Arwa arose automatically at 3.00 am to wake up, dress and wash her two children before giving them breakfast. As her mind slowly began to clear, her sleepiness was gradually replaced by the agitation of two conflicting currents of emotion. Elation soared like a bird in her heart as she thought of taking her two children to see their father after their month-long wait, while depression, like a chain, would tug and pull at its wings, constraining her from really being able to enjoy the feeling. The desert prison camp where her husband had been detained for six months, without trial or charge, was seven hours away. For all her effort to get there in the noisy and crowded bus provided for prisoner's families by the Red Cross, she was rewarded by the rigid hierarchy of administrators and petty officials who determined such things with a 45 minute visit.
It was the same each month. Her husband Abdullah's six month period of administrative detention had been a tortuous countdown interspersed with these monthly glimpses through a chain-link fence. On the last day of his confinement he dressed, shaved and prepared himself to leave, joyous at his release although knowing that the faces of his tent companions, with whom he had shared the last 183 days, would never be far from his mind. He gave them everything he had, a jacket, a few toiletries, some paper and a pen. Everyone smiled and cried and wished him well. "Don't forget us," they shouted after him as he made his way to the discharging office.
The cold faces of his captors (and often tormentors) caused him to shudder but he fortified himself with the knowledge that they would soon be reduced to memories. The tension and relief in the faces of his fellow detainees around him mirrored his own. His name was called and he stepped forward to a waiting khaki-clothed prison officer who was holding a paper, his paper. He began to read it slowly. The official stood for a minute watching his mouth silently making the shape of the words, every now and then pausing with a non-comprehending look on his face, until he finally interupted Abdullah impatiently: "You've been given another six months." Abdullah and Arwa cried a lot during her visit that day, as their young son, standing with one hand on the metal fence, looked on, confused, not really understanding why his parents were so sad. Their young daughter began to cry too, when the sparrow her father had caught near his tent that moming to give her as a present died when she squeezed it too hard in her small hand.
It would not be an overstatement to attribute most of the loss of the initial euphoria of three quarters of the Palestinian population after the Oslo Accords to the single phenomenon of continuing bureaucratic harassment. The excessive multiplication of, and concentration of power in, faceless Israeli bureaucrats or administrators that underpins the continuing occupation is repeatedly cited by Palestinians as their greatest concern, even more than the regular and violent violations of human rights that regularly stain the streets of Hebron, Ramallah and Nablus with blood.
The stain left by red tape on the Palestinian psyche is not washed away by the Imam's sermons on the glories of martyrdom or by the profound sense of communal steadfastness that fills the air at the funeral of the latest teenage victim of the occupation. No one mourns the victim of yet another permit refusal, few shout in the streets or report on the news about the Arwas and Abdullahs of Palestine, about the family that is denied permission to travel to pray at the al-Aqsa Mosque during Ramadan, or the West Bank university student separated by four checkpoints and the lack of a permit from her husband in Gaza. For many Palestinians, the system has become "normal", an expected part of life, and too many journalists underestimate the psychological power wielded by this bureaucratic system against Palestinians to give it serious coverage.
Yet the Israeli bureaucracy that Palestinian residents of the occupied territories have to face is formidable, both in terms of its gradual and subtle negative transformation of an individual's consciousness and because of its universal reach to all sectors of Palestinian society. Both its structure and practices send powerful messages.
Palestinians have to apply for permits for everything from education to hospital treatment, underlining the fact that no area of their lives is their own. Every application prompts an accompanying security check of the applicant by the Shabak security apparatus. Neither the Shabak nor the Civil Administration -- the body responsible for the granting of permits and travel documents to go abroad -- have any legal obligation to state their reasons for denial of permission. Coupled with this, there is no right to appeal against rejections, offering the frustrated bearer of even the most simple and legitimate request only a reminder of his powerlessness.
A Palestinian is not advised in advance about his rights and obligations or the requirements for obtaining the requested permit or approval, and is often sent away repeatedly and told to bring additional documents in a crass show of power. Whereas Israeli citizens can make enquiries or applications by phone or mail, Palestinians have to appear at the Civil Administration in person. The Israelis will not stoop to provide such a service to the Palestinian population of the territories.
