As Israelis march today to celebrate the ‘reunification’ of Jerusalem, Palestinian East Jerusalemites struggle against skyrocketing rents and building restrictions to remain in municipal borders. 

Garbage piles up in the Kufr Aqab neighborhood of East Jerusalem (Photo: Mya Guarnieri)

Every day, investors knock on the door of a small home in Kufr Aqab, a village on the Palestinian side of the separation wall but inside Jerusalem’s municipal borders. The tidy, one-story, two-room house is surrounded by new apartment buildings, some reaching nine stories high. Contractors are currently finishing more than 1,000 units in the area; billboard advertisements suggest many more are to come.

The same phenomenon is occurring in other Palestinian neighborhoods that are technically part of Jerusalem, but separated from the ancient city sites by the huge concrete wall.

Apartment buildings are popping up like mushrooms in these areas. The sound of construction fills the air.

Kufr Aqab – once full of open, green spaces – is now “crowded” and “dirty,” says Amira, an 18-year-old Palestinian woman who lives here. She asked not to be identified by her real name out of fear of endangering her Israeli-issued Jerusalem residency permit.

Residents pay taxes to the Jerusalem Municipality but receive far fewer services than the neighboring Jewish districts of Jerusalem. While Palestinians constitute approximately 35 percent of the city’s population, only eight to ten percent of the municipal budget is allocated to their communities. “We have to hire someone to come and take [the garbage] because the city won’t come,” Amira says. “They will pick up everything on the main street but not behind it.”

Refuse collection is a long-standing issue for Palestinian East Jerusalemites; even Israeli officials have raised concerns about the issue, and the influx of new residents means things will only get worse.

Numerous requests for comment from the Jerusalem Municipality for this article have been unsuccessful.

Unplanned growth has already stretched Kufr Aqab’s infrastructure to the point of breaking, Amira and other residents say. “What once was a spacious entrance into the neighborhood is now a small, rough, tight road that does not allow cars to pass through it. The entrance [has been narrowed] by two new buildings on each side that have taken space from the road to...

Critics often say that Palestinians should concentrate on state-building rather than fighting the occupation. But the prolonged closure of a Palestinian university is a reminder that Palestine can’t get on its feet when it’s under Israel’s boot.

It’s been 10 days since I’ve seen my students at the Palestinian university in the West Bank. A week and a half ago, I was in the middle of teaching one of my afternoon classes when a number of my male students got up to leave. “Sorry, Miss Mya,” one said. “But there’s a fight outside.”

It was the latest flare-up in a long-running family feud between two clans—one from Abu Dis, the other from a neighboring village. This round included stone-throwing and gunshots. It took place right outside the university gates.

According to the Oslo Accords, Abu Dis is in Area B, which means that it is under Israeli security and Palestinian administration. This also means that there are no police in Abu Dis. Thus, in situations like this, there is no one to restore order. This is a common problem in Palestinian areas of the West Bank, including those that are part of the Jerusalem municipality but are on the Palestinian side of the wall. While I was reporting in one such area recently, locals told me that whenever there is crime, the villagers—who pay taxes to Israel and hold Jerusalem residency—have to handle it by themselves.

Abu Dis is in a similar situation. Parts of the village are, technically, inside Jerusalem’s borders; the university is right next to the separation barrier. When the Israeli army heard about the violence, they came and fired tear gas at the crowd, thinking that the fight was about the occupation. The gas wafted into the building I teach in. When the soldiers realized that the feud was internal, they left.

For students’ and faculty safety, the university was shut down. Everyone went out the gates on the opposite side of campus, away from the fighting. For security reasons, the administration decided to keep the university closed until Saturday.

When I got word of the closure, I gave up on holding office hours on Wednesday as I had planned. I was disappointed—several of my students had made appointments because they needed help with their work. With the week prematurely over, I left Abu Dis and headed back to Jerusalem. On my way out, I saw...

A Palestinian man died in Israeli custody, reportedly during or after being interrogated by Israel on Saturday. The death comes amid spreading West Bank protests in solidarity with hunger striking prisoners. Near Nablus, settlers reportedly shoot a Palestinian man in the stomach.

