Click on map to enlarge. Courtesy of Ir Amim.

Worldfocus spoke with Hussein Ibish, a senior fellow at the American Task Force for Palestine, a non-profit dedicated to a two-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Originally from Beirut, Ibish is the former Washington D.C. correspondent for Lebanon’s Daily Star and current author of IbishBlog.

Worldfocus: How would you characterize the current situation in Jerusalem?

Hussein Ibish: Jerusalem is the most divided city in the world. Israelis in West Jerusalem and the Jewish quarter feel like normal citizens of the Israeli state living under Israeli law. For them, life is very normal.

But East Jerusalem is more than 80 percent Arab. The situation is similar to that in the rest of the occupied territory, but it’s starker in Jerusalem because they’re living in such proximity. Insofar as an analogy to “apartheid” applies, this is more stark in Jerusalem than anywhere else, where separate and unequal is almost universal.

Most Jerusalem Arabs are not in effect subjects of Israeli law but practically live under martial law. In many cases, they’re technically residents of Israel — but not citizens. They can’t vote in national elections. And they generally don’t vote in municipal elections. Jerusalem is the flash point for the conflict.

Worldfocus: Why can’t the leaders on both sides reach a rational agreement about sharing the city?

Hussein Ibish: The cultural, religious and political importance of the holy places means that Jerusalem is central to both populations. Both sides are becoming increasingly influenced by right-wing religious rhetoric. The conflict is transforming from an ethnic struggle over land and power in a small area — into a religious struggle between bearded fanatics on both sides about the will of God and holy places.

The Old City of Jerusalem requires a creative solution and the unique formula like the Vatican City. It can’t be the exclusive preserve of any of the religious or ethnic groups. A unique formula has to be found. But it’s not beyond the wit of man to come up with a solution for this, because the national interests of all parties require it.

Worldfocus: Are there certain deal-breakers on the issue of Jerusalem?

Hussein Ibish: For the Israeli side, the “right of return” (for Palestinian refugees) is a deal-breaker just like the claim that Jerusalem is the undivided and eternal Israeli capital is for the Palestinians. This kind of rhetoric acts as a political narcotic: it makes people feel good, but it’s extremely damaging.

But when you get into the final status agreement, these are all issues that can be negotiated successfully. Both parties have a stake in making it work. That could keep Jerusalem united and parts of the city jointly administered — although with separate sovereignty. All it takes is political will and some creativity. I’ve thought about it a lot, and I’m a skeptical person, but it seems possible to me. It’ll be an unusual arrangement reflecting the unique character of the place.

There are reciprocal bitter pills on the right of return and Jerusalem both sides must swallow in their own existential national interests.

The only serious player really resistant to this idea [to create two capitals in Jerusalem] is the Israeli government, which is trying to prevent Jerusalem from being a topic of discussion in any the final status talks. But Obama made it very clear that the terms of reference need to be clear and precise — and involve security for both parties, borders, refugees and Jerusalem. The U.S. position on Jerusalem is closer to the Palestinian view than to the Israeli one. There is implicit understanding in the U.S. that most of East Jerusalem needs to be the Palestinian capital.

There will also clearly have to be a land swaps. The Palestinian people accept that, and the leadership accepts it. Not every settlement in and around Jerusalem must be evacuate. I don’t mean that the Palestinians will be unwilling to have Israelis [in Palestinian-controlled East Jerusalem] or elsewhere in the Palestinian state. But the Israel government would probably not want to face the crisis of some incident involving Israeli citizens living in newly sovereign Palestinian state, and I think it will be they who push for
evacuation in the event of an agreement.

Both sides should be creative and flexible and Israel should be willing to evacuate settlements that make Palestinian statehood impossible. It’s politically problematic but not impossible. These are painful concessions for both but they are obviously necessary. It’s all about a series of complicated quid pro quos. This is not a menu where you can go through and choose what you want based on your tastes, its a delicate pattern of concessions. It’s also a kaleidoscope. Every time you move the image a little, the whole pattern shifts.

Worldfocus: Do you envision that Jewish Israelis will be able to stay on in the areas that become Palestine in East Jerusalem and the West Bank?

Hussein Ibish: Palestinian citizenship or dual citizenship for them is possible, but I don’t think the Israeli government will allow it in the West Bank, though they might find a way to make it work in East Jerusalem.

