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 enlarge their buildings,” Amira explains.

Residents say contractors are left to their own devices. And the investors who knock on Amira’s door everyday – asking the family to sell their home so they can tear it down to make way for even more apartment buildings in the already stressed area – are said to be more concerned with turning a profit than making sure that the neighborhood is livable.

Munir Zughayer, chairman of the local neighborhood committee, says the building damages infrastructure. “In too many places, [contractors] have built over [water] drains. [The buildings] are pushing [on the sewage system] and it’s getting smaller and smaller and smaller,” he said. “It’s a mistake to build on it but we don’t have the power to tell people not to build.”

With nowhere to go, runoff pools in the streets, damaging the roads. After heavy snowfall in January, dozens of potholes opened up in the streets. Because the drainage systems are no longer functioning properly, the melted snow ran into a number of houses – Zughayer estimates that more than 40 homes incurred water damage.

Mohammed Reith, a contractor, agrees with Zughayer’s claim that the area’s sewage system can’t handle the influx of residents. Reith estimates that the area’s population has doubled since 2005 and that there remains a huge demand for land and apartments in the neighborhood. “At the moment, the area is not prepared for this number of people.”

It’s not just the streets, garbage, and sewage system. Kufr Aqab, like all of East Jerusalem on both sides of the wall, does not have enough schools. And on this side of the wall, there are no police. Emergency services are also lacking, as Israeli ambulances and fire trucks cannot pass the Qalandia checkpoint, which is just outside Kufr Aqab.

“No one is responsible for security [here] – not the Israelis or the Palestinian Authority,” Reith says. “If there is a problem, no-one will come. The PA needs permission from the Israelis to enter and the Israelis are interested in making chaos [in Palestinian areas].”

But, as Reith and Zughayer correctly point out, the areas on the Palestinian side of the separation wall, such as Kufr Aqab, are the only places in the city that East Jerusalemites can build.

Israel rejects more than 90 percent of Palestinian requests for building permits; structures built without permission in the Palestinian areas of East Jerusalem on the Israeli side of the wall are threatened with demolition and steep fines. These restrictions have created a housing shortage that critics say is intended to push Palestinians out of Jerusalem and into the West Bank. Critics call this “quiet transfer.”

But the separation wall has actually had the opposite effect. It has fuelled demand for homes on the Israeli side of the wall as Palestinian East Jerusalemites fear losing their residency and access to health care, schools, jobs, and their families. The wall and checkpoints have also made commuting more difficult and time consuming, so many Palestinians prefer to live inside the enclave created by the wall, in order to shorten their travel time.

As the wall has pushed Jerusalem ID holders into a confined space, prices have skyrocketed. But most Palestinian East Jerusalemites cannot keep up with the rising rents, nor can they afford to buy homes in this increasingly expensive market. So they move to areas such as Kufr Aqab, where apartments cost a third of the asking price on the other side of the wall. Because these areas remain a part of Jerusalem, the Palestinians who live there can keep their residency.

However, Israel says it has no development plans for the area. And many residents are concerned that Israel will redraw the municipal lines of the city, excluding Palestinian areas beyond the wall and revoking residents’ Jerusalem IDs. This fear isn’t unfounded – Israel unilaterally redrew Jerusalem’s borders following the 1967′ Six-Day War.

In the meantime, Zughayer and other members of the neighborhood committee are trying to force the city to take responsibility for the municipal areas on the Palestinian side of the wall. They have sued for better garbage services. And because there are not enough traffic lights in the area, locals have pooled their money to build roundabouts. Zughayer intends to pass the bill along to the Jerusalem Municipality.

Zughayer says their work is “an example of regular people who aren’t battling with weapons but are battling with their words for our rights. We’re not working for ourselves – we’re working for our people, the residents, to help the person who has water entering his house.

“As long as the municipality is taking the taxes, we have to get our rights as human beings, to have everything like we are in Israel – streets, garbage and schools. We live like we’re in the middle of Africa, not in a democracy. Where is democracy? Where is it?”

This article was originally published in Al Jazeera English.

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 Palestinian Authority police officers standing outside the university. They can only come into Area B when they get permission from the Israelis.

