This Year in Jerusalem: April 2014

Wednesday, 30 April 2014

At home, for now, with Abu Ghassan

Abu Ghassan

Abu Ghassan has been blind since 1993 when he was only 27 years old. He sits on a battered plastic chair on an earth mound above the ruins of his home in Jabal al Baba. This small hilltop Bedouin village is reached by a steady four kilometres climb east of Jerusalem’s Old City. At 9am on March 12th this year, fifty Israeli soldiers arrived with a couple of bulldozers and razed his home to the ground. He and his family had no warning and no chance to remove any of their belongings. You can still see the remains of furniture and plumbing attachments in the rubble.

The rubble of Abu Ghassan's demolished home

The Red Cross Tent

The European Union provided Abu Ghassan with a prefabricated replacement. But on 9th April the army arrived again and dismantled his new home, which despite being liberally emblazoned with the EU logo, was loaded on to a lorry by the soldiers and removed. He is currently living in a Red Cross tent with his wife, her sister and his eight children.

EU funded temporary buildings in the village

According to Nicola, an UNWRA* researcher who works regularly in thevillage, the inhabitants of Jabal al Baba like it when the Ecumenical Accompaniers arrive. Are the ‘Jakatat' (jackets) coming?’ they ask her. It’s difficult to see what we can achieve by going but Abu Ghassan asks us to take photographs and assures us: ‘Tell our international friends about what is happening so they can see the real face of the Israeli Government and its actions. That will make a difference.’

Jabal al Baba is a small herding community, home to 40 families and about 250 sheep. The Bedouin inhabitants knew long before demolition orders were placed on 18 of its 26 buildings that their hilltop village was a strategic target for the Israeli Government. The Israeli separation barrier is still under construction in this area. When it is finished, it will be surrounded on three sides by the barrier, and cut off from the neighbouring town of Al Eizariya where the village children go to school. Since the building of the barrier commenced, they have suffered many home demolitions and the number of sheep - their livelihood - has declined from 600 to 250.

The reason for these problems is that the village of Jabal al Baba is part of the district known as E1. Israel plans to clear this area of its inhabitants in order to join its large illegal settlement Ma’ale Adumim to the rest of Jerusalem. There are plans to develop this strikingly beautiful area into settlement suburbs and facilities and even a nature reserve. However, it will result in East Jerusalem becoming a surrounded Palestinian bubble within Greater Jerusalem and have the further effect of completely dividing the northern part of the West Bank from the southern part. This will mean that travelling from the north to the south of Jerusalem, approximately a twenty minute journey by car, will take more like two to two and half hours.

Taken from UN OCHA map December 2012. The brown areas are illegal Israeli settlements; the red line is the separation barrier (dotted red line was under construction in 2012, now finished) and the black line the intended route for the barrier

The E1 area is quite simply the red line for the Peace Process - the most contentious and strategic place in the race for Jerusalem as Israel’s capital city. The UN are getting used to hosting high-level delegations in this area. John Kerry, the US Secretary of State and his team have visited recently; Labour Leader, Ed Miliband also paid a visit during his tour last month. Miliband, significantly, spoke out strongly against settlement expansion on his return to UK.

Meanwhile, Abu Ghassan waits by his demolished house: son of a refugee from 1948, when many Bedouin were displaced from their home in the Negev desert, he is now three times a refugee. And he wonders where it will be next. Many of the Bedouin have been relocated in a place up against the separation wall near Abu Dis, a place where there is a large rubbish tip and many health problems resulting for humans and animals from the toxic effluent from the waste. The Bedouin here are placed in concrete houses with no grazing for their animals.

He asks again as we leave: ‘ Please tell our international friends … that will make a difference.’

* United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees

I work for Quaker Peace & Social Witness (QPSW) as an ecumenical accompanier serving on the World Council of Churches’ Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI). The views contained in this email are personal and do not necessarily reflect those of QPSW or the World Council of Churches. If you would like to publish the information contained here (including posting it on a website), or distribute it further, please first contact the QPSW Programme Manager for Middle East teresap@quaker.org.uk for permission. Thank you.

