When I put my silver digital recorder on the table, Kidane Isaac, an Eritrean refugee, eyes it and shifts in his chair. He angles his broken straw fedora downwards, tipping the rim lower, as though to cover his face.

The hat, which has a black band and a hole in the top—bits of straw unravelling, sticking this way and that—doesn’t suit the red, white and blue windbreaker Isaac wears. It’s also a poor choice for the weather. It’s a wintry day in Israel and the stylish summer hat is ineffective against the cold.

Not to mention that the fedora seems out of place here, at a coffee kiosk in South Tel Aviv’s Central Bus Station. The surrounding neighbourhoods, the poorest in the city, are home to a large population of foreign workers and African refugees as well as a handful of Palestinian collaborators. While some migrant labourers make enough to send remittances home to their families, most African refugees are barely hanging on to the bottom rung of the socioeconomic ladder. Some have fallen off completely—homeless, they live in the parks near the Central Bus Station.

When he opens up to me later—sliding his fedora back on his head, leaning forward, putting his elbows on the table—I’ll learn that Isaac, 25, isn’t homeless. But he is unemployed. Too proud to use the word, he says, “I’m taking a break.”

Jobs are scarce for Israel’s roughly 35,000 African refugees. The state does not provide work visas for them so they are forced to enter the black market, where they face exploitation. Because of increasing racism, refugees sometimes have a hard time finding work. Even if they can scrape together the money to rent an apartment, some Jewish landlords refuse to rent to foreigners.

Nor does Israel process their requests for asylum—a “policy of non-policy” that has been sharply criticised by human rights organisations, including Amnesty International. But, because Israel does not deport Sudanese and Eritreans to their home countries—as it does undocumented migrant workers—it tacitly admits that they are refugees.

Isaac left Eritrea five years ago, he explains, because his mandatory military service consisted of construction work, a situation he likens to “forced labour”.

“They don’t pay you, you don’t get to see your family,” Isaac, one of nine children, says. “I felt like I wasn’t a citizen in my own country, you know what I mean?”

According to the United States Department of State, military duty in Eritrea is “effectively open-ended” and human rights violations run the gamut from abuse and torture of prisoners and army defectors to “arbitrary arrest and detention” to “unlawful killings by security forces”. Civil rights are severely restricted, as is freedom of movement.

So in 2007, Isaac left. He fled to Sudan, where he lived in a refugee camp close to the Eritrean border. Because the security cooperation between the two countries made Isaac feel unsafe, he moved on to Libya where he spent more than three years “living in the hands of the smugglers”.

While he tried several times to cross the Mediterranean and reach Italy, Isaac recalls, he was passed from smuggler to smuggler. It’s the typical experience of African refugees in Libya, he explains, nonchalantly. “Or you might get put in jail and then you pay a lot [to get out]. There’s a lot of bribery and corruption in Libya.”

In 2010, he abandoned any hope of reaching Europe and, because he understood Israel to be the “only democracy in the Middle East”, he set his sights on Tel Aviv.

He adds, however, that when he left Eritrea, he had “no intention or inclination to go to Israel. At all, at all”.

He’d heard about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, “all the problems and the Israeli Army. After what I’ve been through in Eritrea,” he says, throwing up his hands, “Khallas,” Arabic for enough.

“I wanted a place I could go and live peacefully,” he adds. “That’s why I preferred to spend all those years in Libya, trying to reach Europe.”

Isaac says he has been shocked by the conditions African refugees face here. “It doesn’t have any proper policy for us. [Refugees] are not allowed to do anything. I would say it would be better for [us] in prison.”

Jail, he explains, would be more honest than the current situation, which he calls a “trick”.

“Because then [the Israeli government] can say, ‘Oh, you’re free and you’re working and you’re living and, okay, we have African migrant workers here.’”

I think of the detention facility the state is building in the south of Israel to house African refugees caught entering the country. I consider the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who were dispossessed when Israel landed upon them. I think of the Israeli blockade of Gaza, the occupation of the West Bank and the Golan Heights. Checkpoints. Home demolitions. Political prisoners.

I think of what the Jews have themselves suffered and the biblical command to care for the strangers among us.

“Do you believe in God?” I ask Isaac.

Isaac angles his hat, which I have come to see as a small act of rebellion to circumstance. “Yes, I do,” he answers.

“Even after all this?”

“Religion, I don’t believe in religion. It’s just a drop, some sort of organisation … But I believe in some superpower or whatever.”

Since the state of Israel was established in 1948, it has granted recognised status to fewer than 200 refugees.

Instead of reviewing the cases of African asylum seekers, the Israeli government calls them a faceless mass, “infiltrators”. It’s a word preferred by politicians, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who also claims that Africans are a “threat” to the “character of the country”, our “Jewish and democratic” state.

On 9 January, just a week after I interviewed Isaac, the Israeli Knesset passed a parliamentary bill that modifies the 1954 Prevention of Infiltration Law. Initially created to keep Palestinians from returning to their homes in Israel after the 1948 war, the updated legislation will subject African refugees and their children to three years in jail, without trial. Those from “enemy countries”, including the Darfur region of Sudan, could be imprisoned indefinitely.

But, even before this legislative change, Africans caught entering Israel via its porous southern border with Egypt already faced jail time. Sunday Dieng, a 26-year-old refugee from what is now South Sudan, was held in an Israeli prison for 14 months in 2006 and 2007.

When I ask about the conditions and whether or not he received adequate food, Dieng looks down at the coffee I’ve bought him and gives a polite smile. The gesture matches his slightly formal dress. He wears a starched shirt with a stiff collar. His brown sweater is zipped up. A tiny Mercedes pendant hangs from the tab.