Order—if one can call it that—had been restored to Abu Dis. But for how long? And what might happen next time?

***

Saturday came and the quiet held. Classes, however, were still cancelled. The faculty was on strike because they hadn’t received their salaries. The past week has seen other Palestinian schools closed by strikes, as well.

This is an ongoing problem. Teachers’ wages come from the PA; part of the PA’s money comes from taxes collected by Israel. To punish the PA for the UN bid—which has produced no meaningful change on the ground, anyways—Israel has been holding Palestinian funds since November. Israel does this from time to time to keep the PA on an even shorter leash.

While Israel’s plans to release part of the funds was widely reported by both the local and international media in late January, that won’t be enough to keep the struggling PA afloat. And here it’s mid-March and, at the university in Abu Dis, wages remain unpaid. Campus remains closed.

The PA’s financial woes suggest that there are more tough times ahead for the Palestinian economy. According to the United Nations, “the real obstacle to growth is the Israeli occupation which… has almost eliminated marketing and investment opportunities and has constricted land and natural resources available for productive activities.”

As the strike grinds on, my students flood me with emails. Are we having class? When? Do I want their papers? Their anxiety and irritation fill my inbox.

A few have written just to say hi. One who had mentioned “Shaun the Sheep” in an in-class free write sent me a photo of the cartoon character. “Remember you asked what ‘Shaun the Sheep’ was? This is it,” she said. Just now another email popped up: Do we have class tomorrow? PS) I MISS YOU SO MUCH. I want this strike to end.

Last semester, my students told me that they find these strikes extremely frustrating. The strikes usually don’t accomplish much and the kids get behind in their work. And, like most people, my students seem to like stability. It is difficult to thrive—or feel comfortable, safe, and happy—in total chaos. And in the midst of the chaos of occupation, taking classes at the university provides much-needed structure.

Going to school also gives some of my students hope and a feeling of agency—feelings the occupation deprives them of. I think feeling like you have some degree of control over your own life is a human right, as is hope.

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 the stomach by Israeli settlers who invaded the village of Qusra near Nablus, he was in serious condition in a Nablus hospital. A 16-year-old boy was also shot in the leg in the same incident.

Correction: Al Haq states that Jaradat was “believed to have died while under or soon after interrogation.” An earlier version of this post stated that Al Haq reported that Jaradat died while under or after interrogation. The name of the man shot in Qusra has been corrected.

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 argue that the media plays a huge role in breeding public complacency. To the extent that this is true (it all depends on the news you consume) the experience has dampened my enthusiasm for journalism. Even when news editors and publishing houses “get it”—and many of them do—they are too worried about sales to take any risks with content. This suggests that the real problem underpinning all these issues, including the highly profitable “conflict,” is the free market, to which even progressive publishers must appeal.

But this is the system, and I can’t overthrow it. So what options am I left with? To conform to a tired model of Israelis versus Palestinians; Jews versus Arabs. To go along with a binary of armed struggle versus non-violence rather than interrogating the fact that the Israeli military is considered legitimate while Palestinian militias are not. To continue to work as a “woman journalist.”

This is the part where I’m supposed to write a plucky ending—where I should come down on the side of digging in my heels and shaking my fist at “the industry.” This is the part where I should say that, screw it, I’m carrying on. Forging ahead. This is the part where I’m supposed to say that I have grit.

Right now, I’m not sure I have that fire left. But I wish I did.

Final post in series: Back to where it all began–Tel Aviv’s Central Bus Station

This post first appeared on Souciant.

Related:
It’s a man’s world: women in journalism and publishing 
Media misconceptions: Is the conflict really about Jews vs. Arabs? 

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:

*Study hard

*Be lovely

*Don’t hurt others

*Work better

*Keep your mouth closed

*Imagine well

*Never give up

*Eat healthy food

*Hate injustice

*Like to help others

*Smile

*Fight bad insects

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:

1) Focus more on my studies in class

2) to Work more on my relationship with God.

3) Stop and think before I do anything.

4) Fix my relationship with my dad and mom

5) Stop talking when the teacher is talking

6) Watch fewer programmes at T.V.

7) Stop listening to music that’s not good

8) Have breakfast before going to school

9) Take real things seriously.

