51887400 Jerusalem Dispossessed Booklet

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Activestills.org | 1Jerusalem Dispossessed

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During our documentary work in and around Jerusalem, we have been increasingly exposed to the dark side of the City of Light. There, hundreds of thousands of people are living in shadow, with identity defined by

forces they cannot control, unwanted in their own homes, afraid of being expelled while they are just asking to live peacefully in their city. Above all we want to discuss humanity, but the sad thing is that in Jerusalem one’s value as a human being is determined by ethnic group and religion. Together with its bulldozers, Israel is trying to smash the Palestinian community in East Jerusalem to dust. Divide and rule. Conquer and annex. If Jerusalem is to remain the symbol of peace and tolerance, it cannot be a ghetto for anyone or owned by any particular group. In the same year that Israel celebrates 40 years of the so-called “unity” of Jerusalem, the city has been divided by force, discrimination and injustice. In the “holy city” of 2007, it seems that the only god is “security” and real estate. Israeli policy is drawing a twisting path of a wall that more than anything ensures more conflict, suffering and despair.

The future of Israel cannot be built by blocking the potential of the other. Any negotiation taking place while facts and borders are aggressively being determined according to one side’s interests, is just an illusion. Without real freedom and respect of the other’s right to live in dignity, there is no basis for political negotiation. ActiveStills, October 2007 Anne Paq, Keren Manor, Nir Landau, Oren Ziv, Tess Scheflan, Yotam Ronen.

Activestills.org

Jerusalem Dispossessed

If you are interested in arranging an exhibition of the photos in this catalogue, or use them in any other way, please contact us at:[email protected] / [email protected], or at +972-547-366-393 (Angela)+972-528-212-930 (Keren)

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Where is Peace?By Muna Hamzeh (1996)

Palestine, of course, needs no introduction. Everyone who has the slightest interest in world affairs knows the Holy Land is a turbulent hotspot where peace seems to be as elusive as a cool breeze on a scorching summer afternoon. But what eludes anyone who lives outside the boundaries of Palestine is just how psychologically stagnant life here actually is. The constant political instability, the acute Israeli racism against the Palestinians, the extremely dire economic situation, the lack of human rights, the military checkpoints wherever you go. Life under occupation is not a life. There is absolutely nothing normal or good about it. All it does is stagnate those who are occupied. It is a slow death nibbling at me bit by tiny bit.I know I want to live a life as a free woman. I want to go for a drive in my car without worrying about whether or not I have a permit to cross this or that military checkpoint. I want to go to a crowded Israeli beach and speak in Arabic without being afraid of getting dirty looks from passers-by because I’m an Arab. I want to travel abroad with my husband without wondering whether the Israelis will consider him a “security risk” thus denying him access to their airport. And so I feel choked by this country. A living corpse waiting for something. For what? For Palestinian, Israeli and American leaders to decide the destiny of the masses who live here! Will there be everlasting peace? Will Jews and Arabs co-exist in the Holy Land? Will there be an independent Palestinian state? Will we have human rights? Will we have a better economy? Will we have freedom of movement? Will we have the right to live? Will Israel’s occupation of us ever come to an end? Ever?

Jerusalem celebrated its 40th anniversary as a “united city”, while the international community continues to refuse to recognise it as the capital of Israel. In 1967, Israel annexed East Jerusalem, thus breaching international law. For this reason, East Jerusalem remains occupied territory.


Bare roots of an olive tree

in the Sur Baher yard of a Palestinian home under

threat of demolition.

The Arab architectural features absorbed into the gentrification become major selling points for new buildings in the west of the city.


Palestinian workers hoping for work in Jerusalem, at 6.00 a.m. in a-Ram, which is now completely surrounded by the Wall. Tens of thousands have had to move as homes, hospitals, schools, clients, friends and family are now cut off; the Wall has created a massive population transfer. A-Ram had been a major Palestinian commercial centre.

They left West Jerusalem

overnight in panic, in April

’48, warned by Jewish terror

squads that Dir Yassin massacre

would be repeated. Today,

Palestinian workers gentrify

old Palestinian villas for the Jewish real

estate market.

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South-east Jerusalem, the Riot Police and

Border Police leave after

policing a home demolition.

