beirut blues

jamming in Ramallah

Ramallah still rocks away. Loved this flyer of Pronto, one of the bars in Ramallah many hang around in. Thursday is their big night!

“You have been denied entry.”

Article out in This Week in Palestine..... an indispensable publication in the occupied Palestinian territory, with articles in english and a listing of events for the month.
The publication can be accessed at: http://www.thisweekinpalestine.com
This is my little contribution to it this month.

“You have been denied entry.” A taste of Israel’s discriminatory visa-freeze policy
By Claudia Martinez Mansell

“You have been denied entry.” The words echoed in my head, trying to find some logic, any kind of logic, but I could not. I was standing at the Allenby bridge passport control, staring puzzled at the two young ladies of the Israel border authority who had just informed me of their decision. I was taken over by frustration as I spoke with them, trying to get any additional feedback, desperately trying to understand the logic that they had applied. I remember one of the two ladies looked at me nervously and reassured me that I just needed to go to the Israeli embassy in Amman and apply for an Israeli work visa. I was informed that once I had that, I would be allowed back in without any problem. While we spoke, flashing back and forward in the back of my mind were the many conversations I had been in with foreigners in Ramallah, discussing and fearing the possibility of being denied entry. And there, standing in the middle of the chaotic Allenby bridge terminal, I was having a taste of Israel’s discriminatory visa-freeze policy.

Soon, a third border official arrived and with the three of them I was escorted out of the building and on to a bus that took me to the Jordanian border authorities and to Amman. My belongings and job with a Palestinian company were left in Ramallah.

It was not long before I soon began to discover the simply impossible bureaucratic trap I was caught in. It appears that for those who are not tourists and not working with an international organisation registered with the Israeli Ministry of Social Affairs, the possibility of obtaining such a permit/visa is impossible.

The visa-freeze policy Israel is applying denies entry to foreign nationals wishing to be in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt) and to associate with Palestinians in any capacity. The pretext is that foreigners must acquire a visitor’s permit beforehand. The reality, however, is that there is no clear policy on the matter and it is nearly impossible to obtain a permit. The result has been that many people carrying foreign passports have been cut off from their friends, family, work and property. Most harshly affected by this policy are many of the foreign spouses of Palestinian ID holders, who must rely on a three-month tourist visas to legalise their stay, because Israel does not issue permanent residency status to those wishing to live in the oPt.

Shortly following the start of the Al-Aqsa Intifada in September 2000, Israel has stopped accepting Palestinian applications for family reunification in the oPt. According to B’Tselem, Israel has carried out this policy on and off since 1967 and now has a back-log of at least 120,000 applications it is refusing to process.

As stated by B’Tselem in its latest report, “the powers relating to family unification and visitor’s permits that were transferred to the Palestinian Authority in the framework of the Oslo Agreements mostly involved mediating between the Palestinian population and the Israeli authorities. The substantive powers remained in Israel’s hands.” Israel continues to maintain almost complete control over the registration of persons in the population registry of the oPt, and over the granting of permits to visit the area. These substantive powers at present are being used arbitrarily by Israel, turning away many people on a daily basis at the Israeli unilaterally declared and controlled international border crossings to the oPt.

Israel’s visa-freeze policy affects people very clearly on an individual basis causing unjustified hardships, but it is only collectively that something can be done about it. A political solution that tackles the policy itself needs to be fought for, and not just the individual cases of discrimination.

For the past two months the Campaign for the Right of Entry/Re-Entry to the Occupied Palestinian Territory in Ramallah has been working hard to raise awareness of the issue and to collectively do something about it. Through it one also becomes very aware of the scale of the problem and the implications of this “silent transfer.”¹ Each day, several new emails and phone calls arrive, telling us of new cases, repeating the same stories, the same procedures and the same feeling of frustration that I had experienced. The number of people affected may be difficult to quantify, but now each has a name, stranded in Jordan or back in their country of citizenship: Ida and Walid, Sam’s uncle and aunt, Nadia, Ali, Somida, Maureen, Maggie and Rami (and the list goes on and on). People caught in the same situation, trying to sort their situation out. 

¹ Term coined by Amira Hass in a series of articles produced for the Haaretz newspaper on this issue. 