10) Try to tell everybody how you feel about him or her

11) Stop believing every body lies

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.

1) Study hard

2) Prepare myself to Al-Tawjehi

3) Start to make my dreams a fact

4) See my life in another way

5) Don’t trust people so quickly

6) Don’t tell my rivals in school my marks

7) Enjoy my school day with my friends

8) Eat pizza

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 remind me a bit of the writing my university students do. It’s often focused on their family, friends, and goals. My female students sometimes write about a love interest. The political circumstances that make a huge impact on their lives are often surprisingly absent. Some of my students say that they just don’t want to deal with things; others feel like nothing they do or say will help. So they turn inwards, retreating into the concerns of their daily lives.

But these lists and my students’ writing reveal something else–I’ve met too many Jews and Israelis who imagine Palestinians as people who spend all day everyday obsessing about the nakba and the occupation and liberating Palestine. It’s an egotistical, self-centered, fetishizing, dehumanizing way to regard Palestinians. It strips Palestinians of any humanity. These lists remind that while, yes, Palestinians care about the political situation, most just want to live normal lives. Which is what any one anywhere in the world wants.

And what is a normal life? One with complete civil and human rights. One where a teenager can leave his house any time of day and night without worrying about being harassed by soldiers or arrested and held, without charge, in administrative detention. The ability to eat pizza as they wish.

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:

In 2003 Mr Netanyahu, then finance minister, called Arab citizens of the state a “demographic problem” adding that the separation barrier would stop a “demographic spillover” of Palestinians from the Occupied Territories. Fast forward to 2010: Prime Minister Netanyahu calls African asylum seekers a “concrete threat to the Jewish and democratic character of the country” and promises another separation barrier, this one to run the length of the border between Egypt and Israel.

When considered through the lens of the government’s goal of maintaining a ‘Jewish and democratic’ country, every non-Jew – Arab or African, Christian or Muslim – becomes a ‘threat’ to or enemy of the state. It’s not about Palestinians or Arabs per se. It’s about maintaining Jewish privilege.

The experience with my book has taught me that the international conversation about Israel/Palestine is stagnant—even though it appears to be changing.

Growing media interest in the “new” unarmed resistance movements—which have actually been around in one form or another since the Ottoman occupation of Palestine—feeds into two binaries: non-violent vs. violent; Israelis vs. Palestinians (or Jews vs. Arabs). Both are problematic.

Regarding the latter, Dr. Mazin Qumsiyeh points out in Popular Resistance in Palestine:

In 1831, the Egyptian armies of Muhammad Ali occupied Palestine, appointing Muhammad Ali’s son Ibrahim as ruler. A Palestinian peasant uprising against Egyptian rule echoed earlier revolts in 1808 and 1826 against the Ottomans. On May 19, 1834, notables of the towns, villagers, and Bedouins told Egyptian officials in Nablus, Jerusalem and Hebron that they would not supply the quota of conscripts.

Just as Israel doesn’t take issue with Palestinians, per se, but rather all non-Jews in general, neither have most Palestinians historically taken issue, per se, with Jews. Rather, many Palestinians take issue with occupation and oppression and colonialism and foreign attempts to appropriate resources, whether it is people, as was the case in the 1834 revolt against the Egyptians, or land, as is the case with Israel today.

When one operates in binaries, one invokes the specter of “Palestinian violence” simply by talking about non-violence. By making a spectacle of non-violence, journalists treat it as though it is something extraordinary; by saying, “Look, look, now they’re non-violent!” one implies that Palestinians were and are inherently violent. Research shows that “positive” stereotypes merely serve to uphold the negative ones.

While websites like Mondoweiss and Open Zion suggest that the conversation about Israel/Palestine does seem to be broadening a bit, the debate still seems to revolve around Zionism vs. anti-Zionism and two-state vs. one-state , along with other oppositional ideas.  The discussion about the “conflict” remains black and white. How can things here be framed as a conflict when the power imbalance is so unequal, when political, financial, and military support are all skewed to one direction?

The Palestinian street is increasingly moving towards a right-based approach. And human rights—whether they are for Palestinians, migrant workers, African refugees, or Jews—aren’t about taking sides. Will the media and publishers listen?

