The Road to Jerusalem

The road to Jerusalem from Ramallah, starts to go very bumpy as you leave Ramallah’s borders. The Ramallah municipality has offered to pave it quite a few times since 1994 but Jerusalem Municipality, which claims jurisdiction over that section has refused since the Eastern part of the city has been illegally annexed to Israel in 1981. However, since it is a just-for-Arabs street, it does not matter if it is paved or not.
Anyway, the situation goes on until you reach Qalandia, where the road block which was turned into a border crossing sits. From there, a big ugly grey concrete wall stands dividing the road into two sections, on the right, is what they keep and the left is what we share. Quite a fair split! Especially considering that we are talking about Palestinian land on both sides of the wall.
Anyway, I keep going down that road, then up and around the other road block, the final one which separates me from Jerusalem. I get called by a blond policewoman and a soldier.

“Where are you going?”, she asks. “Jerusalem.” I answer. “why?” “To see a friend.” “Can I see your passport?”, the question, I was waiting for! “I don’t have one!” “ID card?” so I walk to get my bag from the bike, and as I approach them again, she asked “Blue or Green?”, so confidently, as if it is the ‘right’ answer, I say “green!”

That’s where all the troubles began. “So you are illegal here?” she says. “Excuse me?” “You know it is illegal for you to be here.” She says as if this whole situation is legal. “Not illegal, it is just racist.” I answer. “Racist?” as if it is the first time she hears the word, “you should have a permit to be here, these are the laws!” So I answer to that, “The laws are racist, then! Why should I need a permit to visit my birthplace.”  She tries to answer to that “if you were born here how come you don’t have a blue ID or permit?” I thought the answer to that was very simple, they don’t want us there, do they? But still she argues, like she is not aware of where we live.

And she goes on “my father has one, he is a Muslim, and he gets a permit to stay with his family,” thinking that this would be the perfect example to give to shut me up. “I feel sorry for your father, but that’s racist too!” I added.

“But this is our country and we have to protect it...” and for some reason she didn’t add the ‘from terrorists’ cliché. But it is our country too. “How come you don’t have a blue ID then?” very simple, again. “Because you came in with your guns, and decided these people get blue, those get green! And that was that!”.

“So, say you had an independent Palestine, would you chose to live in Palestine or Israel?” my answer for that was more than ready. “I don’t want Palestine and Israel. We both should have one country amongst us.” And she jumps in with her new question “One country? But what will we call it?”, “I don’t know maybe The Holy Land?” She smiled as she translated the new name into Hebrew for the soldier.

“You know, I think I agree with you! This is a racist country! Because we say it is a Jewish country and many people who live in it are not Jewish.” She admitted, adding “You know when a Jew comes he immediately receives an ID card. While non-Jews can’t. We were born in Azerbijan, my mum is Jewish and my dad is Muslim, when we moved here, we all got Israeli ID cards, except my dad. He lives here on a family reunification permit, because he is not Jewish.” Well, that’s exactly what I am talking about. And not only that, but thousands and thousands of other stories of the same sort.

It was a good experience today!