Opposite: After 30 years of

work at Hadassah Hospital, savings

for a dream home vanished

in a two-day demolition. Home

to an extended family of sons

and daughters.


Demolition order. Home demolitions in Jerusalem are conducted for 'administrative' reasons, generally for a lack of permit. Permits from the Jerusalem Municipality are almost impossible to obtain by East Jerusalem Palestinians living under Occupation.

Opposite:Three generations of the Siam family become homeless in Silwan. Between 1994-2006, 678 houses were demolished in East Jerusalem alone.


Children of the Shu’afat Refugee Camp overlooking the Jewish settlement of Pisgat Ze’ev built during the Oslo “peace process” years. The camp is overcrowded and lacks basic services; people are being expelled by the Wall construction, having originally been forced from the Old City in ’67 when Israel demolished homes to make the Western Wall plaza.

Home demolitions

are also family demolitions.


Israel conquers the desert with concrete. Ma’ale Adumim settlement (34,000 people – as opposed to 15,000 in 1991), is the settlement which most threatens the viability of a future Palestinian state, as it divides the West Bank into cantons, prevents Palestinians from having access to East Jerusalem, and pre-empts natural expansion of East Jerusalem.

Opposite:3,000 Bedouin Jahalin refugees (evicted from their lands in the Negev in the 50’s), are now living under eviction orders because of the construction of the Wall around Ma’ale Adumim settlement.


The wall at Abu Dis curving around a future settlement, Kidmat Zion.

Contradicting security needs, which would apply a straight, defensible

line, the choice of path reveals the real interest: maximum land,

minimum population.

Opposite:The first Friday of Ramadan:

Palestinian worshippers who have not been allowed to reach the holy site, al-Aqsa Mosque, because of heavy

security checks, have to pray outside it, under Israeli police guard.

Settler take-over in Silwan, near al-Aqsa mosque; the “Holy Basin” is the most concentrated focus of

population transfer, especially using archaeology, home demolitions and

settler take-overs.


School’s out in Anata. In the shadow of the Wall, what are the lessons?

Opposite:Al Quds university students look towards the future that Israel is building for them. After completion of the Wall, many students cannot reach their studies.

22 | activestills.org Israeli soldiers often harass Palestinian kids: in January ’07, border police shot to death Abir Aramin, a 10 year-old girl on her way home from Anata school, with a rubber bullet; no stones were thrown by any kids that day. Her father is active in Combatants for Peace. The file investigating her death was closed for insufficient evidence.

Opposite: Although entitled to free public education, the Arab education system in East Jerusalem has been severely neglected, resulting in a shortage of over 1,300 classrooms.


Demolition of Jahalin Bedouin

refugee shacks in mid-winter.

Opposite:Jahalin refugees

from the Negev are soon to be forcibly

transferred by Israel but with

nowhere to go… Others are

considered lucky to be allowed

to live near the municipal

garbage dump.


Israeli special riot police forces

standing on Muslim graves,

watching worshippers

leave the al-Aqsa Mosque.

Har Homa settlement, built during the Oslo “Peace Process” (despite Oslo prohibiting new settlements), stifles the Bethlehem area whilst destroying the most beautiful, wooded hill in the region. Netanyahu said he “had to build Har Homa, to prevent Bethlehem from creeping into Jerusalem”.


Settler organisations,

heavily funded by American Jewish

billionaires, have focused on

Silwan and the Holy Basin as a

means of cutting off the Old City

from Palestinians and extending

exclusive Israeli control.

Opposite: Settler children in Silwan, which has

been the target of intense efforts

by extremist Jewish settlers

to gain a foothold and expand their

presence in the heart of strategic

Palestinian neighbourhoods.


A new police station in the

West Bank (E1) built by settlers, at their expense

($10 million), to link Maale

Adumim to Jerusalem.

Al Qader (Tunnel) checkpoint in the Gush Etzion Bloc, Greater Jerusalem. The apartheid road system serves settlers only, incorporating the region of Greater Jerusalem into Israel. There are more settlers in the Gush Etzion bloc (a major water source) than Palestinians.



Broken families. Living with uncertainty.

Opposite: Palestinian Jerusalemites = 34% of the city’s population. Paying municipal rates and taxes, they receive less than 10% of the municipal budget. “East Jerusalemites like to live in Third World surroundings,” said one Israeli Member of Knesset. For their rates and taxes, Palestinians say they only get bulldozers.