Next: What the media and publishers do listen to? Violence

Read the first post: It’s a man’s world: women in journalism and publishing

This post originally appeared in Souciant.

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

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 in 2009, my former professor Julianna Baggott points out:

“This fall, Publishers Weekly named the top 100 books of 2009. How many female writers were in the top 10? Zero. How many on the entire list? Twenty-nine.

…I could understand Publishers Weekly’s phallocratic list if women were writing only a third of the books published or if women didn’t float the industry as book buyers or if the list were an anomaly. In fact, Publishers Weekly is in sync with Pulitzer Prize statistics. In the past 30 years, only 11 prizes have gone to women. Amazon recently announced its 100 best books of 2009 – in the top 10, there are two women. Top 20? Four. Poets & Writers shared a list of 50 of the most inspiring writers in the world this month; women made up only 36 percent.”

If you want a great analysis of the whys behind these numbers, read the rest of Baggott’s article. For some more current, but equally disappointing numbers in regards to inequality, read on.

A 2011 study by VIDA Women in the Literary Arts found that a majority of the books reviewed in 2010 in The Atlantic, The Boston Review, Harpers, Granta, The London Review of Books, The New York Times Book Review, The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and The New Republic (to name a few) were written by men. And guess what? The reviewers themselves were also men.

Ruth Franklin of The New Republic gets to the bottom of things: publishing houses release more books written by men.

“Only one of the houses we investigated—the boutique Penguin imprint Riverhead—came close to parity, with 55 percent of its books by men and 45 percent by women. Random House came in second, with 37 percent by women. It was downhill from there, with three publishers scoring around 30 percent—Norton, Little Brown, and Harper—and the rest 25 percent and below, including the elite literary houses Knopf (23 percent) and FSG (21 percent). Harvard University Press, the sole academic press we considered, came in at just 15 percent.”

Surprisingly, Franklin found that the so-called left-wing presses didn’t fare any better than the big publishers.

And then, of course, when women do manage to get their books out there, they face literary ghettoization.

***

Of course, there are editors who would call this a “rant.” That’s what one male editor called an op-ed of mine that later got published elsewhere (by a female editor, mind you). Can you imagine an editor calling a man’s article a “rant”? No, it would be “an impassioned argument.”

There’s more. About four years ago, the (female) deputy foreign editor of a Very Famous Media Outlet thought my pitch about migrants in Israel was great. But, she said, I needed to check with the Jerusalem-based bureau chief, a man who promptly shot down the story. A young journalist, eager to learn and grow, I asked him why.

“It’s not fresh enough,” he said.

Before I’d pitched, I’d done my research. His outlet had never published anything about migrants in Israel. I pointed this out to the bureau chief. His answer was still no.

Yet, foreign workers were suddenly fresh enough for that same bureau chief two years later when a male freelancer pitched him a near-identical story.

In the five years that I’ve been working as a journalist, I’ve also watched younger men with far less experience and fewer qualifications enter the profession and bound ahead. I’ve seen them bust into publications that I and other female colleagues can’t get the time of day from.  I’ve watched them get the encouragement and positive feedback that pushes them forward while the fine work of many women journalists goes overlooked.

Is this any surprise when, as the Guardian puts it “sexist stereotypes, humiliating photographs of women, and male bylines dominate the front pages of British newspapers”?

Reporting on research conducted by Women in Journalism, the Guardian states that more than three-quarters of front page articles are written by men. An analysis of these same stories found that over 80 percent of “those mentioned or quoted” were men.

***

I’m also to blame. I’ve internalized stereotypes about women. I, too, end declarative sentences with a question mark so I don’t sound too assertive and I find myself using what linguists call “hedges” (sort of, like, you know)—devices used more often my women than men.

I don’t self-promote or share my work like my male colleagues do for fear of being thought aggressive. When my agent asked me to make my book “Eat Pray Love meets migrant workers” I said “yes” even though all of my instincts and my heart said no. And, a few years ago, when I interviewed a “woman journalist” about her excellent non-fiction book, one of my first questions was whether or not she would write a memoir about her personal connection to the material.

Part two: a black and white conflict with no shades of gray

A version of this post first appeared in Souciant.

