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Twilight Zone / Free passage By Gideon Levy Tags: Gaza, Palestinians  She walks from the pool to the stylish portico of the Bethlehem Intercontinental, a bikini showing beneath shorts and a revealing shirt. There's an anklet on her leg, her hair is dyed a reddish brown, and she's holding a French Gauloise cigarette and a red cell phone. She has come for a weekend at the Intercontinental, for a wedding: When you drink you don't drive, so she stayed at the luxurious hotel, five stars at $130 a night, which was bustling with vacationers - Israeli Arabs from Haifa. She is not allowed to be in Bethlehem, where we met her; she is not allowed to visit Ramallah, where she has been living for years; she is not allowed to travel to the beach in Tel Aviv, as she does several times a week during the summer; and she is not allowed to go to Jerusalem for entertainment or work purposes, yet is there almost every day. She is in the north, but her heart and her family are in the south. A native of Rafah, she arrived 16 years ago to study at Bir Zeit University and has been stuck in Ramallah ever since, far from her loving family. She carries a "Gaza ID card" and despises the whole idea of it. It is supposed to be impossible for her to live in the West Bank and travel in Israel. At any given moment, at any checkpoint, she is liable to find herself expelled back to Rafah. That's how it's been for all these years. Courageous and determined, she has built a full life for herself, between the checkpoints. "Anyone who was born near the sea can't live without it," she told me when we sat over coffee in the lobby of the Intercontinental. Her "passport," she wrote me a few days ago, cost her $300 and was worth it: Elegant and confident, with her Giorgio Armani sunglasses, she passes through all the checkpoints. Advertisement Areej Hijazi lives without borders. But her longings for her parents, her siblings and her relatives, and for her childhood landscapes in Rafah, repeatedly arouse in her a sadness that is reflected in her eyes. A few days ago she sent me an e-mail on behalf of a group of Gazans who are stuck in Ramallah: "As for Gaza, it is a one-way ticket; we can go back there without ever dreaming of coming back to the West Bank! ... We missed the opportunity to have a normal life that all people around us simply had and still have, just because we hold [a] so-called Gaza ID (by the way I am sick of this term); to visit your family on holidays and school vacations, to attend your siblings', cousins', friends' weddings or graduations, to welcome new members into your family or bid a warm farewell to those who leave, to grow up around your beloved ones, to have your family around you in your wedding or to make your parents, while getting old, happy to see their grandchildren, to benefit from a scholarship abroad and to advance your career, to enjoy times with your parents that you simply didn't enjoy as a rebellious teenager before you left your family home ... to have your mom around you when you're heartbroken, to complain to your father about how crazy the world is getting, to share with your sister your love stories or to chat with her about life and men and success and failure, to visit your school or to pass by those places where you had crazy childhood encounters. "Now comes the fun part. I have what my friends call 'the checkpoint syndrome' - you know, those times when you feel helpless and hopeless, and where all becomes meaningless, due to pure personal reasons sometimes. I go to one of the Jerusalem checkpoints and try to pass. Why, I don't know. It could be that at those times you need to do something crazy to regain some of your internal balance, and in my case the craziest thing ever is to challenge the so-called 'Israeli security and checkpoints system.' Success is 100 percent: Each time I tried to pass, I passed not only to Jerusalem, but also to Tel Aviv, Jaffa, Haifa and Nazareth. My passport was my curly hair and the Giorgio Armani sunglasses that I bought only for the checkpoints, and guess what? I believe the $300 investment was worth it. It is so funny that I cannot see my family in Gaza for years, while I spend most of the summer swimming in Tel Aviv or having fun in Jerusalem. What a brilliant security system! In case you feel like knowing more about this issue, please let me know." A waiter in a tie serves coffee. Hijazi crosses her bare legs and tells her story. She was born in 1972 in Rafah. Her father was a farmer who, until the siege of Gaza, raised flowers for export. In 1992 she began to study civil engineering at Bir Zeit University near Ramallah. She lived in the dorms, and during the first two years she often traveled home to Rafah in service taxis that drove between those areas at the time. During those years she would tour Israel with her friends; she even remembers apple-picking in the Golan. In 1996 one already needed an exit permit from Gaza. Hijazi recalls how her friends, the revolutionary students, tried to decide whether to cooperate with the system. When it was difficult sometimes at the Erez crossing, they tried their luck at the Nahal Oz checkpoint; sometimes they were delayed, but they always got back to the university. When she finished studying she decided to move to Ramallah, far from the dictates of her family and a