Campaign for the Right of Entry/Re-Entry to the oPt
The Campaign for the Right of Entry/Re-Entry to the Occupied Palestinian Territory is a grassroots campaign for the protection of foreign passport holders residing in and/or visiting the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt). The group is formed mainly by persons and families directly affected and/or threatened by the Israeli policy of denying entry to the oPt to non-Palestinian ID holders, be they Palestinian citizens of other countries and/or foreigners residing and/or visiting the oPt. The aim of the group is to obtain a fair solution for all to enter/re-enter the country. This is a long-term goal that needs multiple efforts and the participation of local, national and international actors. 

The campaign’s site can be accessed at: www.RightToEnter.ps

the champagne mazda in Bethlehem

I share an office with Kareem and as you often do with colleagues in the lulls of work we chat away on different issues. A few weeks ago Kareem all pleased announced that he wanted to buy a new car, and he finally had received an offer he could not turn down – a champagne coloured Mazda that was bought a year ago and had spent the whole year in a garage without being used. So Kareem all pleased had bought the champagne coloured Mazda. A few minutes later Kareem commented that the only inconvenience with it was that the car was in Bethlehem and he did not have a permit to drive between cities. Yes, believe it or not, to drive from Bethlehem to Ramallah (two Palestinian towns in the West Bank) you need a permit form the Israeli IDF army. Kareem still has been unable to go to Bethlehem to pick the champagne coloured Mazda. It has become a bit of a recurring joke in our office with his offers to drive around Bethlehem to at least have a taste of how it would be feel to drive a champagne coloured Mazda in Ramallah. Until he gets the permit (or he gets a lorry to transport the car to Ramallah), the champagne coloured Mazda awaits parked in a garage in Bethlehem.

The uber-wardens by Amira Hass

Haaretz, 12 April 2006 (http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/705215.html)

Two weeks ago, on Election Day, at 8 A.M., drivers wishing to leave Tul Karm from the eastern exit (toward Anabta) discovered that their permits were invalid. A soldier at the checkpoint, who prevented the passage of the drivers, apologized: Today, leaving the city by car is permitted only to residents of the three neighboring villages - Shufa, Safrin and Beit Lid, he explained to Machsom Watch activists. "And in general, this is not a checkpoint (through which the permits are meant to allow passage - A.H.), but a barricade. And here there are no permits; here there are procedures."

Palestinians living under the Israeli occupation are imprisoned in a thicket of physical, corporeal barriers of all types and sizes (checkpoints, roadblocks, blockades, fences, walls, steel gates, roads prohibited to traffic, dirt embankments, concrete cubes) and by a frequently updated assortment of bans and limitations. There are permanent bans, to which various periodic bans are supplemented, such as the aforementioned ban on travel to Anabta. Even without recurrent nighttime raids by the army to arrest wanted men, even without the shelling that fails to stop the firing of Qassam rockets, life is completely disrupted.

a view of ramallah

Straight across my street I have this view. Ramallah is perched on the top edges or rims of a number of hills. Mine is the neighbourhood of Al Tyre. Straight ahead and what you see in this photo is Betunia.

the ice cream parlour in Jaffa

Last night, I was hanging around with a friend and out of the blue we decided to go to Tel Aviv, and head to Jaffa for an ice cream. The ice cream parlour was full of both Palestinians (referred to as "Palestinians from inside" or also commonly as Arab Israelis - a skillful use of words that takes away their identity) and Israelis enjoying an ice cream. On display at the ice cream parlour is a large amount of frozen fruit, nuts, and chocolates - you make a selection, they put it through a machine and before you know it,  you have a taylor-made ice cream in front of you. We sat there, walked around the city and headed back home. Simple moments like these puzzle me as I sit to remember the Palestinian guy at the parlour who seemed more comfortable speaking Hebrew, the mixed crowd of people at the place, the photography exhibition on the checkpoints at the floor above the ice cream parlour and the fact that we are now on a car driving back to Ramallah with a checkpoint to go through in front of us. Astounded at the complexity, and maybe at my own naivety that keeps being surprised at these everyday facts about life here. I commented this in the car on our return and was soon requested to change conversation - it was too late to talk politics.

Today the suicide attack and I have just sat in my office observing how people have come in and out commenting events. Just today, in the morning, I had read another great article in the Haaretz. The title "Who is a terrorist?" might seem a sick play of words with todays events, but it was published yesterday, and the words of Gideon Levy have a strange echo as you see events today unfold. He makes tough questions about Israel's continuing military operations against Palestinians in Gaza and one is left to wonder when will an active decision be taken to stop and revert the cycle of violence in this part of the world.

min wein inti?

