“This is not a human being...”

A few nights ago I visited Sheikh Jarrah, the place in East Jerusalem that I wrote about just after I arrived where several Palestinian families were evicted from their homes and living on the streets. I went to visit the families and sat with them for a few hours.

When I visited, they had spent 27 days living on the street just in front of the house they had lived in for over 55 years. Three brothers lived in the houses – it had been one house originally and turned into three to accommodate all of their families.

At 5am on Monday 3 August 500 soldiers surrounded the houses (as well as others in the same district), exploded open the doors and stormed the houses destroying everything in their path. They broke the doors, the windows, smashed the furniture and threw the rest out in the garden – photos of parents who had passed away, things that their children had made at school, all were thrown away. “Everything we had worked so hard to bring, they destroyed”. The soldiers wouldn’t let a woman in her late 60’s take her medicine for a recent operation on her eye. The soldiers raided the fridge and laughed as they took a child’s chocolate.

The brother I spoke to was in his late sixties. He had lived in the house for 55 years, his brothers had been born there. Two weeks earlier they had received a paper from the court ordering them to be out of the house and giving them 10 days - between 1-10 August to leave. On the second day the army arrived to throw them out.

By 8am the same day, a family of 15 Jewish settlers had moved into the house.

The following day, one of the settlers brought some of the broken glass to a skip in front of the house, right next to where the family are living, watching them smugly as they tipped the rubbish as if to say they are the victorious ones, that they have won. Every day the settlers enter the house from the front in full view of the family they have forced out. The other day one of the settler children, a boy, stood on the roof top of the house praying, holding the Torah in one hand, a gun in the other.

Soon after the family was evicted, the settler family took them to court to try to get them removed. They made claims that they had erected tents in front of the house, were throwing stones, making noise and were too close to the house. There are no stones in the area and they live in the cold open air, not in tents. When they were evicted they were told they mustn’t come within 20 metres of the house. Where they sit, where they lay their mattresses, is at least 40-50 metres from the house. Every day they sit doing nothing except receiving visitors, which are regular and even high profile - the day before Jimmy Carter and Desmond Tutu had visited them. Otherwise most days there are journalists who come to talk to them and note down their story. But still they live on the streets. The Court didn’t force them to move from where they are living, but told them not to throw the stones they aren’t throwing and not to bother the settlers.

I asked them what they would do. “Even if the Government gives us a house”, they said, “we will stay here to let everyone know this is OUR house. All our memories are here, my father, my mother died in this house. These trees are like my sons”. The lemon trees that they planted in the front garden many years ago are starting to turn brown because they are not being watered or looked after.

Now the men sleep on the street in front of the house. The women and children stay in a nearby hotel – there were 6 children living in the house before they were evicted, one young woman is studying psychology at university so she needs a base to work from.

“Where is your brain, where is your heart, where are your feelings to throw our children outside and put your children inside? This is not a human being. Don’t you have any feelings?” I think I asked the family what they most wanted to say to the settlers.

The only reason they were evicted was because they weren’t Jewish.

The Jewish family is now living in an entirely Palestinian neighbourhood, apart from the other settlers who have also moved in recently to Palestinian homes. The same night – or morning, the soldiers also destroyed a tent which a family was using to shelter in after they were also evicted from their home a while ago. Others are awaiting eviction. The ‘Arabs’ that they most hate (and think most hate them) are their surrounding neighbours and they live not only with security cameras on the outside, but security guards on the inside. They have probably been given a large amount of money by the Government to live in these neighbourhoods, in these homes. But how much money does it take to numb their consciences? What is the price of watching another’s child live on the street while you live in their rooms, sleep in their beds? How is it possible for human beings to be this cruel?

From Ramallah to East Jerusalem

F worked for 14 years in Jerusalem before the wall was built. He travelled to and from Ramallah where his family live every day, it took fifteen maybe twenty minutes. He took a road which brought him directly to East Jerusalem. Since the wall his story is very different.

In order to work in Jerusalem Palestinians need a permit. Unless they have one, they will not be allowed through the checkpoint at Qalandiya, the check point between Ramallah and East Jerusalem. Qalandiya is one of the largest Israeli military checkpoints in the occupied West Bank. It is not located on a border, but between Palestinian towns and neighbourhoods.