An agreement is in the core existential national interest of both parties. Settlements will be evacuated according to a variety of formulae. At least 75,000 [Jewish settlers] will need to be removed. That means perhaps up to 200,000- 300,000 will be staying where they are in the small parts of West Bank such as Ma’ale Adumim that will become part of Israel.

The bottom line is that the Palestinians cannot be denied 22% of Mandatory Palestine — the equivalent of East Jerusalem, Gaza and the West Bank. I think they need and deserve that.

Worldfocus: What role will Palestinian Gaza play if it continues to be a separate entity from the Palestinian West Bank?

Hussein Ibish: Gaza has no independent future from the rest of Palestine. The idea of a political status that is separate is completely wrong. Very few people in the Gaza Strip want that. Israel is strategically trying to emphasize these divisions, but it’s not something that will take.

I don’t think we’re looking at a scenario yet where Hamas can really succeed in replacing the PLO. They’re quite far away from that. All they hope to do so is for negotiations to break down. Hamas are weak and isolated — only able to maintain control in Gaza through brute force and oppression. Hamas thrives on chaos, stalemate [in talks] and a rhetoric of confrontation and violence. Their core constituency — at most 13-15 percent of the Palestinian population — believes in the Muslim Brotherhood model. But that’s not really a major political force unless there is no hope for peace.

Worldfocus: How about fresh alternatives to the Fatah-Hamas split?

Hussein Ibish: Salam Fayyad a very serious actor on the scene, yet he’s not a politician. Fatah is a dysfunctional political party but commands major support. The PA could use Fatah’s political authority to facilitate Fayyad’s state-building agenda and technocratic prowess. This is crucial because Fayyad’s plan provides another avenue for progress, change and momentum towards ending both the occupation and the conflict. If 1/20 of Fayyad’s plan could be implemented, there would be a serious transformation of the strategic environment, greatly enhancing Palestinian interests and the prospects for peace.

I think his plan could serve as a crucial augmentation of diplomacy and a parallel track that is constructive, serious and transformational. The biggest threat to it at the moment is the idea of dissolving the PA and going back functioning strictly through the PLO as a diplomatic but not a governing entity. With international financial support and political protection, it would be very difficult for Israel to block this institution-building plan. In short order, this could really change the Palestinian political scene and the strategic environment for the better.

- Ben Piven

Listen to Worldfocus Radio: Martin Savidge hosts “Jerusalem United or Divided?” with Mustafa Barghouti of the Palestinian National Initiative and Gershon Baskin of the Israel-Palestine Center for Research and Information.

Listen to Worldfocus Radio: Martin Savidge hosts “Jerusalem United or Divided?” with Mustafa Barghouti of the Palestinian National Initiative and Gershon Baskin of the Israel-Palestine Center for Research and Information.

Click here for more of Worldfocus’ coverage of Israel.

Currently, Barghouti is the Secretary-General of the Palestinian National Initiative, a political party that was formed in 2002 with Edward Said, Dr. Haidar Abdel-Shafi and Ibrahim Dakkak. The Initiative (al-Mubadara in Arabic) calls for nonviolent resistance against the Israel occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.

Worldfocus producer Mohammad al-Kassim recently interviewed Barghouti in New York. The rising Palestinian politician talks openly about the difficulties facing the Middle East process, infighting among Palestinians and the Obama administration. Despite all the obstacles, Barghouti feels surprisingly positive about the future.

Also, listen to Barghouti on Worldfocus Radio: Jerusalem United or Divided?

Israeli soldiers argue with a Palestinian farmer in at-Tuwani, West Bank. Photo: Flickr user JoshHough

The peace process between Israel and the Palestinians is in crisis, with no sign that a key issue — freezing Israeli settlements — can be resolved any time soon.

With that in mind, we want to go beyond the rhetoric and look at how Israelis and Palestinians see their shared land.

Should Israel agree to demands to freeze all settlement building?

Tell us what you think in the comments section below. Please remember to be respectful and on-point in your comments. Malicious or offensive comments will be deleted and repeat offenders will be banned.

In one of the world’s most contentious cities, there are two conflicting claims to sovereignty over holy places and residential neighborhoods. East and West Jerusalem are divided along ethnic and religious lines — in addition to the separation fence that Israel built to secure the city.

Palestinians claim the eastern sections of the city as the capital of a future Palestinian state. While successive Israeli prime ministers have announced support for a two-state solution, there is ambivalence about how and when to alter the city’s political fabric.