“Min wein inti?” (Where are you from?) asked the driver as I got on the taxi. “Min Sbania”  I said (there is no P in Arabic so amusingly to say Spain the ‘P’ becomes a ‘B’). “Ahlan wa Sahlan” (Welcome) he replied.

He drove away … and a while later he turned round “Inti messajiye?” (Are you Christian?). “Aiwa” (Yes) I replied. “Ahlan was Sahlan” he said again. There was a silence… a long silence, one of those silences that you feel the person is wanting to say more. But he drove on, silently and every so often looking back at me through the car mirror.

After some hesitation, he looked at me and asked …“Shu raiak fi al cartoon al denemarki?” (What do you think of the Danish cartoons?). I can get by with basic chit-chat but at that point I was literally stuck for words. How could I say what I felt about the whole affair in Arabic? I replied what came to my head “Mushkilla kbiir” (A big problem – a phrase I strangely find myself using very often here). He nodded and I continued “kull ness fil ayyam majnun” (all people in the world going crazy) in a broken mix of Arabic words, that I hoped would allow me to continue in the conversation with him. He nodded again in accordance. “Njad, mushkilla kbir” (Yes really, a big problem)… and he continued to explain how he as a Muslim had felt offended but how even if he was angry he still respected Christians and those who think differently. At that point, I could really every so often just reply “saj” (true) and tried to follow his speech. His name was Bassam and in a very sweet and concerned way tried to explain to me how he saw the cartoon crisis.

Taxi drivers and my drives in the yellow cabs in Ramallah are actually a big part of my life here. It is the people I get to talk to and listen to what they have to say, in my routine of daily life in Ramallah. It is my enjoyable way of measuring the pulse of things here.

plc elections...

I went this morning for a walk around Ramallah and a strange tranquility dominated the streets, very unlike the past few days which with fervour has been following the approach of election day. Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip are today electing their legislative council for the first time in ten years (the first election was in 1996)... a legislative council which is a direct product of the 1993 Oslo Accords that created the Palestinian Authority government. The only talk in town, for the past few days, has therefore been politics. It has creeped into everything. (A bit of data... 80% of eligible voters are registered, 1 340 000 Palestinians entitled to vote, more than 700 candidates running for 132 sears on the Palestinian Legislative Council.) As the Haarezt put it... an "important innovation in these elections is that they are not about the manipulations of a sole leader, such as Yasser Arafat, who could dictate their results; rather, they are about the construction of a broad national leadership that no longer relies on the charisma of a single individual, but instead relates to the various political currents that have developed in recent years, and especially during the intifada."

Two nights ago, I sat at Zyriab, the popular bar in central Ramallah - the place full mainly with foreigners all ready for the elections and I sat there talking to a friend, somehow wondering with him at it all, with a slight feeling of a circus. It was the last night for electoral campaigning, and every few minutes a stream of cars waving flags, hooting and playing music would pass, expressing support to the different parties and lists. As we sat there, we discussed the foreigners involvement (and as there is a wireless service... we were also checking the Google Earth website, and my home in Madrid). In Palestine there are now 850 international observers and over 1500 accredited journalists. The involvement of Israel, the EU and the US on the daily politics, I have found quite unbelievable. (Sometimes I do feel we give far too much attention to such a small place - if you think of the media coverage it all has had especially with with the rise of Hamas.) In addition the election campaign has had it all: financing scandals, plenty of international interference, political arrests and even the arrival of "spin doctors' to this part of the world.

Still, on my daily walk through Ramallah to get to work, I have observed the collage of posters piling away on the walls, and have many times smiled with the sight of Al Manara (the main roundabout in Ramallah) gradually becoming like a Christmas tree full of faces and electoral slogans. In this patchwork of faces, colours and symbols, I decided to take photos of it all and put them in a photoalbum in this blog with a translation of some of the slogans. These (obviously) do not reflect my opinions but just thought it might be interesting to visually get to see how election campaign posters look like here. I think they tell a lot. I hope you enjoy it and find it also informative.

prams at checkpoints

With all its "efforts" to cater in a "civilized" manner with Palestinians moving to and fro, the new terminal checkpoint at Qalandya does not cater for a simple baby pram.