“Yeah, food was no problem,” he says, still looking at his cup. “But, you know, to live in jail for one year and two months for no reason, even though you have food and everything—it’s terrible. It’s very difficult.”

He looks up at me and flashes his teeth to make me, or himself, feel better, perhaps.

“It causes damage to the [mind], because you know you didn’t do anything wrong, you didn’t do any crime.” Dieng, who was not charged with a crime, was held without trial.

He forces another smile before he goes back to the beginning, to 1993.

Dieng was 12 when his village was bombed and soldiers from northern Sudan killed his parents, before his eyes. He and his eldest brother fled, eventually making their way to Ethiopia. But Dieng had his heart set on studying. The refugee camps lacked “proper facilities”, he says, so he went on to Egypt alone.

Because he didn’t feel safe there, he eventually continued on to Israel, making his way through the Sinai on foot until he reached the border.

Speaking of Israel’s unwillingness to process requests for asylum and the refugees’ inability to support themselves financially, Dieng remarks, “How can you let someone into your house if you don’t want to give him food, if you don’t want to give him a place to sleep? This is like killing him in a political way.”

With contributions from Yohannes Lemma Bayu, founder and director of the African Refugee Development Center. 

Photo: Mya Guarnieri. Refugees march in Tel Aviv in December of 2010. The sign reads: “We asked for shelter, we received jail.”

An elderly Palestinian woman spent last week on hunger strike to protest violent attacks by Israeli settlers.

Hana Abu Heikel went on the hunger strike on behalf of her family after settlers burned the family car during the previous weekend. Since Israeli settlers moved into the houses surrounding the Abu Heikel family home in Hebron in 1984, the Abu Heikels have seen eight cars burned. Six vehicles were also smashed by settlers.

Settlers also pelted the Abu Heikel’s home with stones last weekend. Two young Palestinian men were attacked and beaten by Jewish settlers in Hebron during the same period. The young men were jumped on Shuhada Street which was once the bustling centre of Palestinian commerce in Hebron. Because of the street runs through an illegal Israeli settlement, it has been closed. Its shuttered storefronts are covered with spray-painted Jewish Stars of David.

When Israeli soldiers intervened, they arrested the Palestinian men and did not take any action against the settlers.

The second weekend of January also saw settlers cut down over 100 olive trees in two small villages near the West Bank city of Salfit.

Although Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu approved measures to curb settler violence last month, January’s incidents reflect Israeli authorities’ continued refusal to protect Palestinian civilians and their property.

Recent settler attacks also point to growing violence in the West Bank.

According a year-end report compiled by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), settler violence against Palestinians and their property went up 40 percent in 2011 compared to 2010. When compared to 2009, it rose 165 percent.

While settler violence is on the rise, it is not new. According to the Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem, Israeli settlers killed 50 Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza between September 2000 and June 2011. During the 13 years spanning December 1987 and September 2000, 115 Palestinians were killed by Israeli settlers.

Many of these deaths were not acts of self-defence but malice. On numerous occasions, B’Tselem reports, “Israeli civilians chased Palestinians who had thrown stones, and killed them by shooting directly at their bodies.”

According to the U.N., 2011 saw Israeli settlers kill three Palestinians and injure 167; settlers damaged or destroyed approximately 10,000 Palestinian-owned trees, mostly olive trees, in the same year.

The Abu Heikels’ olive grove was ruined after settlers set fire to it in 2008.

Abu Heikel’s brother, Hani, estimates that the family has filed approximately 500 complaints about settlers with Israeli authorities in the past 28 years. He says that the police have not investigated these complaints and that authorities are dismissive of the family’s troubles.

“They tell us to ‘leave the area, leave the house’,” Abu Heikel says.

OCHA reports that over 90 percent of monitored Palestinian complaints about settler violence are “closed without indictment.”

Some settler assaults on Palestinians and their property are “price tag” attacks – retribution for the evacuation or threatened demolition of illegal Israeli outposts. But, in many instances, settler violence is an attempt to run Palestinians out of their homes so that some Israelis can take the property and tighten Israel’s grip on the West Bank.

While the Abu Heikels are surrounded by settlers and are under immense pressure to leave, they refuse to abandon their house. When discussing his family’s long history in Hebron, Abu Heikel notes that his grandparents were one of the Palestinian families that sheltered more than 400 Jews during the 1929 massacre in Hebron that saw 67 Jews killed.

Still, settlers seem intent on driving the Abu Heikels out.

On one occasion, a settler cut the fence surrounding the Abu Heikel’s home and entered the garden. The Israeli woman was accompanied by her children, pointing to one reason settler violence proves so intractable – some settlers teach their children to behave in a violent manner towards the local Palestinian population. This writer has interviewed children, including a 13-year-old girl, who openly admitted to throwing stones at Palestinians.

The United Nations’ recent report on settler violence pointed out that international law mandates that Israel must protect civilians and their property and “ensure that all incidents of settler violence are investigated in a thorough, impartial and independent manner.”

Israel’s High Court has also ruled that the army is obligated to protect Palestinians and their property in the Occupied Territories.

Abu Heikel says that when he asks Israeli police and soldiers for help, they answer, “‘Our work is just to protect the settlers’.”

While the third weekend of January was quiet, human rights groups in the West Bank were bracing themselves for “price tag” attacks due to Israel’s recent demolition of an illegal outpost. Speaking to IPS, a spokeswoman for the Christian Peacemaker Teams said that her organisation and others were preparing for imminent violence in the Hebron area. The groups were scheduling shifts to maintain an international presence in the city and to monitor both the settlers and the Israeli army.

