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 SHEIKH MUHAMMAD Hassan Abu-Tir has something every
politician craves: instant recognizability. His long beard dyed bright orange with
henna is very conspicuous indeed. Actually it is a religious symbol: the
prophet, for whom he is named, used to dye his beard the same way.
The red-bearded Sheikh is better known in Israel than any
other senior Hamas leader. In the most popular satirical show on Israeli TV,
"A Wonderful Land", he is already impersonated by a famous humorist,
who succeeds in imitating his style and body language, with his intelligent smile,
and brought him into our living rooms. For many Israelis, this impersonation
has almost turned him into a likable figure, even if he himself does not like
it at all. (Something similar has happened to Yasser Arafat, too. A marionette
representing him in a very popular TV show portrayed him as a likable, mildly
humorous figure, very different from the demonic image that the official
Israeli propaganda endeavored to establish.)
This week, Abu-Tir was in the news for a much more serious
reason. When I met him at his home, an ominous threat was hovering over him:
expulsion. The Interior Minister in the Olmert government informed him and
three of his colleagues, all Hamas members of the Palestinian parliament, that
within one month they would have to choose: either to resign from all their
positions in the Palestinian Authority or be deprived of their status as
"permanent residents" in Jerusalem.
That would lead to their expulsion to the occupied West
Bank.
HOW WAS that possible? After the 1967 "Six-day War", when the Israeli
government was in a hurry to annex East Jerusalem,
it drew up new borders for the city, well beyond the neighborhoods of the city
itself. The intention was to annex a maximum of land with a minimum of
Palestinian inhabitants. Because of this, a map of the city looks like a
pre-historic monster, or an American "gerrymander".
Yet, in spite of all the efforts and tricks, there was no
way to avoid including a sizable Palestinian population in the
"unified" city, amounting now to a quarter of a million human beings.
The village of Sur-Baher, where Abu-Tir is living, is
situated a short distance from the city, but was annexed along with the rest.
When the annexation took place, there arose, of course, the
question of the fate of these inhabitants. If it had been possible to drive
them out, it would surely have been done, but under the circumstances that would
not have been acceptable. The natural thing would have been to give them
Israeli citizenship, as was done in 1949 when a number of Arab villages, which
were not conquered by the Israeli army, were turned over to Israel by King Abdallah of Jordan in the armistice
agreement.
But the Israeli leaders were appalled by the idea of adding another
large bloc of Palestinians to the already considerable number of Arabs in Israel,
amounting to about 20% of Israeli
citizens. They found a tricky way out: the Palestinians in East Jerusalem were
given the status of "permanent residents" in Israel, but remained citizens of Jordan. That way
they could not take part in Israeli elections, but enjoyed many other privileges
(like paying Israeli taxes and social security contributions.)
The government knew, of course, that the Arabs would find it
difficult to object to this ploy. If they had demanded Israeli citizenship, that
would have meant recognizing Israeli sovereignty over East
Jerusalem - something no state in the world has yet done.
Not giving citizenship to the "annexed" Arabs also
served another purpose. In the course of the 1948 war, the whole population of West Jerusalem had to flee to the East of the city. They
left behind them all their property, including all the beautiful homes of the
Talbiyeh quarter and the land on which the Knesset, the Prime Minister's
office, the Giv'at Ram campus of the Hebrew
University and the Israel Museum
now stand. If the owners of these properties, who now live in East
Jerusalem, had been granted citizenship, they could have demanded them
back. That would not have been an automatic process, but the pressure on the
government would have been intense. It was safer to make them "permanent
residents" only.
ONE OF the differences between a "citizen"
and a "permanent resident" is that it is almost impossible to revoke
citizenship, but quite easy to annul the status of a "permanent
resident". The Minister of the Interior is empowered to do this by a
simple executive decision. The victim can, of course, appeal to the Supreme
Court, but the chances of success are slim.
The action of Interior Minister Ronnie Bar-On is a bad omen.
If he succeeds, this will constitute a danger to all the 250 thousand
Palestinians in East Jerusalem. Their status
as permanent residents could be revoked, under some security pretext or other.
In Israel,
security can be used to justify almost everything. Innocent Israelis can always
be convinced that some measure is necessary in order to protect their lives
from the murderous terrorists.