Martin Savidge hosts Mustafa Barghouti and Gershon Baskin on this week’s Worldfocus Radio show “Jerusalem United or Divided?”

The radio show builds upon three Worldfocus signature videos about Israel — on hi-tech, divorce and settlements — and will focus on the following areas:

• Geography of Jerusalem: East and West, Old City, Temple Mount and security barrier
• Demographic Shift: secular flight, “Judaization,” and “united” capital city
• Shared Capital: unilateral statehood, joint sovereignty and Palestinian government

Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Photo: Ben Piven

GUESTS:

Mustafa Barghouti is the secretary-general of the Palestinian National Initiative (al-Mubadara), also known as the “third way.” A Ramallah resident, he serves in the Palestinian parliament (PLC) and was the Minister of Information in the short-lived Palestinian unity government. He came in second (with 19%) to Mahmoud Abbas in the 2005 presidential elections. He also appeared on the Daily Show last month.

Gershon Baskin is co-chairman of the Israel-Palestine Center for Research and Information, a Jerusalem-based organization committed to the two-state solution. He specializes in the future of Jerusalem, strategic cooperation and water issues. He was also on Israeli PM Ehud Barak’s team of Jerusalem experts following the Camp David talks.

Credits:
Host: Martin Savidge
Producers: Ben Piven and Lisa Biagiotti
Researcher: Mohammad al Kassim

A checkpoint in the West Bank.

Ambassador S. Azmat Hassan is a former career diplomat and a former Ambassador of Pakistan to Malaysia, Syria and Morocco and Deputy Permanent Representative of Pakistan to the United Nations in New York. He currently serves as an Adjunct Professor at Seton Hall University. He is a contributing blogger for Worldfocus.

In the past decades the United States has taken the lead in initiating a number of diplomatic moves to cut the Gordian knot of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There are two UN Security Council Resolutions agreed to by the protagonists: the Madrid Peace Process and the Road Map to a two-state solution. These initiatives have largely foundered on the twin shoals of Israeli intransigence and Palestinian disunity.

Enter President Obama with his vow to improve U.S. relations with the Muslim world. His speeches in Egypt and Turkey calling for new beginning were warmly welcomed by Muslims and indeed the wider international community. Obama called for a total freeze on Israeli settlements as a necessary first step to starting comprehensive negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians aimed at ending their conflict. No doubt his motives were sincere. However, his efforts have yielded no concrete results so far.

The Israeli government, led by Netanyahu and his hawkish Foreign Minister Lieberman, have spurned Obama’s entreaties to freeze all settlement building in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The U.S. then changed course and is now trying to get the two sides to talk while new settlement blocks continue to be built. No Palestinian leadership can be expected to negotiate in this scenario. The impasse has deepened. US credibility is at a low point in the Muslim world.

The opinion in the street is that Obama lacks the clout with Netanyahu to bring him around to halt all settlement activity in the occupied Palestinian territories. Not doing so means that a two state solution will not happen. The ability of the U.S. to act as an honest broker is thus being questioned again. Palestine Authority President Mahmoud Abbas seems to have thrown up his hands in despair. He says he will not be standing for reelection next January.

The U.S. is the main supporter and aid-giver to Israel. U.S. interests in the Middle East apparently dictate that it continues to support Israel — come what may. I disagree with this post-1967 assessment because the Middle East has evolved. Clinging to old shibboleths in foreign policy never helps. But the real question is how long will the Arab countries continue to put up with the abominable status quo of Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands?

Meanwhile, the Palestinian political leadership is split with the extremist Hamas faction ruling in Gaza while an increasing weak and ineffectual Abbas has a tenuous hold in the West Bank, and Palestinians continue to suffer the daily humiliations of an onerous Israeli occupation.

I think the Obama administration needs to get tough with both the Israelis and Palestinians. Both should be told that they have to get their act together. The Israelis should be told in no uncertain terms that they cannot expect to hold on to the West Bank and East Jerusalem indefinitely. The US should not be squeamish. It must treat Israel as any other country in the Middle East and not as a special case. The Fatah and Hamas factions need to be told to bury their differences, form a unity government and engage with the Israelis. Sometimes tough love produces fruitful results compared to continuing meaningless talks to nowhere.

Whether Obama and his team can summon the political resolve, commitment and impartiality in moving the two parties toward a final settlement of this long standing conflict remains to be seen. One can only hope that Obama will succeed where his predecessors have failed. Otherwise we should brace ourselves for another eruption of bloody fighting with incalculable consequences for peace and stability in the Middle East.

