanied Dr. Mahdi Abdul Hadi, chairman of the Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs (PASSIA), to the "Israel and the Middle East" Conference at Tel-Aviv University where he was scheduled to be a speaker. It was a two-day conference sponsored by a variety of Israeli and French academic institutions and was comprised of several sessions, including a forum on Israel and the Palestinians.

Dr. Mahdi was the last of three presenters, along with Alain Dieckhoff and Asher Susser, in the Israel and the Palestinians session and labeling the response of the audience to his speech as 'cool' would be an injustice. Literally every time Dr. Mahdi mentioned the words Nakba, which refers to the process of Palestinian dispossession before, during, and after the War of 1948, massacre, in reference to the recent War on Gaza, and apartheid, in regards to the closure and permit regime in the West Bank, the crowd irrupted in a frenzy of booing and heckling. The jeering became so overwhelming that at one point Dr. Mahdi directly addressed the audience and essentially stated, if you don't want to hear what a Palestinian has to say then don't invite a Palestinian to speak; however, the taunting continued throughout his twenty minute speech. At no point were the six or seven most raucous protesters asked to leave by the conference organizers or even asked to refrain from making remarks during his presentation.

The response of the audience to a Palestinian perspective of the conflict exemplifies the difficulty Israelis have in understanding and accepting the valid presence of a collective Palestinian narrative and further reiterates the difficulty in achieving a just solution to the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict. Perhaps even more elucidating, five sessions at the Conference involved Israel and other countries in the Middle East (Israel and the Palestinians, Israel and the Lebanese Equation, Israel, Turkey, and the Persian Gulf, the Iranian Nuclear Question, and Israel, the Middle East and the United States under Obama), but of the 11 presenters at these sessions Dr. Mahdi was the only Arab speaker. This reinforces the reality of Israel's unilateral vision of the region and one of the major stumbling blocks towards achieving peace in the Middle East.

Map of my bus route from Ramallah to Jerusalem

On the top of my web page I have posted a map (adapted by Imad Farrah from a map published by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs) which traces my route between Ramallah and Jerusalem (black and orange line). The red and black circles on the map with white lines through them are the locations of Israeli checkpoints to regulate Palestinian movement and entrance into Jerusalem. The areas in light brown are Palestinian villages or cities, and the areas in purple are Israeli settlements, which are located outside the green line (pre-1967 borders) and are illegal under international law. Lastly, the black and red lines represent the completed Separation Wall between Jerusalem and the West Bank, black and white lines represent the portions of the Wall currently under construction, and the red and white lines represent locations where the Wall is planned for construction.

From Ramallah to Jerusalem: A bus ride through the occupation - Part II: The Jerusalem Light Rail Project

After passing through Qalandiya checkpoint and entering occupied Jerusalem, which is comprised of portions of the West Bank, or "unified" Jerusalem in Israeli lingo, I hop on a bus and pay five shekels for my remaining 30-45 minute ride to PASSIA. About 10 minutes into the ride I arrive in the Palestinian village of Shu'fat and witness one of the most visible and intrusive examples of Israelization of Jerusalem, the Jerusalem Light Rail - Mass Transit System (click on the Light Rail - Full System map above left for an enlarged version of the map).

Construction of the first phase of the light rail project began in April 2006, and upon completion (9 miles in total length) it will link the Israeli settlement of Pisgat Ze'ev with the West Jerusalem city center (see map above). Although, a segment of the light rail line lies within and on the green line (pre-1967 borders), which is represented by the dotted line on the map above, much of the rail line lies outside of the green line in Palestinian East Jerusalem, particularly along the main road linking the West Bank and the Old City in Jerusalem. These actions are clearly in violation of International Law (UN Security Council Resolution 465 of March 1, 1980), which states that "all measures taken by Israel to alter the physical character, the demographic composition, the institutional structure, or status of the Palestinian territories including Jerusalem, have no legal validity."

The rail construction in East Jerusalem has severely constricted traffic, cutting in half the amount of road available for vehicular travel (see photograph above). Therefore, nearly every morning and evening, when traffic between the West Bank and Jerusalem is heaviest, a bottleneck results and traffic becomes backed up for 15 minutes at the intersection of Shufat Road and Route 1 north of the Old City (see slideshow on right). The pot-holed roads throughout East Jerusalem are already in poor condition, as Palestinian neighborhoods in Jerusalem receive less than 10% of the development budget for the Jerusalem Municipality while paying nearly 35% of the taxes levied by the municipality. As a result of the extremely limited funds available for Palestinian neighborhoods, there are 9,000 children not attending school and a shortage of 1,500 classrooms. Furthermore, 67% of Palestinian families in East Jerusalem are under the poverty line, compared to 23% of Israeli families in West Jerusalem.

Although, the Jerusalem Light Rail System was created under the guise of reducing congestion in Jerusalem and serving both Jewish settlements and certain Palestinian neighborhoods, the reality is much different. Neither the Palestinian Authority nor leaders from the Palestinian communities in Jerusalem were involved in the decision making process for the light rail project, although Palestinians are allegedly benefiting from the new transit system. Furthermore, given the widening cultural and social divide between Palestinians and Jewish Israelis in Jerusalem coupled with the $1.37 suggested fare for the light rail, which is nearly twice that of the Palestinian minibus transportation system, it is highly unlikely that significant numbers of Palestinians will use the light rail line.

