People and Politics / When you need a permit to sleep in your own home

The aroma of the coffee drew us to the Peace Minimarket, in D'hiyat el Salaam, the Peace neighborhood in the southwest corner of Anata. It's a small town in East Jerusalem that was annexed in 1967, making everyone who lived there residents of "united Jerusalem," with blue ID cards that allow them to vote in municipal elections and travel freely throughout the country.

Behind the stand, Marwan Hilwe was pouring coffee beans into the electric grinder. Yes, of course he had heard about what happened in the neighborhood on the night between Monday and Tuesday, August 30-31. Marwan and his old father were among the men of the neighborhood, aged 16-80 who were called out of their beds at two in the morning.

Before they were taken to the Border Police base not far from the neighborhood, the policemen, armed with search warrants, conducted searches of the bedrooms and closets. To not leave the bewildered children at home alone, the Border Police left the women alone, but they promised that when they returned - and it would be soon - anyone without a blue ID card, men or women, would be arrested and interrogated.

Yasser Salame, 32, is also a resident of D'hiyat al Salaam, the peace neighborhood. He makes his living as a clerk in a Palestinian Authority office in Ramallah. He spent the night at the Border Police base together with Marwan, and another 80 men and teens from the neighborhood.

In the morning, to be allowed to go home, he signed a document affirming he knows that he lives in his home illegally, and that he knows he is forbidden to sleep there without getting an overnight pass from the Israeli authorities, a pass that is practically impossible to get under the current circumstances.

The Hilwe and Salame families, and the rest of the people in their beds illegally, cannot present blue ID cards. Many have tried for years to get their cards from the Interior Ministry, to no avail. Israeli authorities, as is well known, do not encourage Palestinian "immigration" to the capital.

Who cares?

Another document, for example, authorization of ownership of land, as in the case of the Hilwe's, does not pass muster for the authorities. Nobody cares they bought the land on which their home and grocery is located, in 1964. The only date that matters for the Israeli government is June 1967 and then, the Hilwe family was living on the eastern side of the municipal boundary that Israel arbitrarily drew, about 300 meters away from their current home.

Nor does a collection of paid city tax (arnona) bills help, as in the case of the Salame family, whose forefathers settled in the neighborhood hundreds of years ago. When the IDF entered the neighborhood in 1967, Nahala Salame's husband was in Amman. The frightened woman took her children and hurried away from the isolated house on the edge of the neighborhood to relatives who lived closer to the center of the neighborhood.

The Jerusalem city hall spokesman: "It is known that winning a Jerusalem residency status is highly desirable among residents of the territories. In recent years we've found that many pay city taxes to try to get Israeli residency. Illegals in the city, who claim to be legal residents, can work to prove their claims and rights, through all avenues, including the legal avenue, and certainly if they have been in the city for generations."

Amir Cheshin, who for years was the advisor on Arab affairs to the mayor of Jerusalem, knows a thing or two about the chances of an Anata resident getting Israeli residency papers. He has been struggling for years to legalize the status of two families from the area, who found themselves in the middle of Pisgat Ze'ev. Whenever they go to the grocery store they end up getting fined for being in Israel illegally.

Attorney Jawad Bulos, who represented some Anata residents who wanted Jerusalem residency status, says he has come across cases of houses in which one room is registered as being inside Jerusalem's municipal boundaries and another room, or the stairwell, is inside the West Bank.

Illegals at home

Ibrahim Salame, son of Nahala, who lives in the Palestinian side of Anata, says that he knows a family in which the three children have blue ID cards, so their parents can get National Insurance Institute allotments, but three others have the orange ID cards of the territories, and are considered illegals in their own home.

Salame, just back from a conference in Jordan of Israelis and Arabs discussing peace and security issues, adds that since the establishment of the PA, and more so since the intifada, Palestinians who want a Hebrew identity card and identity are not looked on favorably. He said many have given up the struggle. All he wants is for the authorities to leave his mother and brothers Yasser and Anwar alone.

The Border Police, which recently was given security responsibility for the neighborhood by the army, says that according to the instructions they received, those who do not have blue ID cards or permits to be in Israel, are to be considered criminals. Anything else is not in their purview. The commander of the Jerusalem regiment says they will be returning to Anata soon.

The effort to shove the residents of Anata's D'hiyat al Salaam out of their neighborhood could give the wrong impression that it is a luxury neighborhood. If Jeremiah the prophet were to suddenly drop into his birthplace, biblical Anata, he would have more than one reason to rage with anger at the authorities.

Like Afghanistan

Architect Simon Kube says that not long ago he invited four senior city hall officials to tour the village. "I swear to you that they did not believe we were in Jerusalem," he said. "And no wonder. It is more reminiscent of Afghanistan than of a neighborhood in a modern state."

In their defense, the Israeli authorities could claim they don't distinguish between the neighborhoods in Israel and those in the eastern part of the neighborhood, which is under PA jurisdiction. There's the same crumbling roads that were once paved with asphalt, the same garbage piled up by the sides of the roads, and the same remnants of sidewalks lacking any shade or landscaping.

Thirty-seven years of "unification" were apparently not enough for the authorities to prepare a zoning plan for what remains of Israeli Anata. Kube says he was promised a zoning plan would be brought in the coming weeks to the District Planning Commission.

Barely a little more than 500 dunam remains for the 10,000 residents of the neighborhood.

The 33,000 dunam from Kfar Adumim in the southeast to Pisgat Ze'ev in the northwest, belonged to Anata before Israel cut the neighborhood in half and annexed what was left over. Some 20,000 dunam, mostly "state land" was expropriated for Maale Adumim, Kfar Adumim, and other little settlements in the area as well as roads and a military base.

The residents, as opposed to the land, were left outside Jerusalem, but caught in an enclave surrounded by Israeli settlements. Their farmland gone, they were forced to look for work inside Israel. The closure policies turned most of them into unemployed people. Border Police are stationed at the checkpoint at the western entrance to D'hiyat el Salaam, meaning inside Israeli East Jerusalem. Only holders of blue ID cards and a lucky few who have work permits, are entitled to cross that checkpoint.

Since Israel put limits on how long Jerusalemite-Palestinians have to fulfill their right to return to the city, hundreds of families from villages in the area have taken up residents in D'hiyat el Salaam. Without land zoned for residential construction, new buildings have cropped up in every alley, including six and seven story buildings. With no zoning plan, all are illegal construction.

The enormous population growth, particularly of young people, has worsed the crowding in the classrooms. In the mornings, hundreds of children trying to get to school congregate at the checkpoints. Officially, all those children are Jerusalemites. They are sent to schools in Shuafat and other neighborhoods. Hundreds of children crowd into the girls' school in Anata, where there are 50 and more girls per class.

According to the proposed separation fence route, the fence will strangle both parts of Anata. From the west, a checkpoint on the way into Israel, from the east, a wall on the way to the West Bank. If the residents don't try their luck with the High Court of Justice, the wall will eat up the last of the land they have left for any growth. On the other hand, if the fence is moved toward the West Bank, it will be at the expense of the Palestinian state that might yet be established one day. Ibrahim Salame says the residents have a split personality, "between the daily interests and the national interest."

	An Anata checkpoint. To be allowed home, resident Yasser Salame had to sign that he knows he lives there illegally.
	Photo by: Lior Mizrahi / BauBa