- 27 تموز 2017
- أقلام مقدسية
By Dr. Ali Qleibo
Jerusalem is a richly evocative city. The discourses deployed reflect the different images through the ages. In the Judeo-Christian Moslem theological discourse Jerusalem is the holy city par excellence. It is one: it is eternal; it is whole and continuous, both in time and in space; it is immovable and immutable; it is limited, but limited only by itself; it is evenly extended in every direction, it is celestial and as believed in Islam, it is a piece of heaven on the earth.
Jerusalem is also a contested city.
Fifty years of Israeli occupation and the consequent forcible annexation of East Jerusalem, and of the transformation of East Jerusalemites into a stateless people with temporary residents' permits in their historical homeland. The cumulative discriminatory repressive measures have exerted a heavy toll on the Jerusalemites. In international law the Israeli sovereignty over the city remains unrecognized. De jure Jerusalem is an illegally occupied city; the Palestinian discourses deployed address the political condition of Jerusalem and the abuses Palestinian Jerusalemites endure under Israeli military occupation.
Palestinian Arab Jerusalem has been systemically undermined by Israelis through extensive falsification, transformation and manipulation of the demographic and socio economic infra structures of the city. The insidious strategy of the Israeli occupation, namely to empty Jerusalem of the Palestinian Arab residents, is manifest through the ingenious legislative bureaucratic means by which the process of silent transfer of the local population is enforced.
De facto, Jerusalem has experienced a radical demographic transformation due to the forcible expansion of the municipal boundaries of East Jerusalem. The city have expanded s to include 28 villages from Isawiyeh in the north and the villages of Silwan, Abu tor, Jabal el Mukabber and Sur baher in the south, Palestinians have become incidental beneficiaries to Israeli social benefits and medical programs that were original mandated to protect the Jewish immigrants. Moreover, the wages for work per hour is the highest in the southern Mediterranean and is eight times higher per hour than in the neighboring West Bank. The financial prospective drew migrant workers from Mount Hebron. These have taken over the historical city which had been the bastion of the intellectual Palestinian middle class. These financial incentives have exerted a corruptive distorting perception of the Israeli occupation to the extent of mistaking the Israeli hegemony as advantageous and beneficiary. Economic expediency is chosen in preference to identity and collective dignity.
"It is not simply the corruption that turns us off." I listen to the Arab mechanics in Talpiot extolling the virtues of the Israeli occupation. "Rather it is our dignity that is at stake. We are well paid. We travel freely throughout the country. We fly at least twice a year to Turkey, Jordan and perform the off season pilgrimage Omra on a regular basis." Samer enumerated the economic benefits of working within the Israeli sector. The subordinate status of the Arab worker, the abuse one is subjected to by the Israeli soldiers, the collective punishments whereby the entrance of his village would be closed, the impossibility of getting a house license; all these grievances are overlooked in preference for a consumer life style their parents and grandparents never ever dreamed of.
Employment within the Israeli economic sector has surreptitiously eroded the Bedouin and peasant ethnic identity so as to become alternate consumer life styles. From impoverished cave dwelling Bedouin shepherds and peasants living in penury they have moved from the kerosene lit lamps in shady caves with out-houses to comfortable villas and spacious apartments with full amenities that include air-conditioning and at least two cars per household.
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Wherever I go in the Israeli sector I am met with sympathetic Arab workers: shopping centers, hotels, medical centers, municipal offices and even in car licensing garages. Language plays a decisive distinctive ethnic marker. Was it not for the use of Arabic or Hebrew language it would be difficult to distinguish by dress, hair cut, clothes and general image between Palestinian and Israeli men and women. Only distinct signs of religious modesty distinguish between Moslem and Jewish observant females... The projected image is produced and shaped by Israeli economy and commonly shared consumer goods. Self image is impeccably designed with great attention to style and labels paralleled by the upper income exclusive few in the neighboring Arab countries. Even the parking garage attendant here dons Hilfiger and Nautica and Polo Ralph Lauren clothing, Ray-ban sun glasses, Hilfiger trousers and expensive shoe brands and can afford the image, haircut and matching look even if it is a limited closet.