The spokeswoman, who asked to remain anonymous because she does not want to attract the attention of Israeli authorities, added that while the settlers were unusually calm last week, Israeli soldiers from the Golani brigade broke into the CPT’s building and a neighbouring apartment.

Photo: armed settlers walking on Shuhada Street in Hebron (ISM Palestine)

Jewish settlers torched a mosque near Ramallah, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on December 15.

Earlier that week, Jewish rightists set fire to a mosque in Jerusalem. They scrawled graffiti on the walls reading “Mohammed is a pig,” and “A good Arab is a dead Arab.” Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat condemned the desecration of the religious site. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did the same in October when a mosque was burned in the north of the country.

“The images are shocking and do not belong in the state of Israel,” Netanyahu said.

When Muslim and Christian cemeteries were vandalized that same month, Netanyahu spoke out again—remarking that Israel would not “tolerate vandalism, especially not the kind that would offend religious sensibilities.”

But such statements belie the Israeli government’s long-standing attitude towards Muslim religious properties or waqf. Meaning literally endowment, waqf and income from waqf serves a charitable purpose for one’s family or community. Under Ottoman rule, waqf properties were exempt from taxes.

Following the 1947-1948 nakba, which saw some 700,000 Palestinians driven from their homes, Israel used its newly created Absentees’ Property Law to seize, among other things, waqf.

In Jaffa, alone, “There was a huge amount of waqf,” says Sami Abu Shehadeh, head of Jaffa’s Popular Committee against Home Demolitions and a PhD candidate in history. “I’m talking about hundreds of shops; I’m talking about tens of thousands of dunams of land; I’m talking about all the mosques…and there were all the cemeteries, too.”

Jaffa was renamed Yafo in 1948 and was annexed by the Tel Aviv municipality between 1948 and 1949. Most of the mosques were closed and several later became Jewish-owned art galleries.

In 2007, attorney Hisham Shabaita, three other Palestinian residents of Jaffa, and a local human rights organization, filed a lawsuit against the state of Israel, the Custodian of Absentee Property, and the Jewish Israeli trustees responsible for administering Tel Aviv-Yafo’s waqfholdings. The plaintiffs didn’t ask for the land back. Nor did they request compensation. They simply wanted to know what had happened to the properties, what their estimated earnings were, and where the money was going or had gone.

The court’s response? The information cannot be released because it apparently would embarrass the state, harming its reputation in the international community. The plaintiffs have filed an appeal and the case is expected to reach the Israeli Supreme Court.

But it’s not hard to guess what happened to the waqf properties, in part because the state admitted that all of the land had been sold. There are other clues: in the 1950s alone, the state demolished 1200 mosques. Later, the Hilton hotel, which stands in an area now known as north Tel Aviv, was built on a Muslim cemetery. Bodies were unearthed and relocated, stacked upon each other in a tiny corner of what was once a large graveyard.

Another Muslim cemetery became a parking lot for Tel Aviv University.

There are also the forgotten corners, properties the state appropriated and then neglected. The Sheikh Murad cemetery, which dates back to at least the 1800s, stands between the South Tel Aviv neighborhoods of Shapira and Kiryat Shalom. Its headstones were smashed by vandals years ago. Bits of marble have been pried off the graves, presumably for use or sale.

Locals have dumped garbage on the grounds and, the last time I checked in on the cemetery—not long after Muslim and Christian graves were vandalized in Yafo—two men were shooting heroin under the shade of a pomegranate tree. Fruit rotted on the ground.

Abu Shehadeh says that the local Islamic committee is building a fence around the cemetery in hopes of protecting it from further misuse. He adds that only Palestinian collaborators with Israel, who are often relocated to South Tel Aviv, have been buried in the graveyard since 1948.

The Jewish neighborhoods Kiryat Shalom and Kfar Shalem both stand on the land of the Palestinian village Salame, which was established before the 1596 Ottoman census. According to Abu Shehadeh, a number of Muslim cemeteries were destroyed to make way to house the country’s new occupants.

And then there’s Jerusalem.

With the approval of the Jerusalem municipality, the Simon Wiesenthal Center is building a “Museum of Tolerance” on a Muslim graveyard. Excavations are taking place at the site, which has served as a parking lot for several decades now, and skeletons are being exhumed so that the Los Angeles-headquartered, “global Jewish human rights” organization can teach tourists a thing or two about co-existence.

Sergio Yahni of the Alternative Information Center, an Israeli-Palestinian non-governmental organization, explained that much of Jewish West Jerusalem is built on waqf.

“One of the most striking demolitions [on land designated as waqf],” he continues, “was made [in the Old City] during the 1967 war. [Israeli forces] didn’t take care [to see] if people were out of the houses…[in some cases] they brought the buildings down on people.”

Several Palestinians who disappeared from the Old City during the war were believed to be killed during the demolitions.

This occurred in the area adjacent to the Al Aqsa Mosque. Some eighty percent of the Old City’s Jewish Quarter is built on waqf.

Jewish Israeli leaders and journalists have expressed alarm at the recent rash of vandalism and arson. In light of the fact that the government itself has perpetrated such violence against Muslim properties for over 60 years, the surprise is misplaced, at best. At worst, it is a disingenuous attempt to relieve the state of its responsibility by pointing the finger at “extremists.”

Sitting outside of the small pharmacy she and her husband own in Palawan—the Philippines’ western-most province, a far-flung island known as the last frontier—Diana recounts how she let her application for American citizenship lapse.

