Terry Bulata and Salah Iyad are separating after 14 years of marriage. They have already spoken to their children, Zina and Yasmin. The two girls will be under joint custody - three nights with Dad, three nights with Mom, and every other weekend with one of the parents. The arrangement is familiar, but the reason less so: the separation fence. Dad is not allowed on one side of it, and Mom is not allowed on the other. The wall runs along the main street near their house, cutting through their town, Abu Dis. It's eight meters high, impossible to cross. That's why they have to separate.
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Salah, as a resident of the territories, has an orange ID card, and Terry, a resident of East Jerusalem, has a blue Israeli one. He is allowed to stay in their house on the Israeli side of the wall, with a special permit for businessmen, only until 7 P.M. After that, he becomes an illegal resident in his own home. She can reach the apartment he rented - for lack of choice - on the other side of the wall, only via Ma'aleh Adumim, a long and twisting route. Israel is threatening that, as of this summer, East Jerusalemites will not be allowed to cross to the other side of the wall at all. The private school that Terry runs and Salah's new apartment are located there. So they're separating; there's no choice.
Even one who saw the wall in Abu Dis in the process of construction is shocked by the sight. In the middle of the town's main street, there is a huge concrete wall that blocks not only passage, but even the view from one house in the village to the house opposite. Anyone who approaches is seized by a feeling of suffocation and distress. The house opposite, a neighbor's house, a relative's house or the house of old friends, has now become a house in the back of beyond.
The Cliff Hotel tells a sad story. Adjacent to the wall, it is an attractive, modest place, perhaps of three-star status, which was once confiscated by the Border Police and turned into a barracks. Now it stands abandoned, surrounded by barbed wire, its windows shattered and its small garden turned into a garbage dump. The last guest slept here in 1998. The hotel belongs to Salah's family. Terry recalls marvelous summer nights in the garden.
She is 38 and he is 45. They were married during the first Gulf War, during a curfew. They spent their honeymoon in the shadow of the Scud missiles: Every time a Scud approached Israel, the soldiers would take cover, and the Palestinians would take advantage of their absence, violate the curfew and go up to the rooftops. She is a school principal, he a small businessman, the owner of a garage and an agent for Hebron marble in the West Bank, a place where almost nobody is building now. He was arrested on the day they registered to marry; she handled the bureaucracy in his absence and by the time he was released, 18 days later, he found himself a married man.
She is a Christian, he a Muslim. Her car has yellow Israeli license plates, his car has Palestinian license plates. She was in prison four times during the first intifada, for the crimes of waving the Palestinian flag and distributing posters, and he, of course, has also been in and out of prison.
Both were comrades in the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), and both left the organization. "Every leader is a little Arafat," she says of her former leader, Naif Hawatmeh. He worked as a journalist until his paper was closed, and became a businessman and a member of the Abu Dis local council.
They sit in the living room, on the second floor of their "Israeli" stone house opposite the wall. On the first floor lives a professor of computer science from Al Quds University, whose campus is adjacent to the wall, but on the other side. For the time being, the professor can still jump over the stones at the edge of town, where the wall is still low, but it is slowly but surely closing in on him, too. The New Generation private kindergarten and school that Terry founded in 1999 are also on the other side of the wall. There are 230 children up to fifth grade, and some of them live, like the principal, on the other side of the concrete barrier. Their 8-year-old, who is five years younger than her sister, no longer attends Mom's school, because of the wall. Terry says it's hard for her. And where's Dad? He's in his house, on the other side of the wall. He'll be here soon.
The girls study in Beit Hanina, a trip of about half an hour in each direction. Their mother's school is a few steps away from the house. The girls are registered in their mother's blue ID card. Their future is relatively assured, although in Abu Dis they are talking about the fact that beginning in July, Israel will not allow residents of East Jerusalem to enter Ramallah, and later on they will not be allowed into Abu Dis, either. Incidentally, new neighbors have recently arrived in the neighborhood: the Kidmat Tzion settlement, two houses that were purchased and settled by a handful of well-protected Jews. The road to the tiny settlement was paved on land belonging to the family. Soon more homes will be evacuated for these new Zionists, in the heart of the Palestinian neighborhood, after those residents of Abu Dis with Palestinian ID cards, about half the population, are forced to leave for the other side: The quiet transfer.
Salah enters the house, and Zina throws herself at him. "Fathers spoil the children, and we, the mothers, are the monsters," says Terry. Salah's brother was lucky: He managed to get a blue ID card. All these years, Salah, the released prisoner, was refused "family reunification" with his wife, even at a time when Palestinians were still allowed to request such a thing. Today there is no longer family reunification for the Palestinians.
During the past two years, Salah has been imprisoned, but Terry is free. She travels abroad via Ben-Gurion International Airport, while he can barely reach his daughters. She can take them to the beach in Tel Aviv, and he can only dream of such an outing. There is a rift between them. She is becoming more of an Israeli Palestinian, he is becoming more of a resident of the territories. There is no longer any possibility of going out together in the evening. They can only laugh at the notion of going abroad together.
It's 6:05 P.M. According to the permit in his hand, Salah has to leave the house in another 55 minutes. When there is a total closure, as, for example, during the Jewish holidays, he isn't allowed to come here at all - to a house that has belonged to his family for generations. Every three months he has to renew his businessman's permit. The stamp from the civil administration costs NIS 30, and he has to wait in a long line, meaning wasted time. For several weeks they have been out of stamps, and it's impossible to get a new permit. If it weren't for the fact that he's a businessman, he wouldn't be able to get to his house at all.
