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  Ir Amim: Voices From Jerusalem: An Arab Citizen of Israel Discovers Jerusalem
Reported by Huffington Post on Wednesday, 18 November 2009 (on November 18, 2009)
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By Abeer Otman
July 2009. Seven years have passed since I arrived in Jerusalem, a girl of 19, from the village of Rabia. All I wanted was to study at the Hebrew University, the premier university in Israel and it did not matter that the university was in Jerusalem. I did not know the city; everything in it seemed strange to me. I did not know who I was, but I knew I did not like Jerusalem.
My first day in Jerusalem, my friend explained to me that I must always carry with me two things: my Israeli identity card and my mobile phone. The identity card -- in case I was subjected to a security check by the police or the army; the mobile phone -- because Jerusalem was unstable and dangerous.
I remember well that day in August 2002, just a few weeks after I arrived in Jerusalem. I was having lunch with my roommates when we heard police, army, and ambulance sirens converging on the university. We were shocked to hear there was a suicide bombing at the university. We left our dorm, running towards the university, deeply frightened. Suddenly we were surrounded by army jeeps. They stopped us like they did all the Arabs they found in the area. They demanded to see our identity cards. Yet those blue identity cards did nothing to protect us from the soldiers\' insults or their blows. I spent five hours in the sun waiting to get back my identity card, prohibited from answering my mobile phone. When I was released later in the day, there was a terrible emptiness that filled my whole being and the world around me. The next day, I was taken to the hospital with symptoms of sun stroke. My body and soul were shaken. It was the first time I came to know who I was: a Palestinian.
After that, I began to ask questions. Why is my nationality recorded as \"Israeli\" on my identity card while residents of East Jerusalem are not recorded as such? Why do I speak Hebrew fluently while they do not understand it? What is the Palestinian narrative, and what is the Zionist one? If there is a West Bank, where was the East Bank? And most important: what is this city?
During the summer of 2005, I began to work as a social worker in the Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem. Dealing with various societal issues, I came to understand the root political causes and the absence of solutions. My case was not unusual. Many of the \"1948 Palestinians\" [those who remained within Israel in 1948], who came to the Hebrew University for their education, stayed in Jerusalem and took positions in government agencies that work with the Palestinian population of East Jerusalem. They bring to this work their fluency in both Hebrew and Arabic and their understanding of how the Israeli bureaucracy works. In contrast, the Palestinian population of Jerusalem does not speak Hebrew fluently, and their interactions with the government agencies take the shape of relations with a usurping colonizer. Their experiences include the drive by the Ministry of the Interior to deprive Palestinians of their identity cards; the investigations of Israeli Security Service (Shabak); and the home demolitions ordered by the municipal government. They prefer not to interact with these institutions.
As a young woman, a \"1948 Palestinian,\" who wanted to address root socio-political issues concerning the Palestinians of East Jerusalem, to raise awareness and demand rights, I needed the cooperation of their community leaders. Because they were, for the most part, male, religious, and closed-minded the collaboration was not at all easy. Only with time did I begin to see the city with completely different eyes. It happened through my daily contact with every strata of the religious community, including women, young men, and children, and through my growing familiarity with the Israeli bureaucracy and the policies behind the provision of services.
I began to discern Jerusalem\'s smells, its colors, the whispers of its walls. Most important, I began to see the expressions on the faces of passers-by in the market and narrate their stories and their miseries. I know now the extent of the suffering of the woman who comes from a village to Jerusalem to sell sprigs of mint in order to satisfy the thirst of her family, or the student who rises every day at dawn and goes through security checkpoints and humiliating searches in order to reach a classroom where forty students study under impossible conditions. And that man, who is without work for many years, deprived of help from governmental and civil society organizations because he does not speak Hebrew. How will he find work in West [Jewish] Jerusalem?
Meanwhile, in East Jerusalem, economic life is so weak and limited. Everyone in this city is in a chase to escape the claws of poverty that overtake most Palestinian families. They are in a desperate fight to build a future under educational, social, economic, and security conditions that are nearly impossible to break through.
And what can I do about it all? Is it enough to work to improve these conditions, to volunteer here and there, to write an occasional article? What should I do to lessen the suffering of my sacred city and its people, who are crouching under occupation and abuse, the theft of freedoms and rights, of their dreams to enjoy a fair and good life and a better future?
These days I walk through the market in Jerusalem\'s Old City and I hear the cries of the sellers, and I smell the perfume stores and see the colors of the hanging shawls. I go into the hidden neighborhoods beyond the market, and I see what is behind the walls of the houses and hear the stories of the stones and watch the children in the alleys and, when they don\'t hide away from me, I join them in their games. From all this, I am able to see the strength and the might of this city and its residents. I pray for them out of amazement and appreciation. I close my eyes and ask that the city accept me as its daughter. Perhaps, from it I can learn more about deep-rootedness, authenticity, strength, obstinacy, love for its children and its people. Perhaps, I could, just once, feel that I am Jerusalem.
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