“We never responded to the [US] embassy,” she says. “So then they sent us a letter: ‘It seems you are not interested in pursuing your application, so we are canceling [it].’”

Diana, 31, shrugs and takes another bite of fried banana, a popular Filipino street food. A motorized tricycle coughs by, its driver looking for a customer. A few stray dogs, whip-skinny, drift past. I watch them make their way down the road, which is dotted with palm trees, nipa huts, and the occasional cement building. It’s typhoon season and heavy grey clouds arrange themselves on the horizon.

“We prefer it here,” Diana adds.

Her attitude might seem odd. After all, the Philippines are a place where a third of the population lives on less than two dollars a day. Good jobs are scarce, even for those with college degrees. The country’s most successful export is people, Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs), who fan out across the globe and send home the billions of dollars in remittances that help the domestic economy stay afloat.

The phenomenon began in 1974, when some 36,000 Filipinos began working abroad. It was supposed to be a temporary solution to what has proved to be a permanent unemployment problem and, today, the OFW ranks stand at about nine million. Their remittances constitute more than ten percent of the Filipino economy and are the fourth largest in the world—with India, China, and Mexico taking the top three spots. The Filipino government hails OFWs, who make up almost ten percent of the population, as “bagong bayani,” the “new heroes” of the Philippines.

But the adult children of OFWs—a generation of men and women who have grown up without their mothers and fathers—often have a different opinion of their parents and their decision to work overseas.

Diana, the middle of three children, was nine when her mother left to work in the United States. An aunt took care of her for awhile. And when that aunt set out for Singapore, Diana was passed along to another aunt.

The money her mother sent home allowed Diana to attend private schools. Later, those remittances put her through pharmacy school. Diana is grateful but, when she looks back on the 22 years she has spent without a mother, she says she’d rather that her mom had stayed in the Philippines.

They kept in touch via the phone and “slow letters,” Diana says, smiling at the memory of these exchanges. Later, they exchanged emails and talked online. But now that Diana lives in Palawan, where the Internet isn’t always reliable, the two women communicate less.

When Diana’s mother comes to visit every year, they often argue. Diana has a hard time being physically affectionate with her mom. “But I love her, you know, so if she wants to kiss me, I let her,” she says.

Despite their strained relationship, Diana and her two brothers badger their mom to move back to the Philippines. She refuses. “She tells us that we have our own lives, that I have my own family now,” says Diana, who is a mother to two small boys. “I tell her, ‘Yes, we are adults, but that doesn’t mean you don’t need a parent anymore. [Motherhood] is not like a job that you get to resign from.’”

That’s why Diana let her application for American citizenship fall through the cracks. Her husband—a first-generation Filipino, the son of Indian immigrants—has visited the United States. He didn’t like it and would prefer not to leave his parents. Diana has already passed the exam she needs to get her pharmacist’s license in North America. She knows she find a good job in the US. But, still pained by her mom’s decision to remain overseas, she won’t follow in her mother’s footsteps.

“If we’re going, we’re going as a family,” she explains. “It’s not me going and them staying here.” Some things are more important than money.

As if to make her point, Diana’s five-year-old son comes out of the store and climbs into her lap. He’s fair-skinned, like his father, and has long, dark eyelashes.

“Do you want mommy to go on an airplane?” Diana asks him.

He shakes his head, “no.”

***

Nanay, 79, came to Manila from Pangasinan a few years after World War II. Although the Japanese occupation had ended, life in the province was still hard, too hard, and she’d heard that there were Americans in the city looking for domestic helpers. Nanay found work with an American-Jewish family living in Manila’s Malate district. She eventually followed them to Israel, where she stayed, illegally, for 30 years before returning to the Philippines.

Her childhood disrupted by the Japanese occupation, her teenage years lost to work, Nanay collects dolls. “I never had any when I was little,” she told me over merienda, the late afternoon snack bequeathed by the Spanish, who colonized the Philippines for four centuries. Nanay gripped her napkin tight as she talked.

Nanay, Tagalog for Mom, is not her real name. Heartbroken when her fiancé left to work as a seaman, Nanay never married or had children. Instead, she took to mothering younger OFWs in Israel, including the mutual friend that introduced us, the Filipina who calls her Mom.

Nanay first made her life as a migrant worker in Malate. Many say this neighborhood was once grand. Today, it’s full of crumbling sidewalks, knotted power lines, wheezing jeepneys. A large sign mounted to the top of a building reads: Job Lane. Malate is home to many of the employment agencies that arrange overseas work for Filipinos. Women queue outside, peering at the notices taped to the windows. Domestic helpers are needed in Lebanon, Dubai, Qatar.

I meet Lyni, the 28-year-old daughter of an OFW who works in Singapore, at a café in a crowded mall in Malate. We order coffee and sit down.

Lyni’s mom left when Lyni was one. Although babies don’t form long-term memories, she insists that she remembers the moment when her mother passed her off to an elderly “aunt”—a cousin of Lyni’s maternal grandmother. The decade that followed, Lyni says, is a blank.

“I totally blocked it,” she explains. “[When your mother is gone] you try to make yourself tough.”

Lyni’s collection of chunky bracelets—carved wood and hammered brass—slide down her arms as she gathers her waist-length black hair. She pulls the bundle over her shoulder and drapes it across her torso. She holds it with one hand as we talk. It reminds me of the way Nanay clenched the napkin. Lyni’s hair is her security blanket.

