I have lived my life in Ramallah less than 10 miles away from Jerusalem. For 15 years, I was able to visit the holy city 4 times. Every time I went there I had to go through all kinds of humiliation and discrimination. My last visit to Jerusalem in 2006 was to attend an interview with the BBC radio along with an Israeli student to have a dialogue about Palestinian and Israeli students and their daily lives. In order to reach Jerusalem and attend the interview, I had to go with my father to an Israeli military base in the Bait-Eel settlement near Ramallah twice and set there for 8 hours each time in order to get a 6 hour permit. Although I’m an American citizen and had all kinds of documentations and an invitation from the BBC, I still had to go through the long process including waiting for hours and being humiliated by young Israeli soldiers in the military base and on all the checkpoints between both occupied cities.
While I was describing everything I went through in order to get to the interview, the Israeli student just simply said “at least you got a permit to get here”!!! People go through all these checkpoints and difficulties every day just because they are Palestinians.
Every time I reached the Qalanida check point separating Ramallah from Jerusalem, I look at the Apartheid wall separating Palestinian cities from each other. I look at the wall and just start thinking about the day that this wall of hate and shame will fall and we will be able to live freely and reach Jerusalem and all the cities behind it.
This week’s readings, although describe research done in 1992-3, prove that we people in the region can break the barriers and build relations together based on mutual respect and recognition. The facts on the ground changed tremendously since almost 20 years ago, the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian population in Jerusalem and rapid expand of the settlements around Jerusalem and within the city change the demographics of the city and tend to occupy not just the land but even the culture and architecture of the city.
In order to make the experiment a reality on ground, people must as Albert Aghazarian said in Researching East Jerusalem “I carry my mirror, but I respect all the other mirrors. The problem is when one big mirror seeks to marginalize all the other mirrors except for it!” Unfortunately, the problem Albert described is a fact in Jerusalem and the big mirror is not just trying to marginalize all other mirrors but seeking to remove them all from the city.
Living Jerusalem class is a great opportunity for me to learn more about the history of the Holy City and discuss current issues in it as well as have the opportunity to express my thoughts and feeling about the city without borders or barriers in my way.