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 renewed. They have now sued us in order to take ownership of the property via individuals whom they claim are the descendants of the original Jewish owners pre-1948. Our case has been reviewed by an Israeli court in two separate hearings and judges have refused to accept evidence we have submitted to show proof of our residence in our home since 1964. Therefore, they are claiming that we are not eligible for protected tenant status. Consequently we have been ordered to evacuate the property by 2pm on December 31st, 2012.  As far as we know, the property will be handed over to a right wing settler organization that has previously taken over properties in the neighbourhood.

Now more than ever we are aware of the double standard of the Israeli law that does not lend Palestinian refugees or their children a claim to property they owned before 1948, yet allows children of Jewish Israelis to sue and evict Palestinian families from homes they have lived in for decades. As a result of this discriminatory double standard of the Israeli law we are about to lose our home and be thrown out onto the street.  

Forced eviction from our home will not only be a human tragedy but also a political maneuver which aims to strengthen and expedite the settlement project in East Jerusalem, specifically in Sheikh Jarrah.  Israeli Jewish settlement takeover in Sheikh Jarrah serves to interrupt the presence of a continuous and connected Palestinian community in East Jerusalem. Numerous families have already lost their homes and 30 more are living, day-to-day, under the eminent threat of eviction. Our case will set yet another precedent that will play directly into the hands of the settlement project and will be another nail in the coffin of a viable East Jerusalem.

We are turning to you, as writers, activists, public figures, artists and concerned citizens of the world, to do all that you can to call on the Israeli government to instruct the General Custodian not to evict our family from our home and thereby facilitate the agenda of extremist settlers who are destroying all chances for a peaceful and just future in Jerusalem.

Sincerely,

Ayoub Shamasneh

Related:
Spotlight: Sheikh Jarrah
Friday protests in Sheikh Jarrah now a tiny vigil

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 militias started breaking the Palestinian state in 1947 right after the UN Partition Plan was approved. As Salim Tamari writes in Jerusalem 1948: The Arab Neighborhoods and Their Fate in the War:

The Zionist forces conducted thirteen operations for the capture of Jerusalem. The objectives of these operations was twofold: (1) to clear the Tel Aviv-Jaffa-Jerusalem highway for the free movement of Jewish forces; and (2) to clear Arab villages on the western flanks of Jerusalem from their Palestinian population to provide demographic depth and linkages between the proposed Jewish state and the city of Jerusalem, in the framework of Plan Dalet. (emphasis mine)

Israel’s plans for E1 are just more of the same. It’s part of the same demographic war that Israel was waging from the get go, it’s part of an attempt to link Jewish settlements from the river to the sea, creating one state in the entirety of the territory shared by two people.

Tamari points out that the Zionist forces “conducted seven military operations in Jerusalem” from December of 1947 up until Israel’s independence on May 15 and that “[a]ll of those operations were conducted inside the boundaries of the UN proposed Arab State…”

Today, these same conquered areas are considered part of “West Jerusalem.” But, as Tamari points out, West Jerusalem is “a post-1948 term.” On a personal note, I feel the continuity between the West Bank and “West Jerusalem” in my bones when I go hiking in Ir Ganim’s hills–which were Palestinian agricultural terraces before 1948–and I stand listening to Battir’s call to prayer. Even though I can see and hear Battir, I can’t reach it. The continuity between Jerusalem and the West Bank was broken six decades ago.

This is what my students, many of whom are refugees from areas that are now part of “West Jerusalem,” talk about when they talk about Palestine. They talk about their grandparents’ villages—Ein Karem, Deir Yassin, and Malha, to name a few—which they consider their villages. They talk about the right of return. They talk about 1947 and 1948—the nakba—and everything that has come since. Those who have foreign passports and East Jerusalem IDs talk about getting arrested at Ben Gurion International Airport—which stands on Lydda, they remind me—because they dared to try to enter their country. They talk about checkpoints and green and blue IDs; they talk about being attacked by a Jewish mob during the holiday that celebrates the “reunification” of Jerusalem; they talk about being assaulted by soldiers.

They are talking about their human rights and all the ways Israel violates them every day. They are not talking about the 1967 lands. And they are definitely not talking about E-1. They’re talking about Palestine.