“When you don’t have someone doting on you, like in a normal family,” Lyni continues, “you lose a lot of emotions. But sometimes it’s nice to feel and sometimes it’s nice to…”

She pauses and I glance down at the questions in my notebook. Her story and her candor have moved me. I find myself struggling against the tears forming in my throat. I keep my head down and I stay quiet, waiting for them to pass.

Lyni touches my hand. “I’m getting better now. Every time I see simple things, like a father carrying his son, I get like, ‘Ahhhh, look at that.’ I want to hug the father and say to him, ‘You’re doing great, even if you’re poor.’”

Thanks to her mother’s remittances, Lyni is college-educated. But rather than heading overseas, as Filipinos with degrees often do, she works at a local NGO that helps the residents of Smokey Mountain, a rubbish dump in central Manila. The poorest of the poor, they pick through the trash for a living.

As Lyni discusses the frustration she feels towards OFWs, her words take on a decidedly nationalistic tone: “It’s really a shame for the Philippines because I think that we have the most talented and intelligent [people] and where are they now? They’re not serving the Filipino people. They’re in a foreign land, serving foreign people.”

This point is not lost on the Filipinas who work abroad. As one woman remarked, as she stood in the queue outside an employment agency in Malate, “In the past, it was the Spanish that came here. Now, we go out there.” But, for OFWs, there is an overwhelming sense of not having a choice.

Lyni’s and Diana’s stories recall the protest literature of Jose Rizal. A beloved patriot, Filipinos call him a “national hero.” His writing, which sparked the Philippine Revolution, often focused on the havoc Spanish colonialism wreaked on families.

I ask Lyni if she thinks the OFW phenomenon constitutes a new form of colonialism.

“Definitely,” she says, nodding. “But it’s going to be a long time before Filipinos realize that working abroad is not a greener pasture.”

Photo: Mya Guarnieri. Filipino school boys piled onto a tricycle in the countryside. Many OFWs report that they are working overseas to fund their children’s education.

The stage and big screen are ready and waiting in Ramallah’s Clock Square on September 23. Workers unload plastic chairs from a truck. Banners bearing the slogan “Palestine 194” hang from nearby buildings.

Preparations are almost set for the public viewing of Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas’s speech at the United Nations, which will begin at noon New York time, 7 P.M. here in Ramallah. The address—broadcast live on big screens in cities throughout the West Bank—will follow the submission of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s request for UN membership for a Palestinian state, with the 1967 lines as its borders and East Jerusalem as its capital. If successful, Palestine will become the United Nation’s 194th member state. One hundred and ninety-four also happens to be the number of the UN resolution that enshrines the Palestinian refugees’ right of return.

Reporting on the event from rooftops overlooking the square, the Western media will count everyone who attends the rally as a supporter. It makes for straightforward news: flag-waving Palestinians cheer as their president takes on Israel and America. On the ground, however, the story is much more complicated.

Confusion is common among ordinary Palestinians because no one is sure what the request for statehood will lead to. Will it be successful? If so, what difference will recognition make, if any? And if it’s unsuccessful, will the PA collapse? Will Israel reoccupy the West Bank?

Some Palestinians say that the move is meaningless—“ink on paper,” as one Palestinian puts it. Others reject the statehood bid outright, because it doesn’t address Palestinian refugees or equality for Palestinian citizens of Israel. Many deny that the PA represents them at all.

***

The presence of Palestinian legislator and activist Mustafa Barghouti at the festivities is surprising. Barghouti is an advocate for the international Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, which calls for an end to the occupation, respect for Palestinian refugees’ right of return, and equal rights for Palestinian citizens of Israel. Many BDS supporters oppose the PA’s statehood request, but Barghouti sees benefits.“[UN recognition] will not change facts on the ground, but it will help facilitate the process of change,” Barghouti says, in English. “Even if a state is not created, it changes the thinking.”

No matter the outcome, the move has once again put Palestine and its plight front and center on the world stage. President Obama showed his hand—and the influence of the Israel lobby—when he announced that the United States would veto the resolution. While Palestinians were frustrated and angered by this, Barghouti says, they were not surprised. Obama just confirmed, yet again, what many Palestinians have felt for a long time: this is an American-Israeli occupation.

‘There is an old Arabic saying that when you are hungry, a small bite will be enough for you.’

The UN bid holds the potential for “something bigger,” Barghouti says. “The creation of a popular, non-violent resistance—a strong international campaign to sanction Israel.”

What Palestinians are looking for in the meantime, Barghouti adds, is for Abbas to be “steadfast,” to hold his ground in the face of American and Israeli pressure.

“My hope is that the people will come out of this fight with bigger hope. What we need more than anything is hope and confidence in ourselves.”

***

Abdul Raziq Jaboura, 79, sits on a plastic chair outside a Ramallah café, leaning on a wooden cane. Next to him sits Kabir Aman Jabar Sheikh. At 86, the freshly shaven Sheikh is 23 years older than the state of Israel. Both men wear white keffiyeh.Sheikh has dressed up in robe cut from grey, pinstriped wool and come to Ramallah from a nearby village to watch the speech, but only out of personal obligation. His father was killed in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, he explains. Because Sheikh was the eldest son, he provides for his younger siblings. He sent his brothers to school, and one became a lawyer and assistant to Abbas.

When asked about the statehood bid, Sheikh has little to say, and Jaboura would rather talk about other matters. “We’re not getting any of our rights,” Jaboura says. “And I don’t think we’ll get our rights soon. We want the refugees to come back, we want Jerusalem, we want the political prisoners to get out of Israeli jails.” He ticks off the demands on his fingers.