The abuse of the term "permanent resident" is
obvious. A "permanent resident" is usually an immigrant who comes to Israel and is
not able - or does not want - to become a citizen. To apply this term to
families who have lived in Jerusalem
since it was conquered by the Caliph Omar some 1300 years ago is a political
and linguistic rape.
It violates international law, which says that East Jerusalem is an occupied territory whose inhabitants
are "protected persons" who cannot be expelled from their homes. It
also violates the Oslo agreement, which says
that the question of Jerusalem
is to be decided upon in the final status negotiations, which have not even
started. Oslo specifically grants the
Palestinian residents of Jerusalem
the right to vote for and be elected to the Palestinian parliament. Abu-Tir has
been elected by the voters of the city as their deputy.
The demand that he choose between resignation from
parliament and expulsion from the city is a crass violation of a written
agreement - by the same Israeli government that demands that Hamas accept all
written agreements with Israel.
There seems to be no limit to the cynicism of Olmert & Co.
Moreover, when the Oslo
agreement was signed, Shimon Peres also gave a written commitment on behalf of
the Government of Israel that no Palestinian institution in Jerusalem would be harmed. When Ehud Olmert
was still the mayor of Jerusalem,
he violated this commitment by closing the "Orient House". Now he is violating
it again.
PERHAPS IT is worthwhile to compare the two protagonists of
this affair: Ronnie Bar-On and Muhammad Abu-Tir.
Bar-On was born in Tel-Aviv, two months after the official
founding of the State of Israel. I am not sure whether his family came to Palestine one or two
generations earlier. He was always a very right-wing person, a Herut-Likud-man
from youth. He is known for his rudeness. In the Knesset and in his frequent
appearances on TV talk-shows he often behaves like a real oral hooligan.
He became famous mainly because of the scandal that bears
his name. When the position of Attorney General, a very powerful office in Israel, became vacant,
Binyamin Netanyahu appointed Bar-On. At once rumors started, alleging that this
had been done in collusion with Shas leader Aryeh Deri, who was awaiting trial
and was eventually sent to prison. A public storm broke out, and Netanyahu was
forced to remove him after only a few days in office.
As a politician, Bar-On is a complete opportunist. His
right-wing views did not prevent him from jumping on the bandwagon when Sharon set up Kadima. Because
of this jump, he is now Interior Minister. He never made any sacrifice for his
views.
Abu-Tir was born in 1951, the son of a family that is deeply
rooted in the country. He was sentenced to prison for life and spent (with
interruptions) 25 years - almost half his life - in prison. First he was a
Fatah member, but in prison he became a pious Muslim and joined Hamas.
He is admired by the people around him, an amiable person
with a lively sense of humor. It's easy to talk with him and he speaks perfect
Hebrew. He has a lot of influence in his party.
I MET HIM first during the stormy demonstration in
a-Ram, under a shower of tear gas. We agreed then that we should meet in
quieter surroundings. A few days ago I visited him at his home. We exchanged
views and agreed to make the fact of our meeting public, thus turning it into a
political act. I asked him to find out whether conditions are ripe for a wider
meeting of Israeli peace organizations and the Hamas leadership.
To me, the meeting brought back old memories. 32 years ago I
established the first contacts with the emissaries of Yasser Arafat, who was then
considered an arch-terrorist, the leader of a terrorist organization whose
charter called for the elimination of the State of Israel. These contacts led
in 1982 to my meeting with Arafat in besieged Beirut. It was his first meeting with an
Israeli, but the circle widened rapidly and prepared the ground on both sides
for the Oslo
agreement and the Two-State Solution.
I believe that now it is the job of the Israeli peace
movements to do the same again: build the first bridge between Israelis and
Hamas and pave the way for a dialogue between the Government of Israel and the Government
of Palestine. (By the way, consistency demands that those who insist on talking
about the "Hamas government" should also use the term "Kadima
government".)
In such a process, which demands a change in the minds of
millions on both sides, the first contacts are very important. The
establishment and its numerous servants in the media naturally try to ignore
and conceal them, the public treats them with hostility and a lack of
understanding, until it gets used to the idea. But it is an essential task.
More than half the population in the Palestinian territories
voted for Hamas. Hamas is an existing fact. It will play a major role in any
conceivable scenario. The majority of Israelis long for an end to the conflict,
and so do the majority of Palestinians. Both governments must, in the end,
accept this reality.
Our task is to help them cross this bridge.
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