The views of contributing bloggers do not reflect the views of Worldfocus or its partners.

Yuli Edelstein, the Minister of Public Affairs and the Diaspora in the Israeli cabinet, joins Daljit Dhaliwal to discuss the prospects of peace in the Middle East and why Israel won’t agree to a settlement freeze.

Al Jazeera English’s John Terrett reports on the challenges and reasons behind Abbas’ decision to bow out of politics — including the expansion of Israeli settlements and the impartial U.S. stance.

Pottery, glass and ceramic making are ancient industries in Hebron, Palestine. The city’s leather, stone, glass and ceramic goods are found throughout Palestinian, Israeli and Arab markets — but this is changing with the advent of economic globalization and fierce competition from inexpensive Chinese goods. Additionally, the political instability that has plagued the region for many years scares away tourists.

Emad El Natche and his family own and operate a Hebron glass and ceramics factory. Mr. El Natche spends hours in front of a gas oven melting recycled glass bottles at high temperatures. No two pieces that Mr. El Natche creates are alike; he prides himself on the attention to detail each piece gets. He says all of his creations are unique because of the process that no machine can replicate.

Despite the challenges from globalization and a lack of master craftsmen, El Natche remains hopeful that this ancient craft is not going to disappear without a fight.

- Mohammad al Kassim

Daljit Dhaliwal talks about the latest developments with Daniel Levy, co-director of the Middle East Task Force at the New America Foundation. He says that many are waiting to see what — if anything — the U.S. has to offer in the way of a new U.S. proposal for the MidEast peace process.

Is the U.S. even-handed in dealing with Israel’s settlement policy?

Tell us what you think in the comments section below. Please remember to be respectful and on-point in your comments. Malicious or offensive comments will be deleted and repeat offenders will be banned.

Only a few days after Turkey excluded Israel from a joint NATO war exercise, a new crisis is brewing between the two Middle East allies.

The problem is a television drama series that Israel condemns as state-sanctioned “incitement.”

“Separation,” a 13-part TV series that aired on Turkey’s state-run television channel for the first time on Wednesday, has several controversial scenes. In one, a Palestinian father holds his new-born above his head in front of Israeli soldiers at a check point. A few seconds later, one of the soldiers shoots the baby dead. In another scene, Israeli soldiers kick and beat elderly Palestinians on the streets and one soldier shoots a teenage Palestinian girl on her chest.

Here is an excerpt from the television drama “Separation:”

The drama outraged Israel. The Foreign Ministry summoned the deputy chief of mission at the Turkish embassy to complain and protest. “Such a drama series, which doesn’t even have the slightest link to reality and which presents Israeli soldiers as murderers of innocent children, isn’t worthy of being broadcast even by enemy states and certainly not in a state which has full diplomatic relations with Israel,” said Israel’s Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman.

The coordinator of the Turkish drama replied by saying that none of the incidents in the show were “imaginary.” “It is possible to find photographs of what Israelis did to Palestinians on the Internet,” said Bulent Erdinc, the series coordinator.

The Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu also shrugged off angry Israeli protests over the show saying the Turkish state “has no right to comment on the quality of broadcasts or the opinions expressed in them.” This statement should be met with some skepticism as Turkey’s record on freedom of speech issues is not known to be very high.

The controversial scenes in the drama are subjective. I’m sure some people will think they’re simple propaganda and some will think them a reflection of reality. In general, Turkish films, especially TV dramas and soap-operas, do tend towards exaggerated melodrama.

But a broader question here is whether filmmakers should care about the sensitivities of those they depict.  For example, should the producers and writers of the drama series “24″ have taken into consideration the fact that their depiction of Muslim terrorists may have possibly led to suspicion against ordinary Arab-Americans?

The TV drama is airing on Turkey’s state-owned channel, TRT. This channel, according to law, has to be “autonomous and impartial.” However, since the Islamist-based ruling AK party came to power in Turkey, TRT has been criticized for its religious/conservative programming, and also for appointing party sympathizers. I think it’s quite possible that the government officials knew what this television drama, which has been advertised in Turkey for a long time, was going to entail. And I imagine they could foresee the reaction it would draw from Israel.

In that case, considering the already strained relations between the two “allied” nations, the question becomes, is the Turkish government interested in enlarging the rift between the two countries? And if so, what would this say about the future of the Middle East?

