Don't Try to Understand

Yasser told us, "Don't try to understand the situation.  There is no logic or answer to be found.   I have been here my whole life, living this experience.  It is the only reality I have ever known and even I can't begin to comprehend it.  Perhaps some day we will get some answers."

Yasser is a very active member of the African Palestinian community in Jerusalem and runs the African Community Youth Center in the African area of the Old City of Jerusalem.  I had an incredible 1.5 hours with him thanks to two other GWU students that I ended up spending the day in Jerusalem with last weekend.  One of them had been working and living in East Jerusalem last summer and had met Yasser then.  On our meanders through the city we found ourselves in the little African section of the city so he asked a guy hanging out on the street if Yasser was around.  To our surprise the guy set off on a mission to find him.  About ten minutes later Yasser arrived and invited us into the center he runs.  

He told us his story.  His father is from Chad and his mother is a "white" Palestinian.  Other Palestinians that I told his story to think it is funny that they are considered "white".  His father came to Palestine on a French passport and therefore in 1967 when Israel occupied East Jerusalem and his mother's family was forced east and settled in Jericho and Jordan, his father and mother were able to stay due to the French passport.  He received a scholarship to study in England but was only given a three month permit to do so.  When he returned at the end of the semester to renew the travel permit he was arrested.  After that he was arrested many times for his political and social activism.  His longest stint in jail was for five years.  He is still regularly arrested and says that anytime there is anything sensitive happening in the city they just come and get him and put him in detention for a few hours.  The last time was back in May when he was leading a group of Palestinian children on a tour of the Old City to counter the 60 years celebration.  He was arrested and taken from the children he was leading.  When his friends at school in Englad asked him why he wasn't returning and lamented about the injustice of it he tried to explain to them (and us) that "It's ok.  Some things are just not a possibility in my life.  It's ok.  I can find alternatives.  I will not give up.  The limitations they impose will not stop me.  I will go to school here.  Every time they try to deny me, I find an alternative."  He also said that every time he is arrested the army and police try to divide him as an Afro-Palestinian from other Palestinians.  They say, "You are African.  Why do you want to support these people? You are not one of them."

When he discussed his work with Palestinian youth in Jerusalem, where drugs and low school attendance are a problem, he echoed the words of the woman I am working with here in Ramallah.  He said that they are very limited in the impact that they can make because of the occupation. By combating drug use they are battling the occupation though. By encouraging youth to get an education they are battling the occupation.

As a lifelong resident of the Old City and as a scholar of Jerusalem Studies he had many things to share with me about the city. When he spoke about the situation and the struggle and the occupation he was completely focused on Jerusalem. It was like he was devoting his life to holding this one piece of ground. He is holding ground while people are offering his community very good prices to sell their homes and move out of the Old City.

He shared with me a very interesting story about the Western/Wailing Wall.  After hearing it I kind of feel like an idiot for not realizing it myself since it is so obvious.  It just shows the degree to which power is all about controlling the narrative.  So did you ever wonder why the holiest site in Judaism, a wall that is thought to be a wall of the 2nd Temple, has a huge amount of open space in front of it in the Old City of Jerusalem where everything else is incredibly cramped with little winding paths throughout the neighborhoods? I am ashamed to say that I never wondered about this before myself. What I learned is that this big open area was formerly the Moroccan quarter of the Old City.  This 700 year old neighborhood became highly diverse with people not only from north Africa but also Muslim, Christian, and Jewish residents of Palestine living in the neighborhood. There were a few meters of space between the wall and the buildings of the neighborhood.  This space became a regular place of prayer for Jews after Sultan Sulayman (1520-1566) cleared a few meters for this purpose.  After the 1948 War, the 1500 Jews living in this neighborhood were expelled by Jordan to the Israeli controlled part of the city, just as tens of thousands of Palestinians were expelled from the Israeli controlled to the Jordanian controlled parts of Jerusalem.  After the 1967 War Israel occupied all of the Old City and put the Moroccan quarter under house arrest while their city planners were brought in. On June 10, 1967 Israel gave two hours notice to the several hundred residents of this quarter that they were to evacuate their homes.  By the evening of June 11th nearly all of the 135 homes had been destroyed.  They destroyed an entire neighborhood in the ancient city of Jerusalem. One old woman who didn't evacuate her home was crushed to death inside it.  Initially religious structures were left in tact. But even the mosques were bulldozed by 1969. Israel offered each family 200 Jordanian Dinars. Only about half accepted it because to do so would have legitimized the ethnic cleansing that took place.

So this is how the "Western Wall Plaza" came to be. It is now considered a part of the Jewish Quarter of the city. Although only 20% of the land is actually a part of the Jewish Quarter, the rest being land appropriated from the Palestinians forced from it, only Jews are allowed to live in this neighborhood. This law has been upheld by a 1978 Israeli Supreme Court ruling in the case of the Burqan family against the state of Israel. The court recognized that the Burqan family were the owners of a house in what is now the Jewish Quarter but said that the special historical significance of the area to the Jewish people trumps all legal claims to the property by non-Jews.

It is strange to walk through Jerusalem and see the American kids on their Birthright trips and all of the Christian tourists and hear all of the stories the guides are telling.  To control the narrative of the city of Jerusalem is to possess the city. At the moment, the pro-Zionism Israeli narrative (only one of many Israeli narratives) is the dominant one. But of course possession of this city, along with the power of narrative, has changed hands throughout time. This is the way of all things I guess. All powers fall, right Mom? I only hope that we can keep the subjugated narratives alive through their period of subjugation.