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The Writing on the Wall (5)
A series of interviews
with Palestinians who live close to the Wall.
Three questions are asked: How is your daily
life influenced by the Wall and the checkpoints?
What does freedom mean to you? What are your
sources of energy? The interviews are made by
Toine van Teeffelen for the
www.verbindingverbroken.nl [connection lost]
website of United Civilians for Peace, an
umbrella of Dutch development organizations and
peace movements. The interviews can be copied
for website use as long as the source is
mentioned.
ALEXANDER QAMAR:
“JERUSALEM WAS ONCE A COSMOPOLITAN CITY.”
Interview: 16/12/04,
Beit Jala
Alexander Qamar is a
retired factory owner from Jerusalem who lives
near Aida refugee camp in Beit Jala, opposite
the Wall.
Every two or three weeks
the army comes knocking at the door. They have
come four times since they built the Wall. They
ask us to leave the house and stand for two or
three hours on the street. You hear a voice
outside shouting: "Open, open!" "Who is there?"
I ask. "Jaysh [army], jaysh,
Israeli jaysh!" Then they search the
house. It is not a living. The last time was
about three-four weeks ago. It happened that a
fellow from them spoke French, he was an
officer. So I spoke with him French. I told him:
"From where are you, from Morocco?" "No, no, je
suis Parisien!" Briefly, I got a feeling of
cosmopolitanism, but under what circumstances!
The street there in front
of our house leads to Rachel's Tomb. It used to
be the easiest way to reach the center of
Bethlehem or to go to Jerusalem. However, it was
closed during the last Intifada. When the boys
from Aida camp came out along that street and
saw the Israelis, they started throwing stones.
After the closure of the road we couldn't easily
move anymore. The refugee camp became a
backwater. There used to be many people living
in this area but now there remains no living
soul here. It’s empty. See, how difficult it is
for you to find somebody over here who knows my
place. A year ago, the PNA opened another street
behind Rachel's Tomb, to make it somewhat easier
for the people. However, with the building of
the Wall access again became more difficult. In
fact, the Wall was one of the reasons to close
our factory.
In the past we used to get
a two- or three-week permit to go to Jerusalem.
Sometimes you took a sideway, for instance the
path through Tantur [ecumenical center besides
the Jerusalem-Bethlehem checkpoint]. That is now
not possible anymore. I am an old man now, I am
81, and I cannot run as before to cross from
here and there, or even to go and walk the
distance. I have to go all the way and ask for a
permit from Kfar Etzion [Israeli civil
administration branch of the army]. Either they
give me one or they don’t.
I used to have customers in
Mea Shearim, Bukharim, Arab places in Jerusalem.
Up until now the merchants in Jerusalem owe me
some money which I cannot collect. Our textile
products were brought to Jerusalem, Tel Aviv,
Nablous, or Ramallah. Now we can't enter, or
easily enter, those places. Before the closure
[in 1993] I used to be in Jerusalem within a
span of 15 minutes. Now, if I have the chance,
it costs at least half a day. It is as if we are
in a prison; not a prison of a room, but of a
quarter.
We used to have a view up
until Gilo. Now we don't see anything in front
of us except the Wall. To have a look, I have to
go to the terrace on the roof. Under the present
situation I want to sell my house. But buyers
don't want to pay as before. That means that I
am losing. With the Wall nearby, nobody wants to
buy. If I would be able I would move to another
place, or move to my two brothers in Canada.
Nobody is living in this quarter. Many have left
for Bethlehem or elsewhere. The Wall has closed
in on us.
* * *
All my life I have been a
factory owner. The places of our factory and
living house have changed over time. In 1948,
our living house was in the Rehavia quarter in
Jerusalem, Arlosoroff Street nr. 15. We were at
supper in the night when we heard knocking at
the door: "Anton, Anton, come out, we want to
speak with you!" [Anton was my father]. He went
outside and some four or five of the Haganah
[the regular Zionist army at the time] showed
their Israeli-made stenguns to him. They told
us: "You are living in a Jewish quarter. We have
a fellow living in an Arab quarter, in Baka'.
You have to go in his place and he will come in
your place." What could we do? This man from
Baka' was an attorney general in the Russian
Compound in Jerusalem, Dr Nacht. We knew his
auntie, and so we accepted.
At the time we had our
factory opposite Mea Shearim. It was in part a
laundry and in part a dye house for textile. The
factory was taken over by the Haganah. We had
just ordered new machinery from abroad. The
machinery came from England and had to go all
the way through Beirut, Damascus, Amman, and
Jericho. Since we had to move we were forced to
put the machines either in Ramallah or in
Bethlehem. We decided to put them in Bethlehem.
We installed the machineries and started working
in 1951. Our old factory in Jerusalem was
completely lost. The laundry equipment was taken
over by a baby home in Jerusalem. We also lost
our other properties. Inside Mea Shearim our
family had twelve shops. Since 50 years we
haven't received any rent. We had pieces of
land, 200 dunams, near Beit Safafa. We all lost
it.
Until 1969 our factory was
located at the junction of the Jerusalem-Hebron
and Bethlehem-Beit Jala roads, at what is
nowadays called Baab el-Zqaaq. One Sunday an
accident happened with an Israeli car in which
there were three officers and the driver. A
truck from Beit Jala took them and crushed them
in front of our factory. The three officers and
the driver were killed. Then the Israeli
government announced that we had 48 hours to
move our factory away from that place. The
factory was thought to be too close to the
street. It made the street narrow - Zqaaq
means "very narrow" - and that was considered to
be the reason of the accident. The Israelis
wanted to enlarge the street. After intervention
of a Jewish lawyer, I got 40 days to move. They
didn't want to pay me any compensation money.
