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Terry Boullata: "BIT
BY BIT THE WALL BECAME MORE TANGIBLE"
Interview: 8/12/04,
Jerusalem
Terry Boullata is head
of a private school in Abu Dis and an advocacy
worker.
I am 38 years old, and I am from Jerusalem. I
was born and lived all my life here, and I am
proud of that. I married 14 years ago with a man
from Abu Dis who carries a West Bank ID card. I
am myself carrying a Jerusalem ID. I studied at
Jerusalem schools and then at Birzeit
University. During the first Intifada I was
arrested four times; the last time, while I was
working as a fieldworker for a human rights
organization, I was released after intervention
of the former American president Jimmy Carter
and Mme Mitterand. Later on I opened my own
private school in Abu Dis, thinking that I
should help in the development of the community
I'm living in. I started the school in 1999 with
loans from agencies and banks and it's still
working. Altogether I have 225 children from
kindergarten up to the fifth grade elementary.
But this year I lost around 77 children due to
the building of Wall, which is less than 0,5 km
from the school. Due to the loss of income I'm
now also working as an advocacy worker for the
Palestinian campaign for Freedom and Peace which
was initiated with the visit this year of Dr
Arun Gandhi, the grandson of Mahatma Gandhi.
* * *
Abu Dis, Azzariyyeh and
Sawahreh [villages to the east of Jerusalem] are
totally isolated from the Palestinian areas.
They are a canton, a ghetto. On the eastern side
of the Wall you have now 70.000 people without
access to proper health services in Jerusalem
nor in areas within the Palestinian Authority.
If you cannot go to Jerusalem, the nearest
hospital is Jericho, at half an hour drive. And
the checkpoint of Jericho is closed after eight
in the evening.
My house is historically
part of Abu Dis. But in 1967 the Israelis
annexed my area to Jerusalem, and it became
Jerusalem area according to Israeli law.
According to international law it is part of the
occupied territories. When we married it didn't
really matter as the area was still open to the
West Bank. The borderline was on the map, not on
the ground. But in August 2002, we suddenly woke
up to see that the army had shifted the
Jerusalem checkpoint towards the entrance of Abu
Dis. And they brought cement blocks one meter
high. So we started to have quarrels with the
soldiers because they sometimes denied us access
to Jerusalem and sometimes to the West Bank. Bit
by bit the Wall became more tangible. Every day
they were bringing more trucks with cement
blocks that were put in accordance with the
Israeli map of Jerusalem. Bit by bit we in the
neighborhood became more and more isolated from
the center of Abu Dis, from my husband's family,
and from my own school. Until January 2004 we
were still able to jump over the one-meter high
wall that was there at the time. As my house is
on a hill, I could more easily jump over the one
meter. But during that period I was pregnant
twice and I lost twice, because of the jumping.
But that was almost the only way to reach my
school.
My neighborhood was turned
overnight from a residential base into a
military zone. The lifestyle in the neighborhood
changed totally. Men, women, children -
everybody was jumping over the wall at the low
point near our house. Early morning the children
on both sides of the wall were trying to reach
their schools on the other side, including the
children from the west side who were going to my
own school on the east side. You could always
find children jumping amidst teargas and sound
bombs. On a daily basis. The early morning and
afternoon were also exactly the times when the
army would come to harass the passers by. The
border police had a military camp in front of my
house, where they settled down and ate and
drank. They came to know us better; in our
neighborhood there are only 13 families, and we
live on the highest part so that the army or
border police always came and sat around our
house. But they were still harassing me and
asking for my identity card. I told them: "You
know me and you know that I'm going to my school
and you still want to know my identity card?" My
family was renovating the nearby Cliff hotel,
which later on was confiscated. They were
teasing us: "Why are you renovating the hotel,
we're going to take it anyway." "Take money, let
us rent it, it is much better for you." I
wouldn't allow my children to play in the
streets of the neighborhood because the army
jeeps, with their teargas, were there all the
time.
The construction of the
Wall, from one meter to nine meter high, and six
meters from our house, took place in January
2004. The jumping from our house became
impossible of course, and we had to look for
other ways to sneak into the village of Abu Dis.
My husband is a West Banker, he cannot be in
Jerusalem. I as a Jerusalemite was however able
to go around the Wall along an Israeli bypass
road so as to enter Abu Dis from the other side.
It became half an hour drive to my school
instead of the normal one-minute drive. Still I
could drive at least, but my husband had to look
for the lowest parts of the Wall that were still
under construction and not yet nine meters, and
jump over the hills or go through small
openings.
However, when sooner or
later the Wall is completely finished he will
not be able to come back to the house by
jumping. Very recently my husband – he is a
merchant, he sells stones – was able to get a
permit that allowed him to be in Jerusalem from
five in the morning until seven in the evening.
After seven he is living and sleeping illegally
with us. That's one of the things we joke about.
My husband is afraid that he can be kicked out
any moment from the house. Or that he jumps over
the wall to Abu Dis and then can't come back.
Other cousins in the neighborhood who own
property here but carry West Bank ID cards are
living illegally in their own property. If they
don't get Jerusalem ID cards or permits to live,
they can be kicked out and their properties can
be turned into absentee properties [to be
confiscated by the Israeli state]. Khaled, our
cousin, was three times arrested, literally upon
entering his own hotel, the Cliff hotel. And the
scary part is that in May 2004 they established
a settlement just behind our house. It is called
Kidmat Zion, with 250 housing units, which means
nothing less than the arrival of 15.000 Israeli
settlers. The famous Moskovics [American Jewish
philanthropist who sponsors settlement building
in East-Jerusalem] is of course the one who
started this settlement, and of course with
subsidies and Israeli government approval. This
settlement is growing on our account and will
squeeze our neighborhood.
