Religion, Nationalism, and Terror

Bernard Avishai Dot Com, July 3, 2008

Abed has a quick mind, infectious smile and Zhivago-like eyes. He could have been anything he set his mind to becoming. He once told me the story of how he and his closest friends had dreamed of studying the law, that a couple of them actually went to Cairo to get law degrees, but that he wanted to start making money and missed the boat, you know, for reasons young men later come to regret. But he did go to work and did begin saving his money–6 a.m. to 4 p.m., every day for 20 years.

When Abed had finally squirreled-away enough, just around the turn of the millennium, he started building himself a stately house in the northern Jerusalem neighborhood of Beit Hanina, just beyond Shuafat, but before the Jewish neighborhood of Neve Yaacov. He and his family finally moved into the house, his dream palace, in 2003. This was, of course, the height of the Al-Aqsa Intifadah.

In 2004, the government announced that the security wall was going up. Beit Hanina was going to be on the other side of it. Abed and his family were given days to find a place inside the wall, or he would be considered a resident of the Palestinian territories, not Jerusalem; he would lose his job, and they would lose their social insurance and health benefits (which his taxes had paid for all those years).

Abed told me this story with resignation. Who lives in the house?, I asked him at the time? “The birds,” he said, and added: “God is great.” His family squeezed into a two bedroom flat. The only time his eyes teared up was when he explained how he had to pull his kids from school and tell them they could no longer play with their friends. In all the years I have known him, I’ve heard nothing but words of revulsion for violence of any kind.

According to Le Monde, on July 2nd, an Algerian court reduced the sentences of two Algerians found guilty of having converted to Christianity. Originally sentenced, in November 2007, to two years in prison and fines of 5,000 Euros, the two men now only face a suspended sentence of six months in prison and fines of 1,000 Euros for having converted from Islam to another religion. The case of an Algerian woman sentenced to three years in prison for converting to Christianity is still being appealed after her sentence was condemned in the Algerian press. According to a law passed in February 2006, Algerian Muslims who convert to other religions can be sentenced to five years in prison and the payment of fines from 5,000 to 10,000 Euros. No laws forbid the conversion of non-Muslims to Islam.

Daoud Kuttab: Life is an ID Card for a 16-Year-Old in Palestine, August 9, 2003

For most teenagers, the world over, the age of sixteen is supposed to be a happy one. However, reaching 16 for Palestinians, especially those living in East Jerusalem, is not much fun. This is the age that they are supposed to start carrying the dreaded identification card and in turn the soldiers (not much older than them) can take pot shots at them without much concern or worry. Any young Palestinian looking close to 16 better have an ID or a birth certificate showing that he/she is under this age.

My daughter Tamara who spent her 16th birthday as a senior in an Ohio High School as an exchange student, came home for the summer to obtain her ID. Her cousin, Manuel Abu Ali, who just turned sixteen, has been moving around Jerusalem with difficulty, using his mother’s ID (which has his name listed) along with his school picture ID. For Palestinians of Jerusalem, getting a personal ID, which ought to be a simple affair, has become the new via de la Rosa. Unlike Israelis who get a five or ten year passport, Palestinians in Jerusalem can travel only on a laisser passier which can be issued for only a year, thus adding to an exasperating problem where 250,000 Palestinians are served by a single office of the Ministry of Interior and are denied the right to use any other office to get official document they need.

Palestinians in Jerusalem wishing to obtain any of these official government certificates (birth, marriage license, travel document or even death certificates) face the impossible task of simply entering the Interior Ministry offices.