Greetings,

A couple nights ago, I sat in my friend Ibrahim’s house while we
watched a poet from Ramallah recite his work at a contest in the United
Arab Emirates.  Through Ibrahim’s translation, I learned the poem was
about Jerusalem and mentioned all the types of people who have passed
through Jerusalem in its history, all the types of people who pass
through it today and the one type of people prohibited from entering-
the Palestinians.

Palestinians, whether residents of the West Bank, Gaza, or Israel are
subjected to a number of measures from which Jewish Israelis are
exempt.  In a recent article published in “The Nation”, Nadim Rouhana
points out that there are over 20 laws in Israel that explicitly favor
the Jewish population.  In effect, this means that the other 20% of
Israeli citizens, the Muslims and Christians, almost all of them
Palestinian, are treated as second-class citizens.  As Rouhana attempts
to prove, Israel’s blatant discrimination against Palestinians would be
akin to laws in the United States that made Mexican-Americans
constantly subject to security checks, kept them out of certain areas
at certain times, and built a large wall across the northern part of
Mexico, declaring it United States territory.  A state (Israel
included) cannot be simultaneously democratic and legally favor people
with certain religious affiliations.  On Israeli and Palestinian
identification cards issued before 2005, the religion of the cardholder
was listed.  Today, one can identify the cardholder as Jewish or
non-Jewish by checking whether or not the date of birth is listed twice
(once according to the Jewish calendar, and once according to the
Christian calendar).  Therefore, a non-Jewish resident of Israel, the
West Bank, or Gaza is easily identified upon checking his or her
identification document.

One of the most ridiculous and stifling measures taken by the
occupation forces against Palestinians are the restrictions on their
freedom of movement within Jerusalem, and particularly within the Old
City.  Forget residents of the West Bank and Gaza who are almost never,
under any circumstances, allowed to enter any part of Jerusalem (or any
part of Israel).  Even Palestinians who are citizens of Israel are
restricted in their movements within Jerusalem.  The Al-Aqsa mosque,
located within the Old City Walls is an extremely holy site for
Muslims; many of them visit the mosque daily, or at least mid-day on
Friday, to pray.  Until 1967, the area was under the control of the
Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan (which took authority of the West Bank
after the 1948 war) and since 1967, Israel has controlled the area, and
unilaterally declared Jerusalem as its capital.  No country in the
world, including the United States, recognizes this move, leaving the
status of Jerusalem as something to be decided in future negotiations.

Last Friday I was in Jerusalem on my way to Gaza to protest the
continued siege.  Things seemed normal until I tried to enter the Old
City by way of the Damascus gate and was stopped by about 50 policemen
who had set up barricades and were checking the documents of every
person trying to enter at designated openings in the metal barriers.  I
asked one of them what he was doing and he explained to me that any
Palestinian or Muslim (read non-Jew and non-tourist) under 40 years of
age would not be allowed to enter the Old City at all that day.  I
asked him, “Isn’t that fascist?”  To which he responded, “No, it’s not
fascist, it’s security.”  To Israel, keeping people from one of their
holiest sites is “security”.  To Israel, blatantly privileging members
of a certain religion over members of another is “security”.  To
Israel, prohibiting Muslims from praying on their holy day, at a holy
site, is “security”.  To Israel, keeping 20% of the population in a de
facto open air jail is “security”.  I was shocked and watched later on
that day while Israeli police officers and soldiers yelled at young men
trying to enter the Old City, shoving many of them aside.

At noon, I went to the balcony of my hostel and observed a crowd of
about 250 people who had gathered across the street from the Damascus
gate to pray on the sidewalk.  Using cardboard boxes as prayer rugs,
these 250 people faced the line of soldiers across the street fingering
their AK-47s, some on horseback, some in Hummers, some in Jeeps, and
some on foot, and they prayed.  When I arrived back home in Faquaa the
next day, and while Ibrahim translated this poem, I remembered the time
he said to me “When you go to Jerusalem you see people from all over
the world ya?  So why can you go when we cannot?  Why can any man from
Russia, from France, from Britain, why can anyone go to Jerusalem
except me?  Why can’t Palestinians go to Al-Quds [the holy]?  Sometimes
I hate myself because I am Palestinian.”  I can only stammer.

Andrew Pappone

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