* * *
Freedom means for me to be
with my husband Salah and children, to have a
family life and to move around easily. So that
we for instance are able to spend joint time on
weekends. I can't easily go with Salah to the
West Bank. Jericho is a well-known winter
resort. But I can't go to Jericho as a
Jerusalemite. I need a permit. It's easier for
him as a West Banker to enter Jericho. On the
other hand, Salah can't come with me to
Jerusalem. Even when he has a permit he is often
denied access; for instance when the Israelis
announce a general closure. The Wall is
depressing us all. No family members can visit
us, so we take the effort and visit them.
Instead of us and the other members of the
family going to a picnic we are just visiting
them at home. It becomes boring for your
children. Also, my husband lost income. Nobody
is building houses and so he doesn't sell stones
much. You run, run, run from checkpoints to
destinations and at the end of the day you just
have enough to pay all the bills. In Jerusalem
you have so many taxes to pay.
Salah nowadays sometimes
says: let's move into the West Bank. He and his
own family have a house there that will lessen
the expenditures of paying the rent and the
taxes and the bills. But I cannot do that
because the moment I live in the West Bank I
will loose my residency in Jerusalem. I will not
get any other residency because the Palestinian
Authority is not giving ID cards to
Jerusalemites who loose their ID cards. They
claim that they do not want to encourage
Jerusalemites to leave Jerusalem. Moving to Abu
Dis would put me in a more brutal life of having
no exit at all, just living in Abu Dis, without
being able to leave the village.
The only time that I can
breathe is when I leave for a conference abroad.
Although there is harassment on the borderline,
you still go out and see the world. That's part
of your personal freedom, to go abroad, a
freedom which my husband is denied. He cannot
travel; the Jordanians do not allow him to
travel through Jordan. We want to be free as a
family, to live wherever we want and that's not
easy. I say to him: I don't want to live in a
smaller ghetto. Yes, East-Jerusalem is a ghetto
but it is a somewhat bigger ghetto than the Abu
Dis ghetto. I want to have more opportunities
for my daughters. On the Jerusalem side they can
have music or ballet classes. I am a middle
class woman, I would like to have some of those
opportunities available for my daughter. He says
that when they kick him out he wants to stay in
the West Bank; he doesn't want the harassment
anymore. That would mean that he would have to
take the girls a few days with him, and the
girls would have to come back and live a few
days with me. So the whole family would be
affected when the Israelis really impose the
expulsion of Salah from the area. So we have to
choose between my own family and my husband's
family, and even between living together as a
family and to divide.
* * *
At the end of the day I am
a mother. As I always say and brag: we created
life. So we have to create hope. You don't have
another option than surviving for the sake of
your children. I better be on a special level of
hope and creativity and easiness and fun, in
order to survive, and to give a better life for
your children. Many Palestinians share that, the
only hope is for our children. It's not an easy
thing. Now I work in Ramallah. It is so
frustrating to stand in line before the
checkpoint of Kalandia every day, for 1,5 till 2
hours sometimes, if not more. It used to be half
an hour drive but now it's an hour. When I am
back home I am totally exhausted. I have no time
or energy to spoil my daughters, I have to
quickly cook, clean, put them to study, to
sleep. It's sometimes becoming so frustrating
and tiring. But at the end of the day you still
have to go beyond that frustration. Daydreams?
No, my only daydream, in fact my nightmare, is
when I come back home and Salah is not able to
come back. For instance when I am stuck at
Kalandia and Salah cannot come home because he
is stuck at the other side of the Wall and the
children are left home alone. You never know. Or
when something happens during the day, and I am
stuck on one side and my daughter on the other.
* * *
I am an activist now. What
gives me hope sometimes is that I speak more
with the press and with Israeli groups. I am
receiving lots of Israeli delegations coming to
see the Wall. Sometimes I am more happy to
receive Israelis than to receive foreigners. If
the Israeli point of view changes it can make
our life easier because they can have influence
from within their own society. I believe that
lobby-wise or campaigning-wise I should work
more and more within the Israeli society. Still
we as Palestinians have a long way to go to
address our issues more strongly but it gives me
hope when I see Israelis discussing, listening,
especially when they see that the Wall has no
sense of security for them. And that it only
separates Palestinians from each other. Making
us suffer more and more and putting us more and
more into the corner is bad also for them. You
talk with intellectuals and the young
generation. Especially the young give some hope.
Sometimes there are a few decision-makers coming
like Knesset members, or the Israeli media visit
us and they write about us. You see the fear
that the Wall is giving them, not just us. When
we work together with these Israelis, many of
them may cross the line. They have become more
active against the occupation and the icon of
the occupation, which is the Wall.
Very recently, we
established Artists without Walls. I am not an
artist, but because of the area, Palestinian and
Israeli artists approached me and said how can
we help you? So in April 2004, Palestinian and
Israeli artists came together to make the wall
transparent by putting screens, projectors and
lights, as in a video conference. The people
from both sides were able to see and speak with
each other. This gives hope to the people who
are living in the ghetto, and who were listening
and watching us. These are windows of hope that
I can see from time to time. We as victims need
to work hard to make the perpetrators aware of
what they are doing to us on the human level. On
our side not everybody is convinced. Many people
are steeped in their own anger and frustration
and I can understand that. I don't identify with
it especially when it comes to suicide bombings,
but I can understand what is happening to those
people. And this is what we have to say to the
Israelis: Put yourself in our shoes. Would you
expect yourselves to accept the daily
humiliation at the checkpoints and the Wall,
while it has no sense of security?
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Writings
Toine van Teeffelen