- Gizem Yarbil

A young anti-war protester in Paris on January 10, 2009. Photo: Flickr user looking4poetry

Almost one year after the devastating war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, the Security Council could soon use the U.N. Human Rights Council-endorsed Goldstone Commission Report to pursue legal action against alleged war criminals on both sides.

Supporters of Israel and the Palestinians continue to debate the relative merits of the report. Media in the Middle East are skeptical that the report will lead to concrete legal results.

Do you think Israel and/or the Palestinians should face prosecution for their actions in the Gaza War?

Tell us what you think in the comments section below. Please remember to be respectful and on-point in your comments. Malicious or offensive comments will be deleted and repeat offenders will be banned.

Sergeant Gilad Schalit.

In the Middle East, an unusual exchange took place on Friday between Israel and the militant Palestinian organization Hamas, resulting in proof that an Israeli prisoner held for more than three years is still alive.

Hamas released a two-minute video showing Sergeant Gilad Schalit displaying a newspaper to show the date, September 14. He said he was in good health and that his captors were treating him well. He got up to show that he could walk.

Watch the video.

Before Hamas released that video, Israel freed 19 female prisoners who were greeted by hundreds of supporters as they returned home to the West Bank. Hamas is demanding freedom for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in return for Gilad Schalit’s release.

Should Israel agree to release hundreds of Palestinian prisoners to secure the release of one Israeli soldier?

Tell us what you think in the comments section below. Please remember to be respectful and on-point in your comments. Malicious or offensive comments will be deleted and repeat offenders will be banned.

The meeting between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas did not produce a breakthrough, but it was a moment deep in symbolism — the beginning, perhaps, of a new and more productive phase in the struggle for peace in the Middle East.

For his part, Obama had a strong message for the leaders after meeting with them individually: Get moving again on a comprehensive peace agreement.

After the meeting, Netanyahu said there was general agreement that the peace process has to be resumed as soon as possible with no preconditions.

Ghassan Shabaneh, an assistant professor of international studies at Marymount Manhattan College, joins Daljit Dhaliwal to discuss the significance of the meeting for the peace process.

Tunnels near Rafah.

On Monday, one day before U.S. President Barack Obama was scheduled to meet in New York with the leaders of Israel and the Palestinian Authority, Israel’s air force launched an attack on Palestinian targets in the southern Gaza Strip.

The targets were three tunnels Israel says are used to smuggle arms into Gaza across the border from Egypt. The Israeli army said the attack was a response to rockets fired into Israel by Palestinian militants from Gaza over the weekend.

Meanwhile, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas met in Cairo with Egypt’s president Hosni Mubarak. Abbas repeated the Palestinian position that negotiations with Israel cannot resume without an agreement by Israel to freeze Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Arab East Jerusalem.

If Israel imposes a freeze on all settlement construction, are you confident there would be a peace deal between the Israelis and Palestinians?

Tell us what you think in the comments section below. Please remember to be respectful and on-point in your comments. Malicious or offensive comments will be deleted and repeat offenders will be banned.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Marius Arnesen under a Creative Commons license.

The schools in question are run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which also provides aid for Palestinian refugees throughout the Middle East. Andrew Whitley, the director of UNRWA’s New York office, joins Daljit Dhaliwal to discuss the organization’s position and how the Holocaust is handled in Middle Eastern schools.

Daniel Levy, the co-director of the Middle East Task Force at the New America Foundation, joins Daljit Dhaliwal to discuss the issue of settlements and whether or not there will be a freeze on settlement construction.

Troy Davis

Troy Davis is a prisoner on death row in the state of Georgia, convicted purely on eye-witness testimony for the 1989 murder of an off-duty police officer that he has always maintained he did not commit. Seven out of the nine eyewitnesses have since recanted or contradicted their testimony, yet until early this week, Troy’s efforts to get this and other possibly exculpatory evidence a hearing were repeatedly dismissed on procedural grounds. Troy has faced execution three times in the last two years, once being granted a stay less than two hours before he was slated to die. On Monday, to the relief of Troy Davis supporters everywhere, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a Georgia federal judge must give Troy an evidentiary hearing. Though the fight is far from over, this could be the difference between life and death for Troy Davis.