They told us: "Collect it from the mayor of Beit
Jala." Now is Beit Jala a small place, and the
municipality didn't have money. All what they
gave us was 1500 Israeli lira, just enough for
moving to another place. In 40 days we built the
building where we are presently in.
Life was easy, because we
had workers; refugees from the camp here [Aida
camp], in total 40 of them, girls and men. We
taught them how to labour in the factory.
However, over time the situation of the textile
declined. Before the factory's closure two years
ago we had only 22 workers. We couldn't anymore
compete with the cheap labor in China.
* * *
Our life has changed
hundred percent, it has moved from freedom to
imprisonment. In Jerusalem we were free, we
lived differently. Jerusalem was like Europe.
Before 1948, there was this open atmosphere. On
Thursdays and Sundays the cinemas were
especially for the Christians. Saturday night
after Sabbath the cinemas were for the Jews. At
the time you had no TV, it was just cinema. The
Christians in Jerusdalem were larger in number
than the Moslems and the Jews. That was so in
the Baka', Katamon, the German Colony, the Greek
Colony, with plenty of Germans and Greeks from
Turkey who came to Jerusalem, Armenians who fled
from the massacre, and Christian Arabs.
We ourselves were Arabs
from Jerusalem. My grandfather came from Lebanon
from Dar el Amar [Shof mountains]. He came after
clashes between Christians and Druzes, and after
the Crimean War [1850]. After that war Turkey
was obliged to open Jerusalem to all. My family
started to work in hotels and mix with the
people. My grandfather became a blacksmith in a
shop in the old city. He happened to have a
neighbour from Malta, who worked with the Cook
Traveling Agency. My grandfather married the
daughter of the agent.
With so many different
nationalities we felt free in Jerusalem.
Nowadays Jerusalem is divided between Jews and
Moslems. But it used to be a cosmopolitan city.
On Sunday all the roads were full of Christians
going to churches. On that day you only saw
Christians on Jaffa Road. We spoke different
languages: Arabic, French, English. There was
the Alliance Israelite, a Jewish institute that
used to teach the French language at an
elementary school. Their boys came to the
College de Freres or Terra Sancta to continue
their studies. They came from Morocco, Tunis,
Turkey, there were even Jews from Egypt. That
was up until 1942. At the time many Christian
schools continued to teach the Hebrew language,
not obligatory, but after the normal lessons. I
sat with Jews in the same bench, with Moshe
Shetrit, and others. Every morning we went to
the church while the Moslems and Jews remained
in the courtyard. Then at eight we all entered
the class together. There were Jews with us in
every class. From the thirty students were seven
or eight Jews and two Moslems, the rest were
Christians. I had a fellow in the same bench; he
was called Louis. He didn't continue the school
but after seven or eight years I met him in
Jaffa Street. I looked at him – he had red hair
– and told him: "Aren't you Louis Schnevelstein?"
"From where do I know you?" he told me, "Were
you not in the College de Freres? But now I am
not Louis." "What are you now?" "I am Levi now!"
He had changed his name. He didn't want to speak
with me further. Imagine, we were in the same
bench.
At that time Jerusalem
meant liberty. There were no patrols. We used to
go to the same cafes, the same restaurants. On
Saturday we went to café Europe. It is on the
crossroads of Jaffa Road and Ben Yehuda Street.
The building belonged to a fellow of Bethlehem,
Sansur. One was free to enter that café, to
dance, to do everything. It didn't matter
whether one was Jew or Arab, there was no
difference. That was so until the publication of
the White Paper in 1939. Before that, in 1936,
there was an Arab strike [of half a year] but
that took place only in the old city of
Jerusalem. In 1939 the Jews, the Haganah and the
Irgun [paramilitary Zionist band], began to
strike at the British. Then the Jewish boys
stopped coming at our school.
* * *
In the course of time many
Christians left. The Germans were imprisoned and
taken to Australia. A lot of Greeks returned to
Greece after the 1948 war. Many Armenians went
to America. Most of the Christians lost their
houses outside the city walls. They fled to
America, Canada, or Australia. The Christians
are now less than 5% of the inhabitants of
Jerusalem. The Christians are also leaving
Bethlehem. People go to places where there is
work. There are now 250.000 descendants from the
inhabitants of Beit Jala, Bethlehem and Beit
Sahour living in Chile or Mexico. Here in Beit
Jala you may have just 10-15.000. Maybe 85% of
Bethlehem, Beit Jala and Beit Sahour live
abroad. The people of Beit Jala left especially
for Chile; the Bethlehemites to Mexico. Nowadays
they are leaving for America and Canada. Most
people don't find work here. And it is work
which keeps people going on.
The Jerusalemites and
Bethlehemites are a mixture of different
peoples, and that is something I value. St
Jerome [who translated the Bible into Roman and
lived in Bethlehem in the 4th
century] came from present-day Romania. In the
past you even had Jews who converted to
Christianity and established themselves in
Bethlehem. Most of the intelligentsia of this
country used to come from places like Jerusalem
and Bethlehem. You always had change here.
People were on the move, there was an atmosphere
of cosmopolitanism. That's why all over the
world you can find people from Bethlehem; in
Europe, America, South Africa, everywhere. But
now you just find a prison here, you cannot
travel, you cannot cross borders anymore. |
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Writings
Toine van Teeffelen