stricter life in Rafah. She worked at the Palestinian Institute for the Study of Democracy for seven years, until 2002, and then began to work for another nonprofit organization, where she organized the annual Palestinian film festival. She never worked in engineering. And she hardly ever got to Gaza. In the summer of 2000 she arrived thanks to a temporary permit for the wedding of her cousin and stayed home for a week. She did not know that it would be her last visit for quite some time. It was also the last gathering of her entire family: Until today, she has not been able to see one brother, who studied medicine in Germany, or another, who studied medicine in Syria. She was sure she would be back in September 2000 for her youngest brother's birthday, but the second intifada broke out then and the gates of Gaza were closed. Shortly thereafter, Israel issued another fateful edict, as far as she was concerned: The Palestinians could no longer change the addresses on their ID cards. Hijazi was fated to hold a Gazan ID card. (Although she has an ID from 2003 with a Ramallah address, her Gaza address shows up on the computers of the Interior Ministry). During the following eight years she succeeded in leaving the country twice, always after a long and exhausting wait for a permit: In 2003 she traveled to a professional conference in Beirut. In 2006 she managed to get to Amman. It was during the month of Ramadan, and the Rafah border crossing was still open. She hurriedly flew to Cairo, and from there traveled to the Rafah crossing and managed to reach her parents' home. There was great excitement. She spent six days with her parents, siblings and childhood friends, after not seeing any of them for six years, and was then forced to leave before the crossing closed. Gaza had changed in the six years she'd been away. Her family's home is near the Philadelphi Route. Most of the neighbors' homes had been demolished and several of Hijazi's acquaintances had been killed. "I saw people lost, helpless, walking around the streets. I didn't recognize my city," she recalls. Her friends took her to see the ruins of Gush Katif and Netzarim; for the first time in years, she could sit with them on the beach between Khan Yunis and Rafah, until 2 A.M., in a place that had been closed to Palestinians for decades because of the Israeli presence in Gush Katif. She thirstily drank in every moment until she was forced to leave. Since then, needless to say, she hasn't managed to go back. During the past year and a half, Hijazi has been working for a large, important international organization whose name she asks not to reveal. Three years ago she made contact - together with a group of Gazan friends now living in the West Bank - with the nongovernmental organization Gisha, in an attempt to regain at least some of the freedom of movement that in effect has been totally denied them. They have already given up on changing the address in their ID cards, but still dream of some kind of entry and exit permits. To date there have been no results. "If they ever catch me at one of the checkpoints, they may arrest me, they may detain me, they may torture me and they may expel me to Gaza. Anything is possible," she says. "I love the sea. I'm a Gazan. I don't understand how I live now without access to the sea. Anyone who was born near the sea understands that. I love the Dead Sea, but it's not the same." Several times a week, Hijazi says she sneaks in via the checkpoints and reaches the beach in Tel Aviv. At least twice a day she speaks to her parents by phone. When the Israel Defense Forces go wild in Rafah, she is likely to speak to them even 10 times a day, out of anxiety. Several weeks ago her sister, her brother-in-law and their children managed to leave Gaza and reach Ramallah. It's unlikely that they will be able to return to Gaza. Now Hijazi is trying to get used to living with family again. Her little nephews know her only as "the aunt from the telephone." In Rafah her father is unemployed because of the siege; there is no Agrexco and there are no flowers. She tries to console him over the phone. What's the first thing you would do if you were allowed to travel to Rafah, we ask her. She falls silent. "There's a point when you stop thinking about those things. You even cut yourself off from the possibility of doing so after all those years. Maybe first thing, I would take my childhood friends and go with them to the sea, and sit with them until sunrise, and try to recall the days when life was simpler and easier. But it's interesting that I've stopped even imagining these things." Bookmark to del.icio.us   Safe haven reached 200 fleeing Georgia after the outbreak of hostilities arrive at Israel's Ben-Gurion Airport. Fatal heartbreak Disabled man dies of heart attack after his girlfriend was arrested by Immigration Police.   1.   Count your blessings 13:58  |  Mrs. Whale from USA 09/08/08   2.   Tragedy of the Palestinians 14:02  |  Stuart Wilder 09/08/08   3.   Go to Gaza, interview people there 16:45  |  Jacob 09/08/08   4.   What if- Hezbollah vs. Hamas 17:40  |  Mrs. Whale from USA 09/08/08   5.   Mrs Whale you are another US fool 19:25  |  Marilyn 09/08/08   6.   What about freedom of movement for the 20:27  |  Eugene 09/08/08   7.   Way to go Areej! 20:30  |  Sani Meo 09/08/08

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