Carly A. Krakow
Mada al-Carmel — Arab Center for Applied Social Research
Palestine/Israel
Shortly after I arrived to Palestine, it was Eid al-Fitr, the celebration and feast marking the end of Ramadan—the month-long Muslim holiday which includes fasting from dawn until sunset each day. Eid al-Fitr is celebrated across the world, but like so many things, it has unique political and human rights implications here in Palestine because the holiday is one of the rare occasions when West Bank Palestinians are granted permission to enter Israel in relatively high numbers. The official regulations, adjusted for the holiday, are as follows:
On Fridays […]: Men over the age of 40, women of all ages and children under the age of 12 (accompanied by a parent) are permitted to enter Jerusalem without a permit […]. Saturday [through] Thursday: Men over the age of 55, women over the age of 50 and children under the age of 12 (accompanied by a parent) are permitted to enter Jerusalem without a permit […]. All ages may request a permit for a family visit during Ramadan and/or Eid Al- Fitr. (Access Advisory: Israeli Civil Administration Measures – Ramadan 2015)
These regulations, though highly restrictive, are significantly less limiting than the normal draconian restrictions placed on Palestinians from the West Bank, whereby they typically have no access to Israel (including the cities and villages from which many of their ancestors originate) and are not allowed to visit Jerusalem (where holy sites such as the Al-Aqsa Mosque are located) without undergoing an extensive permit application process. If West Bank Palestinians need medical treatment in Jerusalem, for example, they are allowed to enter only via a medical permit, and these types of permits are highly difficult to obtain.
The Israeli government touts the fact that a relatively high number of West Bank Palestinians are granted permits for employment in Israel, but these permits are granted only to those who are at least 24 years of age and married with at least one child. This restriction is strategically designed to deny access to young single Palestinian men who the Israeli Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories discriminates against en masse; this demographic is profiled to be the most threatening to Israeli security (COGAT Access and Movement).
I was fortunate to be in Jaffa for a research meeting during Eid and had the wonderful opportunity to meet and speak with numerous individuals and families who had traveled to the Jaffa/Tel Aviv area for the day. One man described to me how he used the holiday as an opportunity to visit the cities of Jaffa and Haifa, where his ancestors once resided: “We have this month only; the rest of the year, we are trapped.”
In contrast to the conversations I had with these families and individuals—uplifting because of the freedom they were experiencing, infuriating because of the unjust temporariness of this freedom—were the many racist comments made by Israeli residents of Jaffa and Tel Aviv. One man (wrongly assuming I might be sympathetic to his viewpoints once he heard I was from the United States) complained that Jaffa “looks horrible during this time of year… It looks like Ramallah!” (Having spent a great part of my time in Palestine in Ramallah, and sitting in Ramallah as I write this post, I can firsthand report that there is nothing “horrible” about this vibrant city, as this man—who has never been to the West Bank in his life—ignorantly and racistly suggested).
One Tel Aviv woman offered a more balanced perspective, spontaneously remarking, “It’s really terrible that so many Israelis hate [Palestinians]… Don’t they see how similar we all are?”
These two interactions, which occurred within minutes of each other, reveals a microcosm of the political and social atmosphere in Israeli cities such as Tel Aviv: a mix of extremist hatred, rational analysis, apathy, ignorance, and absolutely everything in between. In light of the murder an 18-month-old baby boy named Ali in the village of Duma near Nablus just days ago, extremism certainly seems to be horrifically overpowering rationality at the present.
My few days in the Jaffa/Tel Aviv area were in stark contrast to my experience in the places where the majority of my time has been spent, in the West Bank and in the Palestinian Wadi Nisnas neighborhood of Haifa—places where the “conflict” isn’t something casually criticized, ignored altogether, or used as yet another excuse to ignorantly rewrite history while vilifying Palestinian society. In these places, discrimination and Occupation are a part of daily life, not topics to be debated at leisure. Freedom is something never experienced by many Palestinians, and when it is experienced it is fleeting, unjustly temporary, and always lived in the shadow of injustice.