Holy and unholy fire

Palm Sunday procession down the Mount of Olives

According to Amos Harel and Nir Hazen in Monday morning’s edition of Haaretz the left-wing Israeli newspaper, Temple Mount in Jerusalem is ‘a flash point ready to ignite’. Rising tensions in Jerusalem over recent weeks escalated even further on Easter Sunday morning as Pesach - the week long Jewish Passover - was coming to a close. Jewish extremists had been entering the Al Aqsa Mosque compound and eight Jewish activists were arrested en route to the Temple Mount with a goat, thought to be intended for a sacrifice. Two police officers were injured during clashes in which 24 Palestinians were arrested.

Riot policeman

This year was reportedly set to be extra tense in this Holy City as unusually both the Orthodox and Western Easters coincided with Pesach. For hundreds of years the Christian Quarter, and in particular the plaza of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, has thronged with worshippers but for five years the Israeli police have been restricting access for local Christians and international pilgrims to the Old City, reportedly for security reasons, leaving it empty. Yusef Daher, head of the Jerusalem Inter-Church Centre, showed us an old picture of the thronging crowds in front of the Holy Sepulchre. ’It used to be full of pilgrims,’ he said, ‘but now there are only army and police officers.’

A police barrier to 'control the crowds'

Easter actually passed relatively peacefully this year. There was a Palm Sunday procession down from the Mount of Olives to the Old City, various Good Friday processions along the Via Dolorosa, following the Stations of the Cross and the dramatic Holy Fire ceremony at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre on Easter Saturday. This is the most important part of Easter for the Palestinian Christians, who believe that Holy Fire emanated from the tomb as the stone was rolled away at 2pm on the day after the crucifixion. Each year, the eagerly awaited fire is passed on to the faithful on the roof of the Holy Sepulchre and from there it travels out to the villages and on to other Orthodox communities as far away as Romania and Russia.

A patient Georgian priest waiting at Jaffa Gate with some of his flock

As Ecumenical Accopaniers, we were monitoring access to all parts of the Easter celebrations for local Christians. Standing at Jaffa Gate in 30 plus degrees and no shade on Easter Saturday, we were standing with a multitude of Orthodox pilgrims waiting patiently to enter the Old City. The successful ones had been queuing from three o’clock in the morning before the police had put up a barrier at 6 am. Even then, they were waiting on chairs inside the barrier but outside the gate before being allowed in to the Old City itself. The unsuccessful were still waiting at 3pm with the promise that they would be allowed to go in at some point.

More serious was the distinct lack of local Christians. So few had managed even to get to Jerusalem. Bishop Munib Younan of the Evangelical Lutheran Church reported that many Christians from the West Bank had been unable to obtain their permits due to a ‘computer error’. Many families received permits for only some members and chose to stay at home rather than spend Easter apart. We learned that out of 3000 permit applications, the Catholics in Bethlehem received only 700. 12 out of 14 West Bank Scout Troops were refused entry. One EA colleague witnessed a small Boy Scout in tears at the Bethlehem checkpoint. He had been turned back and was prevented from marching in the procession with his band.

Restriction of access to worship is, quite simply, illegal under International Humanitarian Law. Under Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights …

‘Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom … to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.’

At approximately 2.15pm on Holy Saturday, the fire emerged from the Holy Sepulchre. Candles, torches and lanterns were lit from it, first on the roof and then right around the now filling plaza. By 4 o’clock it had been carried from the Old City to Qalandia and through the checkpoint into the West Bank City of Ramallah where the torches of waiting Christians were lit from it.

Some lucky pilgrims

Let us just hope and pray that it is the Holy Fire, the hope of the resurrection, that prevails rather than the smouldering discontent and sparks of conflict that hit the newspapers day after day in this deeply troubled place.

