Blind Israeli Injustice

(UNTITLED)
Dena Takruri
Written in Al-Bireh, Occupied Palestine

Jordan River Border
December 16, 2007

In line to check our bags through security, I make small talk with the young Palestinian man standing in front of me with his Israeli passport in hand. We speak in Arabic and he tells me he’s from Haifa and was just visiting relatives in Amman. He asks me if I’m also originally Palestinian and I tell him yes, but born and raised in the states. Smirking, he replies, “in the end we’re all just simply Palestinians.” I smile, yet soon enough I’d see exactly what his words imply.

What do you do in America?-Where do you study?-How long have you been studying altogether? Count all the years-What exactly did you study in undergrad?-What does that mean?-And now you’re studying the same thing?-Who pays for your studies?-Who paid for your plane ticket?-So what will you work when you graduate?-Media? But why? That’s not what you’re studying.-Have you visited any other Arab countries before coming here? Syria, Lebanon, Iraq? Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran? Have you carried anything for someone?-Are you carrying any weapons now?

Why have you come to Israel?
Why have you come to Palestine?
Vacation.

Vacation?! Why would you come here for a vacation? Why not somewhere nice, like California?
I’m from California.

Where will you stay in Israel?
Ramallah.

Who will you see there?
My grandparents. They’re very old.
Feels like a safe enough answer. What could be more benign than grandparents? They must hear that one frequently...No wait. I forgot that it’s our grandparents that possess one of the most formidable weapons: Memory.

So why exactly do you come to Israel?
I didn’t know there was a way to get from Amman to Ramallah without having to cross into your state. We don’t choose to pass through the occupier in order to get to the occupied, you know.
I have a break from school, so I’m seeing family.

For a moment, I pause to contemplate the face of the border soldier sitting before me. She can’t be any older than me, I think. I try to briefly strip her of her role and imagine her life beyond the uniform. I ponder how she spends her nights off, what novel most moved her, what she might affectionately call her lover. Yet such thoughts are all too fleeting and soon enough I resume my inability to see anything beyond the repressive establishment she represents.
There’s a reason I shudder each time I see someone wearing army green and feel instantly defensive and inferior each time I hear an Israeli accent. You’re it.

Write down the address of where you will stay.
I can’t. They don’t exactly have street names.

What is their phone number?
I don’t know it.

Write down the names of the people you’ll be staying with.

Now write down your name, address in America, cell phone number and email.

She furtively talks to the other border soldier sitting beside her. Discreetly, I listen and try to make out as much Hebrew as I can.

I was fourteen years old when I first began to study Hebrew. The only Palestinian in a class full of American Jews, I spoke of how I believed in peace, in tolerance, and in coexistence. But deep down lay another reason I was not so candid about. To learn the language of the oppressor was crucial, I knew. You taught me this lesson at a very young age. It was always reinforced at the border, where I had my first experiences with racism, power, and oppression. I was six years old at the Allenby border when you crushed before my eyes a gold necklace pendant shaped as the map of Palestine with a small Palestinian flag painted on it. It was a gift. “This is my homeland,” I anticipated telling all of my classmates, excited to finally prove to them that where I come from really does exist! I thought if I could plead with you in a tongue you best understand you might exercise some mercy. Somehow I doubt speaking Hebrew here and now would work to my favor.

You can go take a seat on one of those chairs.

The entire border crossing is empty with the exception of me. Periodically, a new batch of 1948 Palestinians with Israeli passports enters. They check their bags through the security process, get stamped and go. The whole process takes no longer than 10 minutes. Meanwhile I sit alone and wait.

One hour passes-
I try reading a few pages of Love in the Time of Cholera but to no avail-the anticipation prevents concentration on anything else.

Two hours pass-
It could be worse, I think. At least I’m not feeling the vicarious shame of watching my mother being strip searched like the several other previous times at the Israeli border.
Funny how we learned the word for “terrorism” in Hebrew but never learned “occupation.” I’d say the two are synonymous.

She comes back out and sits beside me. In her hand is a form that has all the information I gave her neatly compiled. She points to the names “Bahjat Tahboub” and “Yusra Tahboub.”
Who are they?
My grandparents.

What is their address and phone number?
I told you, I don’t have them.

She leaves.

I wonder what my grandmother would think if she knew the Israeli Airports Authority was busy researching her identity at this moment. Poor Tata, what threat could she possibly pose to the state of Israel? She’s a frail old woman who weighs no more than 95 pounds and depends on a walker to move about. No one in the family will admit it, yet we all know she’s depressed. She stubbornly refuses to leave the house unless a trip to the hospital demands of it. Perhaps she’s sparing herself the disappointment and anguish of seeing her country’s landscape marred by uprooted trees, an apartheid wall, checkpoints, infectious settlements and splattered bloodstains of foolish infighting. By staying inside, she avoids having to juxtapose those images to her imagined ones of ‘what could have been’ were it not for the opportunism, concessions, and corruption of her very own. This is how she escapes her people’s dismal reality-this is where it’s safer.