Ayalon prison facility, near the city of Ramla (photo: Activestills)

A 30-year-old Palestinian man, Arafat Jaradat, died while in Israeli custody today. According to Palestinian human rights organization Al Haq, Jaradat is believed to have died either during or shortly after he was interrogated in Meggido Prison.

Speaking to the Agence France Presse, a spokeswoman for the Israel Prisons Service confirmed the death. She claimed, “It was probably a cardiac arrest.”

But Al Haq reports that Jaradat, who was arrested on February 18, had no known health conditions. Jaradat was from the West Bank village of Sa’ir, which is north of Hebron. He is survived by two children and his wife is reportedly pregnant with their third child.

Palestinian prisoners will go on hunger strike in protest of Jaradat’s death, the Palestinian news agency Maan reports.

According to B’Tselem, more than 4,500 Palestinians are being held in Israeli prisons; 178 of the detainees are being held without trial in administrative detention. The UN reports that approximately 700,000 Palestinians have been held in Israeli prisons since the occupation began in 1967. Many of these prisoners have been held without charge on administrative detention orders. Children have also been jailed. In 2012, 143 children between 16 and 18 were held in Israeli jails, including 21 minors under the age of 15.

Jaradat’s death comes as Palestinian prisoner Samer Issawi has been on hunger strike for over 200 days. Al Haq reports that Issawi’s family is being harassed by Israeli forces. Issawi’s brother, Shadi, was arrested last week; Issawi’s sister, Shirin, was detained for 24 hours in December and was put on house arrest. On New Year’s Day, Israeli forces razed the home of Issawi’s brother, Rafat.

As Samer Issawi’s condition deteriorates, protests and clashes have spread throughout the West Bank. Dozens of Palestinian protesters were injured in demonstrations throughout the West Bank on Friday, including one who was shot with live ammunition in Hebron.

On Saturday, 26-year-old Hilmi Abdul Azizi was reportedly shot in...

In my third post about publishing–or, rather, not publishing–my book about migrant workers and African refugees in Israel, I examine the role of violence in the media and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

And then there was a ray of light. In the wake of the May 2012 race riot in Tel Aviv, the mainstream media was suddenly paying attention to African refugees in the Jewish state. My agent called to say that we might be able to ride the wave of violence to sell my book about migrants in Israel.

There’s something wrong with an industry that only sits up and takes notice when things get bloody. There’s something sick to me about riding the riot and the asylum seekers’ fear and suffering. But, hey, sex and violence sells. As a number of my students pointed out, when blood is spilled, the international community pays attention to issues that the world usually ignores. And it seems the only way to force Israel’s hand.

During and after Operation Pillar of Defense, my university students in the West Bank were divided on the role armed struggle should play in Palestinian resistance. Some felt that violence only begets violence and chastised their classmates who rejoiced in seeing footage of Tel Aviv residents dashing to bomb shelters. When one young man told the class that he was happy to see “Jews running like chickens” to take cover, a girl in hijab turned around and yelled at him, “Haram!” She went on to upbraid him for enjoying anyone’s suffering, including that of the Jews.

Others felt that the frightful images coming out of Gaza—and the lopsided body count—might call the international community to action. And then there were those who were conflicted: violence sucks, they said. But sirens in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem made Israel pay attention to Gaza and to ease the blockade a little bit. That proved to them that, as awful as bloodshed is, fighting back is the only way to “peace.”

It’s all too easy to blame the Israeli government for ignoring Palestinian demands for human rights. It’s comfortable to point the finger at journalists, editors, and publishers who follow a sensationalistic “if it doesn’t bleed it doesn’t lead” line. However, at the end of the day, the fault lies with a public that, to put it simply, just doesn’t care.

Or does it? Noam Chomsky and others...

New Year’s resolutions offer us a glimpse into the hopes of the children who live under Israeli occupation.