This post finishes with an exhortation from Bishop Munib Younan:

Our call as Arab and Middle East Christians is to be instruments of peace, ministers of reconciliation, defenders of human rights, and apostles of love. I invite you to join with your brothers and sisters in the Middle East as we proclaim the truth of Christ's peace in our hearts to the world. I ask you this Easter Sunday to pray for peace based on justice with reconciliation based on forgiveness in Palestine and Israel. I implore you for the sake of the Gospel to pray that politicians will find a peaceful solution to the conflict in Syria. I beg you to pray for Arab and Middle East Christians in this region that they may be filled with the power of hope in the Resurrection. I ask you to not forget us nor cease accompanying us in our journey, for our mission is yours and yours is ours. Our mission continues to be one of a prophetic Church, implanting the power of Resurrection Peace in the hearts of all peoples. This is the reason that even in the midst of our doubts and suspicions we hear His gentle voice saying, "Peace be with you." And all of us with one voice will astonishingly reply, "My Lord and my God!" With this hope of the Resurrection, I send to you the Easter greetings of Jerusalem. Al-Masih Qam – Hakkan Qam! Christ has risen! He is risen indeed!

Amen

Monday morning at Qalandiya

Tuesday, 15 April 2014

Monday morning at Qalandiya

There used to be an airport at Qalandiya. Now the Israeli security barrier bisects the main runway and you have to fly to Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv first if you want to get to Jerusalem. For thousands of Palestinians from Ramallah, and even further afield in the West Bank, going through the checkpoint here is the only way to access their work, their schools, medical care or their relatives who live in Jerusalem. Part of our role here is to monitor the checkpoint at peak time and report any violations of human rights that we witness.

We fall out of bed at 3.45am and grunt at each other in a desultory fashion over bowls of cornflakes and a few sips of tea, depending on bladder strength. There are no mod cons at this checkpoint. The taxi beeps outside and we climb in. The road is not busy as we skirt the old city. Suddenly we turn and the wall is looming above us in the early morning half light— 8 metres of concrete topped with a twisted forest of razor wire.

We alight and divide up the tasks - some to go through to the Ramallah side to watch the forming queue and wait for the humanitarian gate to open. This is a special route for women and children, the elderly, people who need medical attention, or people who just want to visit relatives in Jerusalem.

Half of us go through the checkpoint to the Ramallah side to observe the queue and the others and stay on the Jerusalem side to count people as they come through. The queue is very long even though it’s still early and we position ourselves close to the soldiers’ booth. The windows are tinted and it’s hard to see how many are there on duty. Sparrows twitter frantically, trapped in the barbed wire around the booth. In contrast, the queue moves slowly and steadily and the men show nothing but steadfastness and good humour. Many greet us and even thank us for their presence. Two or three are turned back because their permits have expired.

At six o’clock the humanitarian lane opens. A man comments that this is because we are there in numbers today. Women and children begin to arrive. A tall, anxious-looking young man is carrying a tiny baby in a carrycot and an elderly couple explain that they are going to hospital for the wife’s treatment. Several professional looking men and women with briefcases are next. Two young men stop and chat to one of our outgoing team. She explains that they are student nurses on their way to work in a Jerusalem hospital. Ten minutes later one of them returns with a smartly dressed young woman,also a nurse, who has been refused entry because elf the metal belt on her coat. The EA reasons with the soldier and eventually, after twenty minutes or so, he allows her to pass.

I pass through the checkpoint myself, but fail to produce my passport and visa in an appropriate manner and a kind Palestinian behind me shows me what to do. ‘Sorry,’ I say, ‘this is my first time.’ ‘No problem,’ he says and grins. On the other side a group of about thirty men have gathered to pray, an imam wearing a striking head dress chanting and the others following. I admire their commitment, kneeling on the hard, filthy concrete, with no prayer mats, and I watch their sinewy, worn hands as they bend forward, heads and hands touching the ground.

Then, in a flash, they are up and piling onto buses to make the last leg of their journey to work. The spot-check timing sheets we have given out show that the average length of time today was 50 minutes to pass through the checkpoint. A good day, apparently. Our log shows that 2,222 people passed through this morning. Bearing in mind that many have a longish journey to reach the checkpoint and a bus journey the other end, it makes for a very long working day.

We go home for a rest. Late run the day, I wonder what all the people we saw at the checkpoint are doing now: sweeping the streets, working on an Israeli building site in West Jerusalem, waiting at tables? I call to mind the large official notice at the entrance to the checkpoint: ‘We wish you a safe and pleasant passage.’ There used to be an airport at Qalandiya. But the Occupation has changed everything.