And yet although she decided long ago that home would be her permanent refuge, nothing can mitigate her concealed pain of never being able to see her first-born son, who has been forced to live in exile for the past 30 years. The passing of the years never healed the wounds, for how can one peacefully reconcile not being allowed into Palestine indefinitely or not being permitted to see her own flesh and blood? And so the years passed with a torturous vacancy haunting them both. She missed his wedding and he missed her maqbluba. She missed the birth of her grandchildren and he missed her 70th birthday. She missed the grand opening of his new business, and he missed spending the eids with his mother and family. Next month she’ll miss the first wedding of her grandchildren, his eldest daughter. God only help him when he has to miss her funeral…

Palestine is where we learn how love is painful, justice is an abstraction, and nationalism is a crime.

Another half hour passes. I’m bored and hungry.

“Where do you like more, Dandoona? Palestine or America?” This is the inevitable question I am asked hundreds of times by hundreds of people each time I visit. I hate that until now, I’m too scared to search myself for an answer…

Another 40 minutes go by. I begin to feel as though I’m in the waiting room of hospital waiting to hear an update from the doctor of a loved one in critical condition. No, no, I feel more like a wrongly accused criminal in a courtroom awaiting my sentence. What offense I’ve allegedly committed, I’m not too clear about (I sense it has something to do with being Palestinian, though). It is at the Israeli border where I feel most vulnerable and impotent. Here, we’re just balls in their hands for them to play with as they please. We put our tails between our legs, answer their invasive barrage of questions, and hope it earns us entry into the homeland.

By now I’m antsy and start pacing. I approach the window to ask what is taking so long, especially considering that the entire border is empty. Before I can ask, she opens the door and accosts me. It’s about time. She looks at me accusingly and addresses me curtly:
We found your Palestine ID. You cannot enter from here. Try the Allenby border.
My heart instantly drops, as I am aware of the consequences of that statement. Having a Palestinian ID comes along with all the restrictions that most Palestinians must suffer. It means I can no longer fly in to Tel Aviv, visit any Israeli city, or enter Jerusalem. The latter, of course, is the biggest blow of all.
I don’t know what you’re talking about. I was born in the US and the American passport is all I’ve ever held.
We can’t let you in from here. (she points) Go get your bags, you have to leave.
No, I won’t leave. I always enter with my US passport and you have no right to turn me around. You have to respect my US citizen rights.
I told you, you have a Palestine ID and we found it! You can’t enter from here.
What difference does it make which border I enter from? Plus this is the border I last exited from! I understand that is your policy. Why must you complicate everything?
If you have a hawiyya, you can’t enter from here! This border is only for foreigners and Israelis.
So what does my US passport mean to you!?!
It doesn’t matter. You have a hawiyya.
This is unfair! Who are you to tell me what my identity is?
Okay tell me, where were your parents born?
I’d love to know where yours were born…
Here!
Aha! There you go then.
I’d like to talk to somebody else please. You’re denying me entry and not explaining anything to me.
You cannot talk to anyone else. Go get your bags, you can’t stay here any longer.
I’ll hold you accountable for the sins of your grandparents so long as you perpetuate the crimes of the present.
I won’t leave until someone explains the situation to me.

Reluctant and annoyed, she returns to the office to bring someone else to talk to me. Out storms another female officer, also probably my age or younger. She’s angry.
What? What is it that you want?! I’m in charge now!
You don’t need to speak to me like that. I haven’t said or done anything wrong.

She catches herself and defensively puts up her hand.

Ok, ok. What do you want?
I’ve entered with my US passport several times and I left last time from this border. Why are you pulling this now?
You have a hawiyya and you’re not allowed to enter. This is the policy.
I don’t have a hawiyya.
We have your number!
I was born and raised in the US and I’ve lived there my entire life. This is how I’ll enter.

She snaps and raises her voice even louder.

Listen, don’t stand here and talk to me about a diplomatic passport! You have a Palestinian hawiyya number and that’s that! We have nothing to do with the Sulta! Go deal with this at the Allenby border.

I try to think of what to say next but am stifled by my frustration and exasperation. Instead, I absorb the scene that has unfolded before me and the blatant asymmetrical power dynamic between us: three women of the same age with claim to a same homeland, two somehow possess the right to let her in and third possesses only ability to hope and plead. How triumphant they must feel to watch me stand before them and deny my Palestinian identity (card). Ashamed and conflicted, I regret the thought that has just occurred to me: Have I just betrayed Mahmoud Darwish by telling them instead to “Record!” my American identity while rejecting my Palestinian one? This is painful… I tell myself to calm down and not to dare allow them the satisfaction of seeing that they’ve gotten the better of me, but the combination of sleepless jetlag, disappointment, and powerlessness prevails. Resistance, in this case, is futile and my eyes start to tear up. As they stare at me, their demeanor and facial expressions momentarily change. They are used to mistreating Palestinians and Palestinians are used to being mistreated, but to see a Palestinian so visibly upset seemingly catches them off guard.