Our conversation attracts the occasional passerby. He drops into an empty seat, offers his thoughts, and moves on with a “salaam alaikum” before I’ve had a chance to get his name.

One such man is short and muscular with curly black hair. He lights a cigarette and starts talking in a loud, hoarse voice and doesn’t bother to pause for my translator.

He says he’s a refugee from Lydda, south of Tel Aviv. Under the UN Partition Plan—which was passed in November of 1947 and split Palestine into two states, one Jewish, one Arab—Lydda would have been part of an Arab state. But during the Arab-Israeli War, Jewish forces bombed the area, massacred hundreds, and expelled tens of thousands from their homes, forcing them to walk to the West Bank. This man’s family was among them.

“Ben Gurion International Airport is built on our land,” he says. “We wish we could go back, but I don’t see it coming. We will stay here, inside of 1967 borders, and that’s it.”

When asked if the PA’s move reflects his opinion, he says it does. But he doesn’t think it will be successful. Bid or no, he feels that there won’t be any solution to the conflict.

“This isn’t the first time we give our opinions to journalists and other people,” he concludes. “Our opinion will make no difference.”

With that, he stands, drops his cigarette onto the sidewalk, crushes it with his heel, and departs.

Jaboura sighs. “Inshallah, I hope we will get at least something [from the UN],” he says. “There is an old Arabic saying that when you are hungry, a small bite will be enough for you.”

***

Mohamed Jaradat, my translator, and I stop in a small store to buy water. I ask the fifteen-year-old boy behind the counter what he thinks about the bid.

“I hope we will get our independence,” he says, smiling.

As we leave the store, Jaradat, 32, shakes his head.

“The young generation—they see things in a different way,” he says. “They didn’t see what happened in the past. They just heard about it; they didn’t live through it.” Jaradat himself doesn’t think UN recognition will have any effect.

“The only way things will change is if we change the leadership on both sides,” he says.

“What would it take to change the leadership here?” I ask. “A revolution, like in Egypt?”

“Here?” Jaradat asks.

We walk in silence as he considers the idea.

He nods. “It’s building, it’s building, it’s building.”

Photo: Mya Guarnieri. A Palestinian girl from the West Bank village of Bilin, dressed as a refugee in commemoration of the Nakba during the weekly protest against the separation barrier.

Inter Press Service, September 1, 2011

Speaking to the US congress in May, Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu boasted that his country is a beacon of freedom in the Middle East and North Africa, that it is the only place where Arabs “enjoy real democratic rights”.

It’s true that Palestinian citizens of Israel have some democratic rights, like the vote. But, as Netanyahu told congress: the “path of liberty is not paved by elections alone.” And the summer months have seen an acceleration of worrisome anti-democratic trends.

First, the Knesset passed the anti-boycott law, a move that was widely condemned as a strike against free speech and democracy. Even some of Israel’s staunchest supporters expressed concern.

Now lawmakers have introduced a bill that proposes to change the definition of Israel as “Jewish and democratic” to “the national home of the Jewish people”.

If passed, the legislation would become part of Israel’s Basic Laws, which are used as a working constitution.

Whenever a conflict between democracy and Jewish values arises, the new definition of Israel would allow courts and legislators to favour the latter. According to Haaretz, the proposed bill will also make halacha, Jewish religious law, “a source of inspiration to the legislature and the courts”. And, in the spirit of favouring the Jewish character of the state over a state for all its citizens, the legislation would also downgrade Arabic from an official language to one with “special status”.

Arabic is the mother tongue of 20 per cent of Israel’s citizens. It has been an official language of the land since 1924, when the British mandate set three: English, Hebrew, and Arabic.

When the state of Israel was established in 1948, English was struck from the books. While Arabic remained an official language, it has always gotten second class treatment- as have the citizens who speak it.

Many government forms – including those for Social Security and National Insurance – come in Hebrew only. Arabic-speakers are under-represented in the public sector. So if a Palestinian citizen has weak Hebrew, he or she may be deprived of services or benefits they are legally entitled to and desperately need.

The results are sometimes devastating.

In Lod, for example, 25 per cent of the population is Arab. But out of the city’s 50 social workers, only two speak Arabic and both are part time employees. After a rash of domestic violence left three Arab women from Lod dead, NGOs questioned the state’s commitment to protecting Palestinian citizens.

Could the deaths have been prevented by better access to resources?

Samah Salaime-Egbariya, the director of Arab Women in the Centre, points out the murder rate is lower in places where Arabic-speakers can get help. Speaking to Haaretz, she remarked, “In Jaffa, for example, there are more than a few problems, including violence and drugs – but why is it that no women have been murdered in Jaffa in the last 10 years? Because there’s cooperation there, and resources have been allocated by both the city and the Social Affairs Ministry.”

Those who speak Israel’s second official language sometimes face problems in the court system, as well. Thanks to a legal battle waged by Adalah, The Legal Centre for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, Arabic-speakers are entitled to a free translator. However, they do not receive this service automatically and must request it ahead of time. And, some Arabic-speakers remain unaware that they can get this help – I recently sat in on a court hearing during which a Palestinian man struggled to articulate himself in Hebrew.

Discrimination is written into the manual of a major coffee chain, Aroma Tel Aviv, which instructs employees to “speak Hebrew only” when customers are around. On numerous occasions, Palestinian citizens of Israel have found themselves fired from jobs for speaking their mother tongue.

Such incidents reflect Jewish Israelis’ deep discomfort with hearing Arabic. This phenomenon is so widespread and well-known that it was depicted in the Israeli version of The Office. After a Jewish employee worries that Abed, an Arab co-worker, is consorting “with the enemy,” the manager institutes a Hebrew-only policy. In a comic but poignant scene, Abed conducts business negotiations in Hebrew with another Arabic-speaker.