Fifty years after the occupation Jerusalem has become a multicultural city composed of peasants, Bedouins and a minority of the historical urban bourgeoisies. The "melting pot" metaphor is usually employed to describe a heterogeneous society becoming more homogeneous. However, the progress in Jerusalem has been reversed for the previously homogeneous Jerusalem Muslim and Christian social structure has eroded to be replaced by a more heterogeneous society of diverse ethnic groups with alternate life styles, aesthetics and moral values. Since the relations and mode of production within the Israeli capital is extraneous to the Palestinian economy and is not a natural autochthonous historical development anomie and alienation is paramount.
The passing away of our traditional customs and value system – the Palestinian ethos – has created a state of anomie. Among the urban middle classes, where the influence of clan and tribal solidarity is minimal, the nuclear family’s sense of security is severely undermined by systemic organized crime that seeks, through extortion, violence, and murder, to take over these historical family holdings; family homesteads, businesses and positions. Sporadic shooting, intimidating Molotov bombs, and the setting on fire of cars and houses have become rampant. Palestinian scavengers, thugs, “carpetbaggers,” and fortune hunters have taken over and hold the real estate owners and shopkeepers in terror. In Jerusalem, Palestinian organized crime is further aggravated by the lackadaisical Israeli execution of the law and represents a grave threat to the survival of patrician Jerusalemites in the Holy City.
Fifty years after the occupation chaos thrives.
The extortions levied on business owners, shopkeepers, and restaurateurs – intimidation ranges from kidnapping, shooting, the throwing of incendiary bombs, and other various forms of violence – thrive unabated. In the new social context, a state of chaos prevails where traditional values and conventions are no longer binding.
In the new, atomized, highly individualized Palestine, it is “every man for himself.”
The Palestinian Authority, in the steps of the previous Jordanian official position discourages even forbids any co-operation with the Israelis. Consequently almost the 350,000 estimated population of Greater Jerusalem live, work pay taxes to Israelis but are forbidden by the Authorities in Ramallah to formally consolidate their rights in Jerusalem by seeking representation and establishing presence in any form in the Israeli Jerusalem administered municipality. Any attempts for official representation to lobby for Palestinian interests on the municipal level are de jure ("in law"), an act of treason! To ask for political rights on the national level risks turning the national Palestinian struggle to a civil rights movement is anathema.
Despite the fact that over the past five decades after the Nakseh (the defeat in 1967) Jerusalemite Palestinians continue to work and pay their due taxes to the Jerusalem municipality they have failed to ask for their right to self determination. Incognizant of Jerusalemites needs and in denial of facts on the ground Palestinian Authority official discourse centers de jure on the problematic aspect of the occupation; collective punishments, abuse and over use of power to the extent of shooting allegedly knife yielding adolescents, home demolitions, bad municipal services, underequipped schools and violations of human rights and seeks to restitute the malaise on a purely political level. The objective is to end the occupation and have East Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital.
Against all odds resistance to Israeli occupation continues unabated. The onslaught and daily desecration of the El Aqsa Mosque by Jewish fanatics under the protection of the Israeli army alarms the Palestinians to our precarious position in our homeland. We remain subservient to an arbitrary system of curfews, traffic control through closure of the main gates of the Old City as collective punitive measures. Intricately legislated laws exacerbate the living conditions of the Palestinian Jerusalemites in a coercive attempt to leave. .
Jerusalemite Arabs after Oslo became stateless. Blockaded through check points greater Jerusalem has been separated from the Palestinian territories: Jerusalemites are ineligible for Palestinian passports and are barred from participating in the Palestinian elections. Applying for Israeli nationality and an Israeli passport, a complicated procedure in itself, is de jure an act of treason. Though the Hashemite Kingdom provides us with courtesy passports yet we are not allowed rights of residence in Jordan.
Fifty years after the occupation, caught between the hammer and the anvil, Jerusalemites languor as a stateless people in their own homeland.