Asel Asleh was a seventeen-year-old Palestinian citizen of Israel, shot at point blank range in the neck by Israeli security forces during a demonstration outside his village of Arabeh in the north of Israel on October 2, 2000. None of the eyewitnesses at the demonstration (including the policemen, one of whom pulled the trigger) tried to claim that Asel had been involved in any act of violence. The Israeli government set up a commission of inquiry to examine the killings of Asel and twelve other Palestinians inside Israel in the first days of the second intifada. The commission ended with a recommendation that the police conduct an internal investigation. The police closed their investigation before they ever opened it, blaming the families of the victims for not cooperating. On January 27, 2008, the Attorney General of Israel proclaimed the investigations closed.

What links Asel and Troy, one a Palestinian citizen of Israel executed by an Israeli police officer; the other an African American from Savannah, Georgia, imprisoned for killing a white police offer?

Troy’s nephew, a fifteen-year-old young man named Dejaun, spurred me to ask that question. Incredibly poised and articulate for his years, Dejaun recently spoke at the NAACP centennial conference about the racism that he has personally experienced growing up in Savannah, Georgia. “When people hear that I am in the honors program at my school, that I did a summer course at American University, that I plan to study robotics in order to develop medical technology, they tell me that I’m an exception. No, I tell them back. I’m not an exception!”

I’m not an exception. Shivers went down my spine as Troy’s nephew uttered those words. I flashed back to what Asel’s older sister Nardin once told me. She has spoken to me at length about Asel’s life, his murder and her experience growing up and living as a Palestinian inside Israel.

Asel Asleh. Photo courtesy of Jen Marlowe.

“We are here, they (Jewish Israelis) know we are here, but they try to minimize our place in their consciousness. When I fully get into someone’s consciousness, they are always surprised,” Nardin told me.

“They ask ‘How do you know such good Hebrew?’ and ‘How come you dress like any other Jewish girl? They might live ten minutes away from me, but they feel good with their ignorance, they don’t do anything to fight it. And then, whenever they meet me, they say ‘Oh, you’re an exception.’ They don’t realize how many of our young people go to university, study and get doctorates, become professors, speak perfect Hebrew. They don’t admit that we are at the same level of intelligence and knowledge and motivation as they are, that we are good people, have families, jobs, a normal life. They just dismiss us! And they say, ‘Oh, you’re an exception.’”

Nardin, now a doctor, spoke about her own process of transformation, how as a teenager being told she was an exception made her feel special. It wasn’t until she was in university that she stepped out of feeling special and into anger, and began to answer people with the same sentiment that Dejaun arrived at by the age of fifteen.

“No! I’m not an exception!”

To try and portray the situation and sentiments of African Americans in the U.S. and Palestinians inside Israel as parallel would not only be overly simplistic, but a denial of the communities’ very different origins, histories, experiences of injustice, and struggles.

But despite the differences, the words that I heard from Troy’s nephew and Asel’s sister contain the same cry of anger against the dismissal, invalidation and invisibility they have felt all their lives.

I had lunch yesterday with another friend of mine. Amal is also a Palestinian citizen of Israel. She has been studying in Seattle the last three years, and every time she goes home, she tries to take the political pulse. “People are in despair. It feels worse than I can ever remember, though I can’t put my finger on exactly why,” Amal confided in me. “On the one hand, if you go to the mall or to a Jewish Israeli place, you can see Arabs there more than ever. But there is less true integration between the societies. There is no merging. Shops in the mall are willing to take our money, but that’s it.” She struggled to find the words. “We are barely tolerated…we are definitely not wanted.”

When I visited Asel’s family in their home last week, Asel’s father Hassan similarly expressed his feeling that the Palestinian community inside Israel was preparing itself for a worsening situation. Something, he felt, would soon be coming to a head. I remember talking to Hassan soon after the Israeli Attorney General announced that Asel’s case and the cases of the other Palestinian victims inside Israel would be closed. He was upset, angry and disappointed…but not surprised. “There is justice,” he told me then. “And there is justice for Arabs.”

The justice system in the U.S. is fraught with racial overtones as well. The application of the death penalty is one egregious indicator. The Yale University Law School held a study of Connecticut death sentences in 2007. The study revealed that when victims are white, African-American defendants are three times as likely to receive the death penalty as white defendants. In Georgia specifically, 65 percent of the homicide victims are African American, yet white victims account for 90 percent of Georgia’s death row cases.

