MIFTAH
Friday, 29 March. 2024
 
Your Key to Palestine
The Palestinian Initiatives for The Promotoion of Global Dialogue and Democracy
 
 
 
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I was to have had dinner at the home of Terry Boullata and her family, but I was too tired and also somewhat depressed. I had come back after a day in a village near Hebron where we were trying to protect Palestinian farmers who were unable to harvest their crops because of the threats of settlers and Israeli soldiers. It had been a difficult day. There were times when I was sure that something terrible was about to happen: that the settlers or the soldiers would shoot or that the Palestinian children wouldn’t follow the rules and would throw stones. But above all I was sad thinking that the next day the Palestinians would be alone again, and knowing that the road blocks which we had managed to remove would be put back by the soldiers that very night. However the Palestinian farmers were happy to see internationals and Israelis standing beside them.

I called Terry and told her that I couldn’t get to her house in Abu Dis. She insisted that she would come to me, bringing the soup which her mother-in-law had prepared. She had to see me to tell me about the wall that they were building in Abu Dis, right in front of her house.

I know Terry from the time of the first Intifada when she was a young woman in jail, a member of the Democratic Front. I had heard about her then from my Palestinian and Israeli friends. One of them, Nayla Ayesh, had just been released from jail with her baby, Majdi, but she couldn’t see her husband Jamal as he had been deported the day that their child was born. Nayla had had a miscarriage a few years earlier after being tortured under questioning. She had been released from prison thanks to a campaign carried out by Israeli and international women, among them Yael Dayan, daughter of the "conqueror" of East Jerusalem in 1967. In Italy in 1989 we had a group which called itself Nayla.

Nayla was also in the Democratic Front then (Palestinian political parties were banned by the Israeli occupation authorities). She told me that we had to do everything possible to free Terry who had a bad case of viral hepatitis. We did what we could, and we were successful, and Terry came out of prison and went to the United States for treatment.

Terry and I first met in Ramallah in August 1994. I had returned to Israel and Palestine for the first time since my expulsion in November 1988. Nayla was right. Terry was a very special person. She had left the Democratic Front and was working with a women’s organization. She believed in the challenge afforded by the Oslo Agreement and with her usual enthusiasm had thrown herself into the task of working for changes in the legislation regulating the status of women in Palestinian society.

As I continued to eat the soup, praising her mother-in-law, Terry said: "Do you know how she gave me this soup?"

"Of course I don’t, you tell me."

"She passed it to me through one of the holes in the wall which the Israelis are building in Abu Dis. It is still only two meters high, and there are still some openings. One can get through near the mosque. But before long it will be more than 8 meters high. My in-laws’ house is on the other side. I don’t know what will happen to us. You must come to see it".

This was in August 2003. Today that wall is really 9 meters high and there are no longer any openings. The space near the mosque has been closed and the lovely little hotel Cliff, which was owned by Terry’s husband’s family, has been confiscated and is being used as a police barracks. In January the Israelis built a road on land taken from Salah’s family, a road for the use of Israeli settlers who occupy two old Palestinian houses. These houses form a new settlement which is now called Kidmat Zion. Before long the Palestinians who live in Abu Dis who do not have Israeli identity cards will be deported to the other side of the wall, and Kidmat Zion will grow.

Terry and Salah were married towards the end of the first Intifada. They have two daughters: Zeina, who is now thirteen, and Yasmin, who is eight. Terry is from a Christian family while Salah’s family is Moslem. Intermarriages such as theirs occur frequently among the democratic activists in Palestine. In 1999 Terry and another woman called Manal, who had been recently elected as a member of the Abu Dis City Council, opened a kindergarten and elementary school which they called "New Generation". This school is now on the other side of the wall, and the 230 children who attended it live divided by the wall. Because of the wall, Terry and Salah will have to live separately. Terry has the blue identity card of Jerusalem while Salah has the orange card of the West Bank. They can no longer live together in his house which is now on the Israeli side of the wall where his presence is illegal. If he is caught there he would be jailed. The family reunification law has been frozen.

Salah has been elected to the Abu Dis municipality and is renovating his family house on the side of the wall which has remained part of the West Bank. The wall, which the Israelis say has been built for security reasons, in fact separates Palestinians from Palestinians. Abu Dis is a town which has been divided in half, with the wall running down the middle of the main street. People who were neighbors can no longer see each other. Youssuf had his shop on one side of the street and his home and warehouse on the other side. With his orange identity card he can say goodbye to his shop. The Palestinian National Authority can say goodbye to what was to have been their parliament building. The building was almost finished, but is now on the borders of the wall and might be lost to the Israelis on security basis

Zena and Yasmin are trying to learn to accept the separation of their parents but their anger towards the Israeli soldiers is growing. Their father may sometimes be able to get permission to enter the area of what is called Greater Jerusalem, but he may only stay until 7 PM. The trip to his new house, which is only two minutes away, now takes him more than 30 minutes, passing along the winding road near Ma’ale Adumin which will soon have 3 500 more houses supposedly to compensate for the withdrawal from Gaza. Salah is in some ways fortunate as he has a business license which entitles him to daily passes to the other side of the wall, but these are passes which take time and money to procure.

Terry and Salah have decided that the children will spend three nights with their mother and three nights with their father, alternating the weekends. They can stay with their mother because Terry had them registered on her identity card, otherwise they would not be able to move from side to side. They go to school in Beit Hanina, a Palestinian suburb which is some distance from Abu Dis and which is considered by Israel to be part of Greater Jerusalem.

But now a new threat hangs over the lives of Terry and other Palestinians with blue identity cards. The Israeli government has said that from July they will need permits to visit the West Bank. This means that Terry, Zeina and Yasmine will have to spend days and days and a good deal of money to get the permits required to visit Salah.

Terry continues to work in every way she can to tell the world about the injustice of this wall and the tragedy which it is causing to so many lives. She is active in the coalition for peace and is a supporter of the Geneva Agreement, the agreement between Palestinians and Israelis sponsored by Yasser Abed Rabbo and Yossi Beilin. I participated in the demonstrations in Palestine with the grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, organized to spread the culture of non-violent action, and together we visited President Arafat and marched with the Israeli pacifists against the wall and for the liberation of the Palestinian prisoners.

It is because of her activism that she has decided not to move to the other side of the wall. If she did so she would lose her blue identity card, and with it her freedom to move. She could no longer leave from Tel Aviv airport but would have to go through Jordan, losing days and days of precious time. She could no longer drive her car with its Israeli license plates on the roads which can be used only by Israelis. She could no longer help those Palestinians who need to communicate between Jerusalem and the West Bank. She could no longer see Jerusalem and remain in contact with the Israeli pacifists. But above all she is from Jerusalem and doesn’t want to leave.

This is the story of Terry and Salah. There are thousands of stories like theirs, of Palestinians separated by the wall and separated from their land. Until when will this go on?

 
 
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