If Terry comes to live on the other side of the wall, she will lose her blue ID card, and with it, her freedom. There are dozens of other couples like them: their friends, economist Samir Khalila and his wife Sausan are torn between Ramallah and Jerusalem; Anwar Abu Hashish, who is active in the Geneva Initiative (a joint Israeli-Palestinian peace proposal) and his wife Sonia are torn between A-Ram and Israel.
It was hard to tell the girls. They tried the usual cliches: You'll have fun, two homes, a house for Mom and a house for Dad. But what will happen if we forget a notebook in Dad's house? And if we want to change clothes? The girls are afraid. Terry: "The more I talk about it, the more it hurts. After 14 years it may be healthy for the relations between us, but not for the girls."
"Zina is becoming a young woman, a teenager, she's changing at this age, she's angry at everything. And she's exploiting it now. The arrangements at home will change. All her music and ballet classes are here, but her father and her grandparents and all her cousins will be on the other side." Grandma and Grandpa don't visit here any more. They are too old to jump over the wall. Their 23 cousins are on the other side, and the girls like to spend time with them.
At home they barely talk about the separation. The girls have so many questions for which the parents have no answers. What will happen if we suddenly feel like going from one side to another? Salah promised them a computer and a room for each of them in his house, as compensation. They will be able to cross only in the school bus, which will be allowed to cross. And what about at other times? And what will happen after they finish school? Terry talks about a ghetto, about people on the other side who are increasingly closing themselves in.
Terry is a very independent woman, and she is close to many Israelis, mainly from the peace organizations. She is disturbed by the fact that her daughters will be cut off from her Israeli friends: "I don't want them to grow up thinking that all the Israelis are bloodthirsty. I want to continue to show them the other side of the Israelis. When women from Machsom Watch (Israeli women who voluntarily supervise the behavior of the soldiers at the checkpoints) come to the house, we have so much in common. We talk about raising children and then Zina asks: `Aren't these women the mothers of those bad soldiers at the checkpoints?'
"Sometimes she hears me talking to my Israeli girlfriends about private matters. I have more in common with Israeli women from the same political and cultural background than with my Palestinian neighbors. I want that to pass down to my daughters as well. But Zina already says to me often: `Why are you in contact with them? They kill us.' But it's important to me to preserve the human dimension."
Salah: "It was the choice of the Israelis to build the wall and to separate us from you."
Recently, Zina has supported the terror attacks. Does she support Hamas? Zina: "Yes, they are good people. If they go and kill soldiers, clearly they're good people. I don't like everything they do ... actually, I do like everything they do."
The suicide attacks in Israel, too?
"The suicide attacks too," she says. "Here people are killed inside their homes."
Terry sometimes tells her about the first intifada, about the strikes and the nonviolent protests of her generation, and about the fact that they hardly every fired shots, and didn't blow themselves up, and Zina asks: "What good did it do?" She has reservations about her mother's Israeli friends. "As friends they're nice, but they don't have enough power. All those who have power, on your side and ours, are bad people." An adolescent girl, she dreams of a world without flags and without weapons, as her parents once did. "That's globalism," says Salah. "That's Marxism," says Terry.
Even education loses its importance. The children ask, what for? What will we get out of higher education and a doctorate? Where will we go? Terry tries to convince her pupils that with a good education it will be easier to break out of the ghetto, but the children are skeptical. "How will we get out of the ghetto?" asks Zina. There are about 100 unemployed university graduates in Abu Dis. And Salah intervenes: "And what about the others? Education is not a solution for everyone."
They say they have never considered leaving. Salah observes: "Look at the Israelis. They are trying to bring everyone here, the Falashmura [from Ethiopia] and the Russians, and we should leave? We love this country very much. I hope that we'll succeed here. Our memories are here. I have never considered leaving. I've had many opportunities, and I never even considered them. That's not a solution."
Terry: "The children of those who leave grow up without an identity. You run away, and what about your memories and your parents? The challenge is to maintain our lives. I want an opening to the world, to give my children an open opportunity when they grow up, but to preserve their identity as well. I saw lost immigrants in America and in Canada. It takes decades until they're absorbed. In today's world they always remind you of your origin. You're an Arab, you're a Muslim, you're a foreigner. I know how hard it is for my relatives in America. They have lost their children. And I want a different future for my children. I want them to have a sense of belonging.
"From that point of view, we are like the Israelis who are looking for a sense of belonging. I want a sense of belonging, too. When you're a parent, belonging is more important to you, for the sake of the children."
They read The Guardian on the Internet, Haaretz in English, Al Quds, Al Ayyam, and sometimes The Jerusalem Post as well. Salah occasionally publishes an article in Al Quds. They haven't all gone out together in the evening for two years. The girls have never been to the movies. In the summer, their mother took them to the beach in Tel Aviv. Six years ago was the last time the four of them were together at the beach in Jaffa. On Christmas they tried to go to Bethlehem, but the soldier discovered that Salah is Muslim and didn't allow him to pass - only Christians. Terry says that she shouted at the soldier until an officer of Russian origin came, and said to her, "All right, stop shouting and take your Muslim," and let them pass. Since then they haven't been in Bethlehem, although their town was once considered one of its suburbs. It takes them about half a day to go to Ramallah and back. They avoid traveling there. "We all hope we won't have to travel anywhere," says Salah. Sometimes a teacher from Terry's school phones in the middle of the night and asks Terry, who has Israeli license plates, to rush her to the delivery room at the Makassed Hospital in East Jerusalem. Nelson Mandela's picture is in a frame on the breakfront in their living room
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