The struggle for justice in Asel’s case came to a dead end over a year ago. The struggle for justice in Troy’s case has a new hopeful opening. But the ever-present racism that has made both struggles necessary means that neither Troy nor Asel; Dejaun nor Nardin are exceptions. That Dejaun and Nardin are intelligent, hard-working, high achieving individuals is certainly no exception. That Troy Davis is a black man who has spent 18 years on death row for the murder of a white off-duty police officer though he has compelling evidence to prove his innocence, is no exception. And the fact that Asel Asleh, a seventeen-year-old Palestinian citizen of Israel, was killed by police forces who carry the same passport as he, and there was no serious effort to hold the one who pulled the trigger accountable, is no exception.

When racism is combined with mechanisms of power, the result is not only an absence of justice but an absence of equal value for human life, sanctioned by the state. This is also, tragically, not an exception.

- Jen Marlowe

The views expressed by contributing bloggers do not reflect the views of Worldfocus or its partners.

Worldfocus: You’re from Gaza, but you weren’t born there?

Gaza City in 2007, the year that Hamas ascended to power.

Nizar al-Wazir: My family has lived in Gaza City for generations, but I was born in Dubai 27 years ago. My parents were unable to return to Gaza after leaving the coastal strip to study abroad in the late 1970s. After the UAE, we lived in Jordan for three years — until the Oslo Accords allowed us to return to Gaza in 1994.

I did high school in Gaza before attending Birzeit University from 1999 to 2003. But I couldn’t visit my parents 60 miles away in Gaza, due to the 2nd Intifada.

Worldfocus: Is your family involved in politics?

Nizar al-Wazir: My uncle, Khalil “Abu Jihad” al-Wazir, was a co-founder of Fatah. He was Yasser Arafat’s right hand man and the commander of Fatah’s al-Assifa military wing. He was exiled from Israel to Gaza in 1948, and then from Jordan to Lebanon to Tunisia. He was assassinated there by Israel in 1988 — at the beginning of the first Intifada.

My family has always been Fatah, but my parents stay out of politics. They still live in Gaza City, where my father is a consultant for the Fatah-controlled Ministry of Finance. My mother is a deputy assistant at the Ministry of Education.

Worldfocus: When do you think Palestine will achieve statehood?

Nizar al-Wazir: We were optimistic after Oslo, when I attended the Seeds of Peace Camp in the U.S. After the beginning of the second Intifada, F-16 bombardments were regular. Electric generators were knocked out, so we had power for five or six hours each day.

After Shalit was captured, we had sonic booms over Gaza five times per day — for over a month.

Anyway, I don’t see the Palestinian state coming any time soon. The West Bank is too divided into small cantons, and Gazans are too extreme.

Worldfocus: In 2008, the U.S. State Department cancelled seven Fulbright grants because the recipients could not get visas. After a diplomatic outcry, the grants were reinstated two days later. Could you explain the political issues at stake?

Nizar al-Wazir: With a Palestinian Authority passport, one can travel everywhere. But getting a visa is the difficult part. Israel has imposed strict movement restrictions since Hamas took over Gaza. I can’t even have friends from other countries visit me in Gaza.

The Department of State even sends different forms to Fulbrighters in Gaza and the West Bank. We are not viewed as being from the same Palestinian entity.

I was nominated for a Fulbright scholarship for the first time in 2005. But I couldn’t get a placement at an American university because I couldn’t travel to either Egypt or Jordan for the GMAT.

Of the seven Fulbrighters chosen from Gaza in 2007, only three made it to the U.S. — mostly via personal connections. But there was no media attention that year.

In 2008, seven Gazan Fulbrighters were very close to losing their scholarships, until the media alerted Condoleezza Rice and the international community.

Worldfocus: After your work in Washington D.C. is finished, will re-entry to Gaza be difficult ?

I plan on returning to Gaza at the end of this summer. Some of my friends think I should go back to the West Bank and not Gaza. But since I’m in the U.S. on a State Department grant, the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem might organize a group re-entry for a group of us to re-enter Gaza.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user OneArmedMan under a Creative Commons license.

Jen Marlowe is a filmmaker, writer and human rights activist currently traveling throughout Israel and Palestine. She visited the families who were evicted on Monday.

I heard the jangle of ankle and wrist cuffs before I saw them. The detainees (five Israeli, four Palestinian and four international) were being led into a small court room. One woman had a black eye. They had been arrested the night before at a demonstration against the eviction of the Hannoun and al-Ghawe families from their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of east Jerusalem. At 5:00 Sunday morning, the families were removed from their homes by Israeli police, leaving 53 people homeless — 20 of them children.