A recent report on the issue of bureaucratic harassment by the Israeli human rights organisation Betselem outlines the difference between the administrative systems available to Israelis and Palestinians.
"A significant difference exists between Israeli citizens and Palestinians as regards the foundations upon which services are granted. The services Israelis receive from governmental authorities are set by law and provided according to standard and known criteria. When an Israeli citizen applies to the Ministry of the Interior for a passport, for example, he can be certain, except in extraordinary cases, that he will receive his passport in the mail within several days."
Palestinians, on the other hand, are dealt with according to the kind of vague criteria described earlier. As Betselem points out, this gives the impression that these services are "provided not by right but ex gratia". Israel has repeatedly made a public show of this pretended benevolence through the peace negotiations, perhaps no more so than when it announces it has "conceded" to grant permission to another group of 10,000 Palestinians from the territories to work inside Israel.
Lest we miss the lie out of our legitimate longing for signs and symbols that this conflict is actually beginning to be n resolved, let us remember that peace does not come from leaders but from the feelings of the population they represent or rule. The hollowness of these "victories" for the Palestinian side need not be explained to the population of Gaza, where Israel's recent "concession" to grant permission to work inside Israel to men who are both "married and over 30" hardly touches the lives of the Strip's population, three-quarters of a whom are under 30 years of age. Israel's Oslo commitment to live in "mutual dignity" with Palestinians cuts little ice on the mutuality scale with West Bank Palestinians who are charged over six times the amount Israeli citizens have to pay to replace a lost identity card.
To maintain a passport for ten years, a Palestinian must make yearly applications in person to the Civil Administration, paying over six times as much as an Israeli citizen, who need make two postal applications to the ministry of the interior, each one five years apart.
Above all the other insults of the occupation, the denied access to Jerusalem stings the most. Adli Da'ana, a Bir Zeit University employee from Hebron in the southern part of the West Bank, faces a journey to work of between two and four hours each day via a circuitous and dangerous road known as the Wadi al-Nar ("Valley of Fire") because the Civil Administration will not grant him a permit to travel through Jerusalem. His moods work in cycles. Some days he simply shrugs his shoulders, laughs and says, "haik al-dinya" ("that's life"), other days his frustration and anger are tangible.
It is the ordinary people whom suffer most on the Israeli alter of "security". According to educationalist Gabi Baramki:
"As far as the Palestinians are concerned, the dismemberment of the Occupied Tenitories, and especially the cutting-off of Jerusalem, is not for security reasons. The only people who are prevented from entering Jerusalem are ordinary people who have to go through the humiliating process of applying for endless permits that are often tumed down. Suicide bombers generally do not bother applying for permits! Israel's policy of sealing the territories has only created more bitterness, even among those who support the peace process. Relations between Palestinians and lsraelis are the worst they have been for 27 years."
A Palestinian may wait in line for several hours for a number of days to be treated in a demeaning way by the Israeli official at the clerk's window, which according to Albert Aghazarian, director of public relations at Bir Zeit University, speaks of a conscious humiliation, implicit in the way people are "forced to queue up like dogs for permits".
One Israeli soldier put in context the continuing misuse of bureaucratic power when he was ejecting a Palestinian from the compound of the Ramallah Civil Administration. The Palestinian, who had just been queuing for three days before being denied a permit without explanation, was shouting, "where is the peace', where is the peace"? The soldier, armed with an automatic rifle, mockingly raised his foot off the ground and, pointing to the sole of his boot, said: "Peace is under this." The same officer had earlier complained in a discussion with myself and a waiting Palestinian friend about "terrorist attacks" on Israelis. Unfortunately, in this conflict that many call "confusing" and "complex", one thing is crystal clear: like the sparrow crushed by the anxiety and fear of Arwa's daughter, peace can be crushed in the same way, leaving only the bitterness of violence to answer the sneering taunts of the bureaucratic machine.
This article originally appeared in Middle East International magazine, issue 502, 9 June 1995.
Related sites
- Free Ahmad Qatamesh website - Despite Qatamesh's release in early 1998, this website still contains excellent information about administrative detention and a good sample of Ahmad's writings.