Prohibitions against Arabic are sometimes found in Israeli schools. In Yafo, a principal has forbidden Palestinian citizens from speaking their mother tongue. Students of Russian origin, however, are free to converse in their first language.

Sawsan Zaher, an attorney with Adalah, points out that even Arabic-speakers in the Arabic school system face language-related problems.

Earlier this year, the Arab Cultural Association reported that the textbooks used by Palestinian citizens of Israel have over 16,000 grammar and spelling errors. Mistakes appeared in math, history, geography books and those used to teach the Arabic language itself.

This leaves Arab students doubly disadvantaged-they learn a damaged version of their mother tongue and, because most Jewish Israelis don’t speak Arabic, they are forced to speak in a second language, Hebrew.

“International law obliges the state to respect the minority’s language,” Zaher says, adding that Israel’s 1953 public education law also requires the state to acknowledge the language and culture and religion of minorities.

The error-ridden textbooks, then, represent a violation of both international and Israeli law, according to Zaher. “You cannot acknowledge and respect a defective language,” she says.

Because Israel has long neglected Arabic and its speakers, Zaher doesn’t feel that downgrading the language’s status will result in practical changes.

What is alarming is that the legislation is proposed as a Basic Law and Basic Laws will eventually form the constitution of the State of Israel.

“Language is an important indicator to see whether or not a state is acknowledging the minority,” Zaher explains. “You set the status of a language in the constitution. [The proposed bill] would mean that there would be no recognition of Arabs as a national minority and that they would not be able to get suitable protection as according to international law.”

That the legislation was introduced a month before the United Nations vote on the recognition of a Palestinian state is significant, Zaher adds.

“It could be viewed as another attempt to respond to the Palestinian move in September,” she says. “Like, ‘Okay, you want your own state? Then Israel will be the state of the Jewish people and others will be marginalised more and more…”

Recognising a certain group’s language means recognising the existence of the group itself. Conversely, Zaher explains, “If [Israelis] want a state only for the Jewish people, they have to undermine Arabic.”

As this undermining and marginalisation has been going on for years, perhaps the Knesset’s latest move represents a step towards a more honest Israel – one that no longer pretends that being both a Jewish state and a democratic state for all of its citizens is possible.

At least the world will know, at last, what it’s dealing with.

Photo: Mya Guarnieri. Arabic-language textbook that was approved for use by the Israeli Ministry of Education.

The media has been quick to depict the Israeli tent protests as a middle class movement. But there are other groups taking part: Palestinians, low-income Jewish Israelis, migrant workers, and African refugees. While all of these groups face a number of serious problems—as does Israel’s middle class—one was living outdoors in Tel Aviv long before the first protest tent was pitched.

Talk a walk through south Tel Aviv’s Levinsky Park on any day of the year and you’ll see dozens of African refugees sleeping on the grass. But they’re not here in protest. These men and teenage boys are homeless.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu calls them “infiltrators.” The state, however, has reported to the U.N. that about 90 percent of Israel’s approximately 30,000 asylum seekers are indeed refugees. Most come from Eritrea—a country gripped by a brutal dictatorship, fraught with religious persecution—and war-torn Sudan. Some have escaped genocide in Darfur. Many flee first to Egypt, where they might spend several months or years working. From there, they walk to Israel, making making a treacherous journey through the Sinai. A significant number of the refugees are “unaccompanied minors”—teenagers who made this trip alone.

Since Israel’s founding in 1948, the country has given status to about 200 refugees, mostly Vietnamese boat people and Christian Ethiopians. The recent wave of asylum seekers—which began with a trickle in the early 2000s and gained momentum around 2006—has been subject to what Amnesty International calls a “policy of non-policy.” While international law forbids Israel from deporting the refugees, the state refuses to grant status or work visas to a tremendous majority.

But the refugees have to work, of course. So they are forced to enter the black market. There, they often contend with wages that fall far short of the legally-mandated minimum. Sometimes they face “employers” who “hire” and then refuse to pay.

All this leads to tremendous difficulties finding affordable housing.

Their wages too low, rent too high—and receiving no help from the government—refugees are left with few options. In a bid to bring the cost of living down, they cram themselves into apartments, sometimes as many as a dozen to a room. Or they sleep in public places, like south Tel Aviv’s Levinsky Park.

As the number and visibility of refugees has grown, the issue has become increasingly contentious. In July of 2009, the Oz Unit—the strong arm of the Interior Ministry’s Population and Immigration Authority—began enforcing the hitherto ignored Gedera-Hadera policy, which forbids asylum seekers from living in the center of the country.

In the summer of 2010, 25 Tel Aviv rabbis signed an edict that forbids Jewish Israelis from renting apartments to “infiltrators.” A small group of real estate agents in south Tel Aviv—where most of the city’s asylum seekers live—answered the call and began turning away African refugees.

Last year also saw the government announce its plans to build a detention center for African refugees. The barebones facility, which will house women, men, and children, will be located in the desert. It will be cramped and without air-conditioning. Speaking to the Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot, an anonymous government official explained, “The instruction is to avoid indulging them, so this does not become a recreational facility.”

But many Jewish Israelis and local NGOs are in the other proverbial tent. In the summer of 2009, a public outcry put an unofficial end to Gedera-Hadera. On one occasion, the Oz Unit filled a bus with African refugees, with the intent of sending them out of Tel Aviv. By forming a human chain around the vehicle, Jewish Israelis stopped the expulsion.