F’s boss – who he has worked for over the last 14 years applied for a permit for him. It costs $1500 for a six month permit and on top of that 800 NIS – around £130 (new Israeli sheckles) each month.

Every day he crossed through Qalandiya checkpoint, every day he was taken into a tiny room – he showed us photos – and held there for any amount of time from 5 minutes to three hours. Inside the room where he was usually left alone, there was a constant high pitched sound – he covered his ears with a napkin and played with his phone in an attempt to drown out the noise. Often the officers (often female) would knock on the window, tell him to take the napkin away from his ears and stop playing with his phone. When he didn’t they came in and did it for him. They told him he was crazy – he asked what they wanted him to do while he was sitting there waiting for them to release him so he could carry on his way. There are no cameras in these rooms so the IDF can do anything they like unobserved and unrecorded.

After one month – he had five months left to go on his (legal) permit, without any explanation they took the permit away from him and told him to go home.

Without a permit at this time which was about a year ago, there were only a few ways into East Jerusalem. One was through the underground sewage canal. When F needed to travel to Ramallah he would return this way. Sometime he would leave Ramallah at five in the morning and not arrive until midnight. He could spend fifteen minutes or all day underground waiting for the army to leave the exit point of the sewage system. Sometimes he was alone, other times he could be with up to 100 people.

Then the army closed this exit point permanently so they had to find another way, which was over the wall. At this point the wall in this area was around 6 metres high. F would climb to the top of a building which was around the same height and balance a plank of wood between the roof and the wall and walk over. When the soldiers saw them doing this they shot at them – one day ten jeeps arrived to look for him in the building. He hid for two hours until they left.

Then the height of the wall was extended, from 6 metres to around 14 and it became much more difficult to jump over.

A year later he tried again to get a permit. His boss paid another $1500 and 800 NIS per month. Again each day he was taken into the room and left there with the sound. At Qalandiya checkpoint there are five different ‘lanes’. After around 20 days as he got to the front of one of these lanes, they closed the access point. ‘Mohamed’ the female IDF soldier called out – his name isn’t Mohamed but such is the disrespect of the Israeli army – and ordered him to enter the room or he wouldn’t be allowed to pass. Inside the room were four female IDF soldiers. Once the door was closed they start to touch him, tell him he is beautiful. One signalled to her breasts, told him ‘silicon, silicon, touch, touch’. He was afraid that they would put him in unwillingly in a compromising position, perhaps take photos and blackmail him – this often happens and people are forced to find out ‘inside information’ and give it to the army. If they don’t they know to expect the worst.

He told them to open the door, demanded to see their boss – they said he wasn’t working as it was Shabbat. So he started to shout and beat the door. She called him ‘mastul’ – ‘crazy’ in Hebrew and let him go.

The following days, the same female IDF soldier denied him entry through the checkpoint, told him he couldn’t pass. She brought her boss – F told him what had happened in the small room but the officer in charge didn’t believe him. Instead he threatened that if F made problems here he wouldn’t ever pass to go to work.

After that, F looked tried to make sure he avoided the lane where this particular IDF soldier was. Still every day he was held in the checkpoint room for between 5 minutes and three hours.

A month and a half into his second permit, they took him into the small room and this time told him he couldn’t pass because the Shabak – the border police didn’t want him to. Again they took his permit from him and sent him home.

Now he stays in Jerusalem, in the shop he works in 24/7. He can’t even move around the Old City because the IDF might stop him arbitrarily and demand to see the permit he doesn’t have. If that happens he faces three years in jail. But he says ‘here I’m in jail, there I’m in jail. The only difference is that here I take money. There I don’t.’

He hasn’t been back to Ramallah for a month, hasn’t seen his family (as he’s telling us this story he remembers he hasn’t called his mother today – he calls her every day – and rushes off to call her) but soon he will return for Eid to be with his family and give money to the women of the family as is customary during Eid. We asked how he’ll get back to Jerusalem but he won’t tell us. It’s a secret...’ he said with a smile.