Stolen olive tree. Plastic grass. Roundabout in Pisgat Zeev settlement in front of Anata.

Opposite: Palestinian kids playing in the Old City’s Moslem Quarter. A new, Jewish settlement of 31 residential units is due to rise here, instead. West Jerusalem has 531 sports facilities, East Jerusalem has 33; West Jerusalem has 36 municipal swimming pools; East Jerusalem has none.


Celebrations of 40 years of Jewish control over “united” Jerusalem.

Opposite:From 5.00 a.m. onwards, Palestinian workers in Bethlehem queue hours to try to enter Jerusalem, seeking work. Bethlehem was always a twin part of the city. Ramallah/East Jerusalem/Bethlehem is the major Palestinian economic salient, once representing 40% of their economy.


Sheikh Sa’ad is yet another Palestinian neighbourhood of East Jerusalem where the Wall and a checkpoint have besieged the entire area, so that most villagers have had to abandon their homes, and the village now stands empty. Nuaman, Wallaje, Bir Nabala, A-Ram and A-Zaim are similar examples.

Opposite: Qalandia checkpoint. Please wait your turn patiently. Since 2005, a massive system of cement walls, gates, carousels and lanes marks the northern entrance to Jerusalem. Daily, thousands of Palestinians have to wait hours to return home or reach work. They are the lucky minority who manage to obtain permits to use the checkpoints.


The “Jerusalem Envelope” is the official name given by

Israel to the construction of the wall or “separation

barrier” in Jerusalem, disguising the reality it

creates - ethnic separation between populations.

Opposite: Building a separation or

apartheid road: Jews on the left of the Wall, Palestinians

on the right. In the West Bank, over 20 “Jews only”

roads, which form the main grid of the region, have

forced Palestinians onto non-commercial mountain

tracks, whilst Jewish settlers have easy access on a road

system upgraded with $3 billion of US aid money.


Nof Zion – “a view of Zion – a private neighbourhood in Jerusalem.” American Jews buy holiday homes in a Palestinian neighbourhood. On privately owned Palestinian land. Creating a wedge of Israeli settlements deep inside Palestinian Occupied Territory that will prevent the Clinton Parameters from ever being realised. Another thorn in the side of peace.

Opposite: Ancient and modern. Israeli settlement and Wall expansion has devastated a biblical, world heritage landscape.

Identity Card, 1966 Mahmoud DarwishWrite!I am Arab.Card number: 50,000Number of children: eight.And the ninth will arrive after the summer.And you are furious! Write!I am Arab.Without a family name – I am my first

name“Infinitely patient” in a country where

everybodyLives on the embers of AngerMy roots …Before the birth of time they were growing deepBefore the overflowing of

steadfastness.Before the cypress and the olive.. before grass started to grow

My father .. comes from a family oflabourersAnd has nothing to do with gentlemenMy grandfather was a peasant – a personWithout value – or noble descentWho taught me the pride of the sun before teachingMe to read booksWithout a family name – I am nothing but my first name

Write!My hair .. colour of coalMy eyes … colour of coffeeDistinguishing marksOn my head a kuffiya with its cord

tightly knottedAnd my palm is rough as a stone… it scratches the hand that shakes itThe food I prefer is olive oil and thyme

Write!That I am ArabThat you seized the vines of my fathersAnd the land I farmedMe and my children togetherYou have taken everything from us

exceptThe survival of my grandchildrenThese rocks hereBut your government is going to seize them, too… from what they say!

SO! Write! At the top of the first page

That I have no hatred for peopleThat I attack no oneBut that ... if I am hungryI eat the flesh of my Usurper

Beware! Beware! Beware!My fury!

WWW.ACTIVESTILLS.ORG

This exhibition is mounted by ActiveStills (an independent collective of photographers who believe in photography’s power to create change through awareness) and ICAHD: The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions’ Action Advocacy Project (Angela

Godfrey - Goldstein). Funding by Irish Aid, The Austrian Development Agency and The Netherlands Representative Office is gratefully acknowledged, as is generous permission to use the writings of Mahmoud Darwish and Muna Hamzeh by those two Palestinian poets.

Documents

51887400 Jerusalem Dispossessed Booklet