By Joharah Baker for MIFTAH
After briefly mulling over my choice, I decided doughnuts were the way to go. So, I picked up two baker's dozens and headed to my office. Anyone who knows Arab culture will know that a sweet treat is usually offered by the bearer of good news. So, if you get married, have a baby, graduate, or if anyone in your family does any of the aforementioned things, you are obligated to share this joy with those around you, usually in the form of some sugary delight.
At this point, you are probably asking what happy feat I have accomplished. Well, none of those customary events I just mentioned, for sure. No, my treat for my office mates was for a more unorthodox kind of joy, one that is completely localized, confined only to this bizarre place and one that only Palestinians living here in the occupied territories would understand.
My source of happiness came in the form of one sheet of paper, scribbled with loads of Hebrew and duly stamped and signed by the Israeli Interior Ministry in east Jerusalem. This paper, which I immediately laminated after making several photocopies, is my first step to so-called legitimacy in my own home. It is a "residency permit", which in contrast of the last 11 years of my life, has made me legal in Jerusalem, the place I have called home for over a decade.
About now, I am suspecting that many readers think I'm crazy. Well, only those who are not versed in the complicated and extremely discriminatory measures of Israeli authorities against Palestinians in Jerusalem. According to Israeli law (and I use the term loosely), Palestinians who marry Jerusalem residents must apply for family reunification in order to obtain a Jerusalem ID card and thus live legally in the city. While this may sound like standard procedure (I mean, who would deny a wife the right to live with her husband in the same city?) nothing is standard in Palestine.
My husband and I did apply for family reunification months after we got married back in 1998. We received a letter from the interior ministry several months later denying our request. What? Why? We had all the papers to prove we lived in Jerusalem (a prerequisite), we even provided them with wedding photos upon demand. The reason, however, for their denial had nothing to do papers and documents. I had to do with (yes, I apologize beforehand for having to use this term) Israeli "security". Whatever that really means, we had no idea.
So, a couple of years later, we gave it another shot. This time, they did not deny us and we were ecstatic. But all the same, they did not accept it either. They simply took the application and said they needed time to look it over. Well, the "time" they needed was six years, during which they neither denied nor granted us family reunification. In that time, having produced two lovely children who had the good fortune of being registered with their father as Jerusalem residents, I remained an "illegal alien" in my own home. I could not work, could not drive, could not cross checkpoints into the West Bank, basically could not do much except try and keep out of Israel's way. Because, "legally" (again I am wary to use this word but for lack of any other), if Israel's authorities wanted to ship me back to the West Bank, they had the law behind them to do it.
So, for years, I stayed home, walking to wherever I wanted to get and working from my old computer in my den. When I could travel across checkpoints, it was only when I had a permit issued for designated hours of the day in which I could enter Israel. According to the permit, I would have to be back in the West Bank by seven in the evening.
Meanwhile, we badgered our lawyer to get the ball rolling again to demand that the Interior Ministry give us an answer, one way or another. If, by a stroke of bad luck, they denied it, the decision would be irrevocable and we would just have to come up with a contingency plan for our lives.
Well, thankfully, luck would have it that our lawyer called us one day with the words we had been waiting to hear for so long. "You have an appointment at the ministry. This is good news," he told us. The next day, we went to our appointment, and after some paper work, signed the residency permit, valid for the next 12 months.
Let's not get ahead of ourselves though. This permit is a far cry from a permanent ID card, which according to yet another Israeli law, West Bank residents are not eligible for at this time. Instead, every year, I will have to go back to the ministry for the permit to be renewed, contingent of course, upon my "behaving" in Jerusalem. If I (or my husband) so much as look the wrong way at an Israeli soldier or policeman, my permit may not be renewed at all.
Needless to say, I am not alone. There are approximately 40,000 other West Bank Palestinians living in Jerusalem without family reunification. And like me, they are all struggling to get that precious piece of paper, which would prevent them from being separated from their loved ones.
Hence, this is a huge relief. I no longer have to worry about getting stopped in the street by an Israeli soldier and not knowing how to answer their routine question of "where is your ID." I can travel back and forth to the West Bank on a 24-hour residency permit without hindrance and I do not have to worry about getting stuck in the West Bank when there is a military closure on the Palestinian territories.
Someone living anywhere but in Palestine could probably never fathom these problems. What country denies a mother the right to live with her husband and children and, by law could tear them apart at any given time? These are basic human rights that all people, regardless of nationality, should enjoy without exception.
But here in the jungle land of Israeli domination, nothing can be taken for granted and a mere paper that offers a 12-month residency permit to live in one's home is reason for celebration.
Joharah Baker is a Writer for the Media and Information Program at the Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy (MIFTAH). She can be contacted at mip@miftah.org.