There’s nothing else we can tell you. Go get your suitcases and we will walk you out.

I’m defeated. In a somber procession, I push the cart holding my suitcases outside of the border terminal to the bus stop across the street. From there I’ll have to take a short bus ride back to the Jordanian border to cancel my exit stamp and reenter Jordan. I demand to hold my passport, they tell me not yet, I have to wait. Only when they are assured that I am seated securely on the bus do they return it. I quickly flip through the passport’s pages to find these agonizing words stamped in cruel red ink: “Entry Denied.”
You don’t have to pay for the bus ride, we took care of it.
Just fuck off and leave me alone…

“Home is an addiction, it throws us against death, detaches us from forgetfulness, and yet we cannot be without it.”

Allenby Border
December 17, 2007

Allenby is full of Palestinians and Jordanians eager to cross in and spend the holidays with their families in the West Bank. Although the abundance of people means waiting longer, I’m at once put at ease by the fact that I have company this time.
Yesterday’s protocol and interrogation replay themselves. This time it takes only 20 minutes for them to come out and inform me that I have a Palestinian hawiyya number and that I must take a seat and wait for them to figure out what to do with me.
In the meantime, I enjoy chatting with the people around me. Everyone shares his or her story of why they are being barred from entering. Collective sufferings prompt interesting conversations; I’m astounded by the stories I hear.
I also notice that Palestinian holders of foreign passports have also been held for hours without any explanation. It is clear that Israel wants to make their process of entry as difficult as possible to deter them from wanting to return again.

Finally a young soldier comes out with my passport and calls my name. His name is Moshe and he explains to me that my mother recorded my name under her Palestinian ID number long ago and that I cannot enter Israel without “tasreekh.” He says my mother should have this paper and that I should go call her in San Francisco because without it, I cannot enter. I tell him:
This is ridiculous. You’re talking about a piece of paper from over 15 years ago. She won’t have it, and anyway there’s no way I can get it from her. Let me enter and I’ll do all the paperwork from there.
But how can I trust you?
Are you afraid you’ll let me enter Israel and I won’t leave?
Yes.
Wow. At least he’s honest…
That won’t be the case. I’m a student in America, I’ve shown you my university id. I’ve just come for a vacation. And anyway, if you’re scared I’ll stay, why are you forcing the hawiyya on me? With that, I have a right to live here permanently!

Moshe tells me he’ll see what he can do. What follows is hours of waiting interrupted by intermittent reappearances by Moshe. Each time, he gives me a new contradictory piece of information and each time I fire back responding that what he’s requesting doesn’t make sense and that the situation is a lot less complicated than how they’re treating it.

After over five hours, I am finally handed back my passport and a form filled out in Hebrew with my picture and information on it. This is to suffice as a temporary tasreeh until I can get a proper one along with a Palestinian identity card from Ramallah. I receive no visa. Instead, my passport has a large new stamp that reads in Hebrew. And under my name is the following number which from here on out defines my existence in this small land that causes such a big commotion: 948523815.

In the taxi ride from Jericho to Ramallah, I talk to a fellow passenger who is a professor at Birzeit University. I tell him about my last two days and he responds with the following:
“You should be very happy and proud that you have the Palestinian hawiyya now. This is a small victory in our large struggle. We’ve just increased the number of Palestinians by one, and soon you’ll pass on the identity number to your children and our numbers will continue to multiply. I know this experience was frustrating and difficult, but it’s good in that it has increased your sense of belonging here. Now you’ve suffered like we suffer, you understand our plight better and have strengthened your commitment to ending it. So don’t be upset. Thank them for returning you to your roots.”

His words move me, yet I still can’t help but feel an unsettling ambivalence. Were we foolish and arrogant to think all of those years that we were the exception with our mighty blue American passports? Who am I to lament being prohibited from entering Jerusalem when there exists an entire population that has lived in Palestine its whole life and has long been forbidden from visiting it? But at the same time, don’t we pay our US taxes that help fund this vicious occupation that slowly seeks our obliteration? To be recognized as American citizens and given a visa seems but a meager consolation prize to expect to help us allay our guilt. I can’t deny how angry I am. What I have just experienced demonstrates the unjustified discrimination routinely practiced by the Israeli state; this is the epitome of racism. It is outrageous that Israel gives itself the right to completely disregard any other nationality or passport that a Palestinian holds. I am surprised, yet not shocked, as this latest episode is but a microcosm of the larger phenomenon of institutionalized Israeli racism and denial of rights to Palestinians. Today, the lesson is clear: to Israel, any Palestinian is nothing beyond a loathed Palestinian and must be oppressed accordingly. Sadly, the young man from Haifa I first talked to at the Jordan River Border captured it most accurately: “In the end, we’re all just simply Palestinians.”

The Author is an MA candidate in Arab Studies at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service