A colleague of mine, a fellow journalist and writer, teaches English to Palestinian children in Hebron. I visited her recently in the West Bank and she generously shared her teenage students’ New Year’s resolutions. They are published here, sans names, with the students’ permission.

From a teenage boy:

The next one list was written by a girl who seems unusually self aware for a teenager. The most heartbreaking entry in her list was number 11, which she’d drawn a line through. It shows how hard it is for her trust the world around her and alludes to the severe impact it makes on her personal relationships:

Another young woman’s list shows, again, how hard it is for these children to have faith in the people around them. No surprise given the fact that their lives are so unstable and can be changed on the whim of an Israeli soldier.

That these lists do not mention the occupation does not mean that living under Israeli military rule makes no impact on the children’s lives. Rather, that the students don’t talk about freedom of movement or seeing their brothers, uncles, and cousins released from Israeli prisons suggests that it doesn’t seem like a realistic hope.

The New Year’s resolutions...

In the second post of my three-part series about media and publishing, I examine some misconceptions about the Israeli-Palestinian ‘conflict,’ and the ways in which the media feeds into a binary that leaves non-Jews and non-Palestinians out of the spotlight.

When my agent and I shopped my book about Israel’s migrant workers and African refugees around, we got a lot of those “We love it but it’s not right for us” and “This is an important book that needs to be published. But there’s no audience for this” kind of responses.

But perhaps the most common response was, “Where are the Palestinians?”

The Palestinians are there, of course. They are discussed directly and indirectly. As migrant workers were first brought to Israel during the First Intifada to replace Palestinian day laborers—a fact I take care to mention in my book—you can’t talk about the state’s treatment of foreign workers without alluding to those they replaced. And with most Palestinians locked behind the separation barrier, migrant workers and African refugees—the “new” non-Jewish “others” in Israel—have become more convenient stand-ins for the racist sentiments that have long been channeled towards Palestinian.

But, no, publishers who haven’t set foot in Israel—much less covered it as a journalist for years on end—insist that the “conflict” is about Jews vs. Arabs, Israelis vs. Palestinians, not Israel versus all non-Jewish others. Tell that to the families of migrant workers who are being deported by the state; tell the African refugees who face prison without trial that Israel’s conflict is with the Arabs.

And tell that to the many Israeli politicians who readily admit that the issue is preserving a Jewish state.

Further, Israel has tweaked the 1952 Entry to Israel law and the 1954 Infiltration Prevention law—both of which discriminate against Palestinians—broadening them to apply to migrant workers and African refugees. Israeli politicians use similar rhetoric and separation methods (read: walls) against all of these non-Jewish groups.

As I wrote in The National:

The eviction of  a Palestinian family from their home in Sheikh Jarrah, planned for today, has been delayed by two months. 

Two Palestinian children in front of their house in Sheikh Jarrah, February 7, 2010 (photo: Anne Paq/Activestills.org)

The Shamasneh family was slated to be evicted from their home at 2:00 p.m. today, December 31, so that the Israeli Custodian for Absentee Property could take possession of the house. The Jerusalem District Court ordered the eviction to be postponed until March 1, 2013 after the family’s lawyer appealed to Israel’s high court.

Activists and politicians who support the Shamasnehs in their fight to stay in their East Jerusalem home emphasize that this is just a temporary postponement in the eviction, and that the family of 10 is still in danger of losing their house. They also point out that it is just one of many examples of Israel’s lopsided, discriminatory application of the law that is leading to the “Judaization” of East Jerusalem.

In a number of cases, the Israeli Custodian of Absentee Property has handed over Palestinian homes to Jewish settlers after Israeli courts have ruled that the properties in question were owned by Jews prior to the 1948 war. Palestinian refugees who were forced or fled from their homes in the same period, however, are not allowed to sue for the properties in Israeli courts.

The Shamasneh family has lived in their Sheikh Jarrah home since 1964, three years before Israel occupied East Jerusalem. In 1980, Israel unilaterally annexed East Jerusalem, a move that remains unrecognized by the international community.