The Hannoun family with friends and supporters on the pavement across the street from their former home. Photo: Jen Marlowe

After leaving the court, I walked to Sheikh Jarrah. It was easy to locate the houses. They were blocked off and guarded by police forces. I found the father of the Hannoun family, Maher, sitting on the pavement across from his home with his family, friends and supporters. A pile of thin foam mats were stacked up behind them.

I asked Maher the details of what had taken place the previous morning.

“It was 5:00 in the morning. A lot of policemen came with weapons,” Maher told me. “My son was standing guard outside. When he saw them, he came inside and locked the door. The soldiers broke the door to the gate, the main door and the windows. They got in by force and they kicked all the family out of the house. Seventeen people.”

Was violence used against the family members? Maher nodded emphatically.

“They hurt my son Rami’s arm and they broke the bottom of my 17-year-old daughter’s teeth.”

Twenty-one-year-old Rami’s arm was in a sling. The arm was injured, he told me, when the police threw him down the front steps of the house. “They told my niece that if she didn’t open the door, they would shoot her,” Maher said.

The foam mats are piled up on the sidewalk where the Hannoun family is now sleeping. Photo: Jen Marlowe

According to Maher, after the families were forcibly removed, their furniture was hauled away and unloaded behind the police station. The family was later able to reclaim it, but they have nowhere to put it. Their furniture now sits in an empty field nearby their home.

And where did the family sleep last night?

“Here, on the street.” Maher indicated the pile of thin foam mats behind us. “We have nowhere else to go. We will stay here, God willing, until we are able to return to our homes.”

Maher’s home already has new residents. Just a few hours after the family was expelled, religious Jewish settlers moved in. The U.S. strongly condemned the evictions, as has the UN and other foreign governments. But the condemnations didn’t hamper the settlers’ ability to enter and exit the house at will, under police guard, while the Hannoun family sat across the street on the pavement and watched.

A policewoman guarding the home that settlers now occupy. Photo: Jen Marlowe

In 1956, the UN and the Jordanian government (who controlled east Jerusalem at that time) resettled 28 Palestinian refugee families, including Maher’s parents, in Sheikh Jarrah. Maher himself was born in the home in 1958.

During the 1967 war, Israel conquered and annexed east Jerusalem. The eviction of the Hannoun and al-Ghawe families seems to be part of a larger political plan to Judaize the area. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz verified the plan when they quoted from a 2004 letter from Jerusalem mayor Lupolianski to the Housing Ministry in which he supported this policy, stating: “zoning the (east Jerusalem) neighborhood for a Jewish population is likely to contribute significantly to the unification of the city.”

The plan has been ongoing. Back in 1972, two Israeli settler associations registered the land in Sheikh Jarrah with the Israeli Land registrar. The settler associations provided documents from the Ottoman era to back their claim of ownership. A complex and protracted legal battle ensued, with the Israeli court system supporting the settler associations’ claim, though the Hannoun family and their current lawyer strongly dispute the authenticity of the documents.

An Israeli settler in the home. Photo: Jen Marlowe

“The Ottoman documents are false, but even if they were real,” Maher said, “there are so many Palestinians who have proof of ownership of their homes and villages from before 1948!” I understood the point he was trying to make; Jewish claims to pre-1948 land ownership were being upheld. But Palestinian land claims were not given any legitimacy.

What do Maher and his family want?

“We are asking to stop the transfer of refugees again and again. We had big hope, especially after U.S. President Obama’s speech in Cairo. Diplomats from the U.S. and the EU visited us and promised to help us stay in our houses. All the world was watching us but nobody did anything on the ground. Our big hope turned into big disappointment. And now we are sleeping on the street.”

Just then a cheer broke out from the crowd on the sidewalk. The electricity (which the Hannoun family was still paying for) had been cut. A moment of bittersweet victory.

The settlers’ electricity will be reconnected. The imprisoned activists may have already been released. The U.S. will most likely protest in sharply-worded statements, but not use any real leverage to shift Israel’s policy of changing the demographics of east Jerusalem.

And the Hannoun and al-Ghawe families will sleep outside again tonight on the pavement across from their homes.

- Jen Marlowe

The views expressed by contributing bloggers do not reflect the views of Worldfocus or its partners.

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