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The upcoming
Israeli unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and the mess of the
wall around East Jerusalem have been producing some unusual statements
and positions not heard of since 1967.
Members of the
Israeli Knesset and other right wing Israelis, angry at the possibility
that permits will be needed to visit settlers in the Gaza Strip, came up
with some interesting statements.
Despite official
Israeli assurances that requests for visits to the Gaza settlers will be
processed within eight hours, the response was explosive. “These
decisions are inhuman,” said one. Another called the closure of the Gaza
Strip, where nearly 8,000 Jewish settlers live, “undemocratic”. Others
complained about this “collective punishment”.
Well, what about the Palestinians who have been experiencing the closure
of the territories for the past five years? Palestinians need permits to
travel from one city to another. Those wishing to visit relatives or
acquaintances in Jerusalem have needed a permit since 1993. Even with a
permit, no Palestinian from outside Jerusalem is allowed to sleep
overnight or drive his own car to reach relatives, friends, cultural
centres or religious locations. With a few exceptions, visitor visas for
Arabs wishing to visit the occupied territories or Israel have been
repeatedly rejected by Israeli embassies in Amman and Cairo.
On another issue, the Israeli government issued a statement that
surprised hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Jerusalemites. In
preparations for a response to a case being brought against them in the
Israeli high court, the Israeli Cabinet confirmed that 55,000
Palestinian Jerusalemites will be locked outside the wall and that the
Israeli government will open various administrative offices for these
Palestinians, including a post office, national insurance and ministry
of interior offices.
Wow!
For 37 years, Palestinians have been complaining about being obliged to
use the single, overcrowded ministry of interior office in East
Jerusalem that serves a quarter of a million Palestinian Arabs (Jews get
to use the less congested West Jerusalem office). Every new minister of
interior that sees the long lines outside the ministry's office would
state that he would resolve the problem, but nothing has happened.
Neither did a high court decision to ease the problem produced results,
with the exception of allowing Jerusalemites travelling to Jordan to get
their permits at the bridge terminal and to renew their travel documents
by mail.
The news story in
Al Quds about the possibility that a second ministry of interior office
would be opened has produced many discussions and some black humour as
well. Some sceptics think that this is just another promise that will go
unfulfilled. But Palestinians are joking about the ulterior motives.
They are trying to get people to go outside the wall and then close the
gates on them, they say. Others think that this is a transfer trick that
will get Jerusalem Palestinians on record as going outside the walls and
therefore they would gradually loose their right to reside in the Holy
City.
The settlers are
now getting a taste of their own government's oppressive policies, which
they have been using for years against Palestinians. They are made to
feel the double standards, or what many would say is racist policies
that Israel has been practising against Palestinians for so long.
A look back at
statements of Zionist Jewish activists in the 1940s shows that they were
decrying the British Emergency regulations, using a variety of negative
terms, only for these same emergency regulations to become the standard
used by Israel in what is becoming the longest occupation in modern
history.
Individual rights,
including the right to self-determination, freedom to travel and other
essential freedoms, should be observed for all peoples, whether Jews or
Arabs. But these rights will never be fully enjoyed unless the most
blatant human rights violation, that of a foreign military occupation
ruling 3.7 million Palestinians against their will, is put to a
permanent end. |