In December of 2010, Jewish Israelis and African refugees took to the streets of Tel Aviv to demonstrate against the detention center, marching 1000-strong. While the number seems small in comparison to today’s tent protests, it was large enough to attract the local media’s attention.

Concerned citizens have started everything from grassroots initiatives to help feed the refugees to full-fledged organizations like ASSAF (Aid Organization for Refugees and Asylum Seekers in Israel). The African Refugee Development Center, which was founded by a Christian Ethiopian who received legal status in Israel, relies heavily on volunteers—Jewish Israelis who are there in the spirit of tikun olam, repairing the world. And every spring since 2008, individuals and NGOs have come together to hold a Passover seder for Tel Aviv’s asylum seekers. Together, they celebrate the ancient Hebrews’ flight from oppression in Egypt. It is not lost on anyone that the biblical story of exodus bears uncanny similarities to that of the African refugees.

The refugees’ presence at the seder, and in Israel, strikes at the heart of what it means to be a Jewish state. Is it about demographics alone? Or is it about values, like the biblical command to care for the strangers among us? Can Jewish Israelis preserve both their hegemony and their humanity?

What’s really at issue here is the national identity—or who gets a seat at the table.

The tent movement opens up other sides of the same issue by demanding that the state give the collective a bigger slice of the pie. But implicit in the idea of distribution is the question: who?

Who is part of the collective? All citizens? All Jewish Israelis? Or just Jewish Israelis those who live inside the Green Line? And what about all the “others”, the non-Jews who live inside the 1967 borders: Palestinian citizens, migrant workers, and African refugees?

Shouldn’t the government give those who live inside the Green Line the same benefits as or more than those who live, at great expense, beyond it? Or does the government only care to help those Jewish Israelis who push an expansionist agenda? Is Israel about land alone?

And what about Palestinian residents of the West Bank, who live under de facto annexation? What piece of the pie do they get? Where’s their seat and at what table?

Until the Israeli collective—and that includes the tent movement—tackles these pressing questions of identity, until borders are set and the state figures out what this project called Israel is and who it includes, both the refugee and housing crises will remain unresolved.

Photo: Mya Guarnieri. The writing was on the wall months before the tent protests began. This picture, taken in April, shows graffiti that reads: “The dream of [Tel Aviv mayor] Huldai is to build a city for the rich alone.” Where would African refugees fit into that capitalist vision?

The uber-conservative Christian Zionist commentator Glenn Beck has arrived in Israel. He will hold his “Restoring Courage” rally in Jerusalem on August 24.

So it seems like a mighty odd coincidence that a few weeks ago, I found this ad on Janglo:

I emailed the contact listed. I included the link to the ad and asked a straightforward question: “will you be paying people for their participation in this event?”

I received a response from Jonny Daniels—Senior Advisor to MK Danny Danon (Likud)—who wrote “Depends where you are from.” So, in other words, that means at least some of those who attend might be getting paid to do so.

Photo: istock. Stripes from every country will fly at Glenn Beck’s rally. Never mind that at least some of the participants are getting paid to hold those flags.

The American economy is in a crisis. Suburbs arefalling into poverty. Schools are struggling. Cities teeter on the edge of bankruptcy.

And 81 U.S. Congressmen are off in Israel when they should be here, dealing with the mountain of problems facing the American people — you know, the men and women who elected them.

Of course, Congressmen deserve a break. They need to relax and spend time with their families just like any other working stiff. But those 81 Congressmen aren’t exactly on vacation. They’re on a junket funded by the American Israel Education Foundation, a supporting organization of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). As AIPAC is a special interest group — pro-Israel hardliners who support expansionist policies — it is unlikely that the Congressmen will be getting a clear-eyed view of the country.

With perks like all-expenses-paid trips for government employees, it’s no surprise that Israel is the largest single foreign recipient of U.S. aid. Israel receives three billion dollars worth of aid annually from the United States. America has committed to giving Israel a whopping 30 billion from 2009-2018. It’s worth adding that Israel is not using these dollars to build schools or help the needy. Rather, the funds come in the form of weapons that are used to maintain the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory.

And what are American taxpayers getting in return?

In his article, “Friends Without Benefits,” Matthew Yglesias gives a succinct answer: “Israel does us no favors and is no use to us.”

The Congressmen’s trip to Israel illuminates this point. Not only is it useless to the American people, it’s a distraction during a time when taxpaying U.S. citizens need and deserve the full attention of the representatives they elected.

As Josh Ruebner, National Advocacy Director of the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation,puts it,

“This August break is for Members of Congress to be at home, meeting with constituents to hear about our concerns. They should be listening to our anxiety about the economy and thinking through ways to dig us out of the financial mess they’ve created with their corporate giveaways, tax breaks for the wealthy and lax regulation of unscrupulous banks that are forcing people out of their homes with fraudulent mortgage documents.”

While the disappearing act these 81 Congressmen have pulled is reprehensible, it’s not surprising.

After all, this is the same Congress that showered Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with standing ovations as he stood and spoke one half-truth after another. This is the same Congress that took the unusual move of breaking its own rules to pass a resolution about foreign policy — wasting time and energy that could have been spent on pressing domestic issues.

So, no, this trip isn’t shocking. It’s just one more outrageous example of American politicians putting special interest groups ahead of the dire needs of the American people.

Photo: Mya Guarnieri. A Palestinian boy sells shoes outside of Damascus Gate, Occupied East Jerusalem, when he should be in school. Will the 81 Congressmen learn about East Jerusalem’s classroom shortage?