In this context, the Israeli objectives of the Jerusalem Light Rail Project are clear and two-fold, link the the core of West Jerusalem with Hebrew University and the Israeli settlements in Greater Jerusalem, and most importantly create new, irreversible facts on the ground which solidify the ultimate goal of preserving Jerusalem as the "unified" and "eternal" capital of Israel.

Please click on the slideshow on the right, which contains a series of images of the Jerusalem Light Rail Project in East Jerusalem and Qalandiya checkpoint.

From Ramallah to Jerusalem: A bus ride through the occupation - Part I: Qalandiya checkpoint

Every morning I ride the bus from Ramallah to Jerusalem and every evening I return. This roughly 15 km commute between the de facto capital of Palestine, Ramallah, and the capital and sacred holy city in the hearts of Palestinians, Jerusalem, is a journey through the Palestinian reality of Israeli occupation. This commute should take only 30 minutes, but typically I arrive at the office of the Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs (PASSIA) nearly two hours after I begin.

I live in Kafr 'Aqab a village just south of Ramallah in an apartment building on the main road between Ramallah and Qalandiya checkpoint. My work day begins by picking up a service taxi (multi-person taxi) to go to Qalandiya, and I typically arrive at the checkpoint 10 minutes after stepping out of my apartment building. After completing the quickest and easiest part of my journey to Jerusalem, I am forced to navigate through Qalandiya checkpoint, one of the best and most famous examples of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Jerusalem.

Until about a month ago, traveling through Qalandiya was relatively easy. Every morning, I would say to the taxi driver "an duk laws a macht" and then hop out of the taxi and get into a bus going to Jerusalem. Being an international I could go through Qalandiya on the bus and simply show my passport and VISA to the soldier who checks IDs and passports at the vehicle checkpoint (see slideshow to the right). Women with babies, school-aged children (depending on the mood of the particular soldier), men and women over 50, and those with medical conditions also were allowed to ride through the checkpoint on a bus.

However, in mid-March, the ride through policy was abruptly changed and all Palestinians and internationals were then required to walk through the checkpoint terminal. These changes occurred with absolutely no notice, explanation, or justification. No soldiers or police at Qalandiya either would or could tell anyone why the ride through policy had been halted. Now instead of it taking 15 minutes to load up the bus at the checkpoint and ride through, I often spend 45 minutes waiting in line and walking through checkpoint security, including four different turnstiles.

The walking terminal resembles a cross between an entrance to a concentration camp and a livestock corral, and the entire terminal is comprised of either concrete or metal. After entering a 'waiting area' where a sign eloquently states "please keep the terminal clean," I take my place at the end of one of three lines of people waiting to enter three corresponding metal corrals (picture above left) leading to a manned checkpoint station where you pass through a metal detector, have your bags x-rayed, and have your identification examined (picture above right). After spending 15-20 minutes waiting in line in the 'waiting area' and in the corral, I pass through a turnstile and line up behind another turnstile leading to the manned checkpoint station (see slideshow to the right). Each of these stations have on average 15 people waiting behind the turnstile.

It is in these lines that I have witnessed some of saddest and most humiliating and degrading scenes in my life. Often at the busiest times, when there are roughly 25 people waiting at each station, all sense of order and compassion for others breaks down. Everyone starts pushing and shoving to enter the turnstile with 2-3 people squeezing into each revolving space on the turnstile, which are designed to fit one person. These are men who are trying desperately to get to work on time, students in primary and secondary school and university who need to make it to class, women with children younger than six who are simply trying to make it through the chaos safely. I've seen teenagers getting in shouting matches with adults, I've seen fights (the police blow their whistles to break them up), I've seen children start crying after getting crushed between people shoving their way into the turnstile, I've seen women with babies get pushed out of the way, I've seen people forced to go to another station for no apparent reason after waiting in one line for 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, what are the Israeli soldiers and police who are monitoring the checkpoint with assault rifles doing to help? Literally, nothing. Their ambivalence and lack of concern towards Palestinians going through the checkpoint reveals much about the root of the conflict. This is particularly apparent when one tries to pass through the 2nd turnstile into the manned checkpoint station where your ID is checked by a soldier in a 'control room' behind bulletproof glass. The soldiers behind the glass control access to the station and electronically open and close the turnstile, allowing only three people in at a time. Often the soldiers wait 2 minutes, 4 minutes, 5 minutes, or however long they wish before opening the turnstile to allow people through, thus slowing the process tremendously and increasing the number of people in line.

When you look through the metal bars into their 'control room,' you see the soldiers eating food, laughing, and talking on their cell phones, completely unconcerned about the lives of the people behind the turnstile. On one occasion, when I was waiting to walk through the metal detector and have my passport checked, a Palestinian girl no more than 15 years old walked out of the interrogation room bawling followed by the checkpoint commander. While I was waiting for five minutes to pass through, he stood by her while she continued to cry in full view of all the people waiting in line behind me.

Incidents such as this and those described above are particularly disturbing because they are in sharp contrast to Arab-Palestinian culture. This culture, which is based on a tremendous respect for elders and a preferential treatment of women with children, fractures and is fundamentally debased as a result of checkpoints such as Qalandiya.

I will never forget the words of man at Qalandiya when after being stuck in a corral together for 15 minutes he turned to me and said, "Where is Obama now?"

I encourage you to click on the photograph slideshow on the right, which contains a series of images of Qalandiya that will give my description of the checkpoint a visual perspective. I have also provided a map (created by Imad Farrah) at the top of my blog that outlines my bus route from Ramallah to Jerusalem.