Speaking yesterday of the Shamasneh’s case, Dr. Saeb Erekat of the Palestine Liberation Organization remarked, “We hold Israel accountable for any consequences to their illegal actions and we call upon the international community to end the culture of impunity for Israel and treating Israel as a state above international law.”

Related:
Palestinian family in Sheikh Jarrah days away from eviction
Fact sheet: Israel’s tightening control over Jerusalem
Spotlight: Sheikh Jarrah

Over five years of on-the-ground research. Almost three years of writing and rewriting. And my book about migrant workers and African refugees in Israel just isn’t selling.

I’ve spent more than two years addressing everything in my control (with the help of an excellent literary agent who has sold some very big books). My experiences as a journalist–and some appalling numbers from the publishing industry–leave me to conclude that editors are passing on my book because I’m a woman.

I’ve also gotten the sense that publishers aren’t interested because the discourse about Israel-Palestine is locked into an overly simplistic discussion of a bilateral “conflict” when—as Israel’s treatment of migrant workers and African refugees shows—the conversation needs to be about the Jewish state’s denial of human rights to ALL non-Jews.

And then there’s the issue of violence. As the old journalism adage goes, “If it doesn’t bleed, it doesn’t read.” My experiences with the publishing industry suggest that this holds as true now as ever.

In this post, the first of a three-part series, I’ll talk about what it means to be a woman in journalism and publishing.

***

I should have known that I was battling gender bias the moment my agent asked me if I could turn my original draft—a journalistic, semi-academic, discussion of non-Jewish, non-Palestinian “others”  and their place in Israel—into “Eat Pray Love meets migrant workers.”

Yes, memoir was big at the time. But can you imagine an agent asking a male journalist to turn his investigative work into something less deliberate? Can you imagine a male journalist being urged to write about how “you bumped into this person who introduced me to that person”?

And doesn’t the term “male journalist” sound funny? That’s because we’re not used to hearing it. Male journalists are the norm and we don’t bother describing norms. We only describe the exception to the rule. Articles exclaiming how far “female journalists” have come or the “Unique advantage of ‘female war reporters” actually suggest that we haven’t come that far… otherwise, participating in our profession would be unremarkable, so unremarkable it wouldn’t need to be discussed in an article.

That’s not to say that my agent is to blame. He’s  just a salesman—he’s a conduit for and reflection of market forces. And when it comes to publishing, women are relegated to particular corners of the industry.

Writing in The Washington Post...

On December 31, as Americans celebrate New Year’s Eve and Israelis lift a glass to “Sylvester,” a Palestinian family will be evicted from their East Jerusalem home to make way for Jewish settlers.

The Jerusalem District Court has ruled that the Shamasneh family must leave the house they have been living in 1964—three years before Israel’s occupation of East Jerusalem began—by 2:00 PM on Monday afternoon. Ten people currently live in the home, including six children.

The court has granted ownership to the Israeli Custodian for Absentee Property, which was represented by lawyers who also represent settlers’ organizations, including the Israel Land Fund.

According to the Israel Land Fund’s website, the organization’s goals include “acquiring all the land of Israel for the Jewish people.” The ILF “strives to ensure that Jewish land is… reclaimed and in Jewish hands” rather than “hostile, non-Jewish, and enemy sources.”

The ILF has been behind a number of different settlement projects in East Jerusalem. Activists believe that the Shamasnehs’ home will be handed over to Jewish settlers after the family is evicted.

The Jerusalem District Court’s decision breaks a three year lull in such evictions in Sheikh Jarrah. The al-Kurd family was evicted from their house in Sheikh Jarrah in 2008 and were left homeless; two more families were dispossessed in 2009. Jewish settlers now occupy all of the houses.

The wave of evictions led to weekly protests in Sheikh Jarrah that were, for some time, popular with Jewish Israeli activists.

In the below letter, Ayoub Shamasneh, asks the international community to help him and his family. He also points out that Jews the world over can claim properties in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories based on previous ownership–however tenuous those claims–while Palestinians are not allowed to reclaim the properties they were forced to leave during the 1947-1948 conflict.