As I was to go through the last revolving metal barred gate, before finally exiting Qalandya, I found a man standing in front of the gate unable to pass with his baby daughter in the pram. We both stared puzzled. Instinctively he grabbed his daughter and placed her in my arms as he juggled closing the pram. I went through with the little baby and he followed.

There was a crowd of people watching this whole scene. Something so simple can turn into a complicated operation. I handed back the baby and walked off. Strangely I did not hang around, I did not even look back properly at this man. Don't ask me why, but I was somehow very embarressed at seeing the impotency and frustration of a father going around a checkpoint with his daughter in a pram.

the subhuman and his habitat

welcome to the land of milk and honey
where figalmondapricots grow
unmetaphorically on accommodating trees
eat of them and be my guest today
i’ll pay your taxi to the first roadblock

my father waits behind the second roadblock
he’ll make you his guest of honour too
with oil bread oregamo sesame
stars press down upon his roof
sleep there and give him nadir’s love

the day to father is hard but essenstial
try to find a kid with a barrow
take donkeys or scramble on foot round the cliffs
follow the others keep telling yourself
now we are animals this is permissible

wheelchairs go bouncing through dust
back from the city where they cure the sick
diabetic with cancer in blazing sun
many old, many sick, many sweating animals
but that’s the whole idea

in the day we are sweating climbing animals
because that’s the whole idea
they beat and kick the animals to an end
that one day we will give milk and honey
one day manna will rain from human hands

if this seems insane to you habibi
just think that miles down the road
real girls and boys are sitting nervously
outside starbucks as an act of resistance
uproarious in fear of their lives

by Ramsey Nasr

Ramsey is Antwerp’s City Poet.

I managed last week to have the opportunity to see Ramsey twice: the firt time at Al-Diwan Art Coffee Shop in Ramallah (diwan in arabic refers to a place of family gathering) and the following day at the YMCA in West Jerusalem. The difference in the crowds at the two places was stark, especially with regards to the issue of identity.

christmas in bethlehem

“It is unconscionable that Bethlehem should be allowed to die slowly from strangulation.”

— Archbishop Desmond Tutu, 2005

I woke up early on the 24th of December, and as I potted around in my room, I looked outside my window. The hill I can normally see on the other side of the valley had disappeared in a big grey cloud and for the whole night and morning it had been pouring down with rain. Jessica, my housemate, had gone the previous day to spend Christmas back at home in Belgium and I was left to wonder what to do for Christmas. Part of me was very much tempted to stay all day at home, with a good book, listening to 107.2 fm (the peace radio channel that was putting a charming mix of Christmas carols, Arabic and Hebrew ballads and 80s hits) and just calmly have dinner by myself.

After a few hours, I somehow gathered some energy and decided to venture outside, to go to Bethlehem with a bunch of friends.

Bethlehem is 26 km away from Ramallah - both are in the West Bank and one would think it should not be a too complicated ride. But it took 3 hours and on Christmas Eve it felt like a kind of modern age pilgrimage. A few years ago, before the last Intifada, it used to take 35 minutes via Jerusalem. Historically, Bethlehem, East Jerusalem, and Ramallah comprised one interdependent economic/cultural unit that accounted for 30-40% of all Palestinian economic activity. Now this has been fragmented (the economy is in a critical situation), and the whole trip is quite an ordeal.

From Ramallah I took a service (shared taxi-minivan) to Qalandya. Qalandya used to just be a part of the suburbs of Jerusalem, a pretty desolate place with no character - just a road in terrible conditions and a refugee camp. Under the rain, this is extremely depressing and desolate, as it transforms into a big mud puddle, with rubbish, construction debris and the wall. For the past 7 years it has also been the place for a checkpoint which has gradually become a more permanent structure in the landscape. Now, it is the location for the new checkpoint "terminal" that opened last week. Last Monday was the opening ceremony with the security officer of the American Consulate, along with a few others. The representatives of the European Union and other diplomats boycotted the tour. The reason for the boycott is that Qalandya is 5 kilometers away from the Green Line (the pre-1967 border) and it is surrounded by Palestinian neighbourhoods and villages. It controls Palestinians going from the West Bank to the West Bank and Jerusalem, and not to Israel. It makes life for Palestinians in the suburbs of Jerusalem impossible.