To whom it may concern,

My name is Ayoub Shamasneh and I live in Um Haroun, Sheikh Jarrah. My wife and I are living here with our son, Mohammed, his wife Amaal, and their six children ranging from the ages of 11 to 22 years old. We have lived in this house since 1964, it is where we built our family and raised our children.  In 2009, after decades of living in our home, the Israeli General Custodian’s Office informed us that our rental’s agreement will not be...

Those who think that E1 is the nail in the coffin of the two-state ‘solution’ are willfully blind to the fact that a one-state outcome is already on the ground and that the Zionist militias started building it before there ever was an Israel.

I know this is a little late. The big brouhaha about E1 was, what, a few weeks ago? I wasn’t paying that much attention because, as someone who spends a lot of time traveling between Jerusalem and the West Bank–and noticing the one unequal state already on the ground–I didn’t quite get the fuss about E1. It’s just more of the same; it’s part of the process that began in 1947.

Every day, I take a Palestinian bus from East Jerusalem to Abu Dis, in the West Bank. We go through Sheikh Jarrah and then through the tunnels, popping out in the Palestinian land next to the Israeli settlement Maale Adumim. We pass through Azzariya and then take a winding road to Abu Dis.

People were up in arms about construction in E1 making a contiguous Palestinian state impossible. As though there were any possibilities left. The West Bank has been carved up already. Israeli settlements dot East Jerusalem and the West Bank and the Palestinians are confined to separate bus line that connects their Bantustans. I see it on my commute every day as the Palestinian bus passes Israeli bus stops full of settlers. As we pass Maale Adumim. As we share the road with all the yellow-plated Israeli vehicles traveling to and from settlements that are even deeper in the West Bank than Maale Adumim neighboring E1.

Of course, it’s awful that Israel will expropriate privately owned Palestinian land for settlement in E1. It’s shameful that the Palestinians who live in the areas surrounding E1 will find their (already non-existent) ability to expand to accommodate for natural growth further limited. But those who think that the tiny piece of land known as E1 is what will make or break a Palestinian state don’t realize that the Palestinian state was broken from day one; those who think that E-1 is the nail in the coffin of the two-state “solution” are willfully blind to the fact that a one-state outcome is already on the ground and that the Zionist militias started building it before there was an Israel.

Zionist...

Festivities were held in Ramallah throughout the day to celebrate the Palestine Liberation Organization’s bid at the United Nations to receive an upgrade to non-member observer state. It’s a bit ironic that the Palestinian Authority chose Ramallah for these official festivities—isn’t East Jerusalem supposed to be the Palestinian capital according to the two-state solution?

And President Mahmoud Abbas’ move is a two-state move, as some of my students angrily pointed out this week. One girl, who is the 18-year-old granddaughter of Palestinian refugees who fled the massacre in Deir Yassin, said that Abbas is giving up her right of return. Another young woman said Abbas and the PA need to go—as does Hamas. She likened both to dictators.

I also heard this sentiment throughout “Operation Pillar of Defense.” While many of my students were excited to see the Palestinian moqawama (resistance) holding its own as Israel pummeled the Gaza Strip, some also felt that there is a need for something entirely new. Not the PA, not Fateh, not Hamas. This flies in the face of mainstream media reports—written by people who have very limited contact with Palestinians—that “Operation Pillar of Defense” represented a tipping point during which Hamas garnered more support. Support for Hamas was already quite strong at the university I teach in; Fateh had a weak showing during local elections in October.

What I saw change during the Israeli assault on Gaza is that my students were energized—they wanted to do something for Palestine. It was no longer enough to keep Palestine in their hearts; the idea of “existence is resistance” was no longer enough either. But before they got anything off the ground, “Operation Pillar of Defense” was over and the feeling of urgency waned a bit. They’re used to the grind of occupation—the checkpoints, the restrictions on freedom of movement, that they can’t visit their grandparents villages. And then the UN bid was upon us all.

Many of my students support the UN bid. It feels like some sort of victory, even if it’s only on paper. Some feel it might bring some sort of change by raising international awareness of the Palestinians’ plight.

My Arabic teacher who lives in East Jerusalem but is a Palestinian citizen of the state—and who holds a...

Yes, the suggestion to segregate buses is disgusting. But it shouldn’t overshadow the fact that, if we consider Israel/Palestine as one continuous territory under a system that privileges Jewish Israelis, there is already de facto bus segregation on the ground in occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

One of the three large bus terminals in East Jerusalem that serve Palestinian residents. From this station, lines head to Sur Bahir, Atarot, and elsewhere. Sur Bahir is a Palestinian village of East Jerusalem, which Israel unilaterally annexed after the Six Day War in 1967. Palestinian residents pay taxes to Israel like Jewish Israelis but have a special bus to the area. Atarot is also occupied land and a large industrial park is found there, where many of the businesses are Jewish-owned. Yet Palestinian workers take a separate bus line to Atarot from their Jewish bosses and coworkers.

No, I’m not Palestinian. But I experience this segregation every day because I work at a Palestinian university in Area B. Every morning, I make the trip to East Jerusalem, where I head towards the “Palestinian buses.” Sure, there are Israeli buses that head into the West Bank, too. But they only serve the settlements. They do not serve all of the people who are under Israeli control.

And no matter where one lives in the West Bank, Israel is in control. Israel controls the borders, the water, the air space, and the checkpoints—including the one that my bus passes through every day.

Many of the people on the bus with me are Jerusalem residents. This means that they pay taxes to the Israeli authorities. Or, if they’re students—and most of the passengers on my line are—their parents pay taxes. Despite the fact that they pay into the same system as Jewish Israelis, the transportation system available to Palestinian residents of Jerusalem take into the West Bank is separate and unequal from the one that Jewish Israelis take into the West Bank.

Outside of one of the entrances of the “Central Bus Station” in East Jerusalem. The driver hangs out the window to make sure there are no children crossing in front of the small bus.

It starts with the station itself....

Rushdi Tamimi, 31, was shot by Israeli soldiers during a protest in Nabi Saleh on Saturday; he died today in a Ramallah hospital. 22-year-old Hamdi Falah died today after being shot four times by soldiers at a Hebron protest. In the past several days, Israeli forces have violently repressed demonstrations in East Jerusalem and the West Bank against the army’s ‘Operation Pillar of Defense.’

Rushdi Tamimi’s funeral Tuesday, Nov 20, 2012 (Activestills0

Abir Kopty of the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee reported that protests held on Saturday and Sunday at Nabi Saleh, Ofer Military Prison, Hebron, Nablus, Jenin, and Bethlehem were put down through the use of tear gas, rubber bullets, and rubber-coated bullets, with soldiers sometimes firing directly at demonstrators. More than 10 protesters were arrested and a number were injured, including Tamimi, who was shot in the back with live ammunition. According to Kopty, “While injured, soldiers dragged him attempting to detain him.”

Tamimi was taken to a hospital in Ramallah where he died of his injuries today.

Falah was protesting the Israeli assault on Gaza when soldiers shot him in the face, chest, and knee. According to Maan News Agency, witnesses reported that Falah “was shot at close range.”

For the second day in a row, Israeli soldiers fired tire gas at unarmed students of Al Quds University in Abu Dis in the West Bank in an attempt to suppress protests against the assault on Gaza.

A 19-year-old student told +972 that as she was leaving campus yesterday around 4:00 p.m., she saw little kids throwing stones at Israeli soldiers. One of the college students also threw a rock in the soldiers’ direction, she said, as a form of protest of the Israeli assault on Gaza that has killed over 100 Palestinians. The soldiers shot tear gas at the children and the student and then ran towards a crowd of university students, pushing them into campus, where they continued to fire tear gas at them.

Five Al Quds University students were arrested.

The student reported that she and dozens of other students hid in a building as they did not want to confront the soldiers. One of her friends fainted from tear gas inhalation.

A professor told...