Your Home Is My Castle

The Apartheid Wall – the so-called "security fence" – presently being erected deep in occupied Palestinian land has already left about 12.000 Palestinian villagers outside it, trapped between the Wall and the Green Line. All this territory, between the Apartheid Wall and Israel proper, has been termed "the seam zone." The Israeli Army recently issued clear and detailed orders concerning this zone, as reported by Amira Hass of Ha'aretz (14.10.2003):

"An individual will not enter the seam zone and will not stay there; An individual found in the seam zone will have to leave it immediately."

What about a Palestinian who lives in the seam zone? -Well, he "will be permitted to enter the seam zone and stay there, so long as he bears a permit in writing" issued by the Israeli Army.

So if you happened to have your house in the seam zone, and you are aged 12 or older, you have to persuade the Israeli Army to give you a permit to stay at home, or to go home. If you expect a visit, first make sure your guest fills one of the 12 relevant application forms – for an owner of a business in the seam zone; a merchant; an employee; a farmer; a teacher; a student; an employee of the Palestinian Authority; a visitor; an employee of an international organization; an employee of a local authority or infrastructure company; a member of a medical team; or for 'all other objectives' – the Israeli Army thinks of everything. Once your guest has filled out the form, and has been lucky enough to obtain the permit, he is most welcome to visit you.

Obviously, the Israeli Army may or may not issue the permit. The Army may limit its validity, withdraw it, or suspend it at will. It may take you several days to get a permit, it may take months. But it may also depend on the applicant: he may be politely asked – in a discrete conversation with an anonymous agent in dark sun-glasses – to keep an open eye on his neighbours or family if he wants to get a permit, or to grant the Israeli intelligence some other service: No free lunch.

Obviously, these draconic measures are not really applied to everybody. Some people do not need a permit. These are:

"1. A citizen of Israel;
2. A resident of Israel;
3. Anyone entitled to immigrate to Israel according to the Law of Return."

So if your mother happened to be Jewish, and you live in Montreal, in Mexico City or in Johannesburg, you need no permit at all to go to the small West Bank village of Salim. But if you are a Palestinian, even if you and your family have been living in Salim for centuries, you cannot stay there without a written permit from Major General Moshe Kaplinski "or someone acting on his behalf", as the order goes.

Major General Moshe Kaplinski has not been summoned to the International Criminal Court in the Hague yet for this racist order. I doubt whether he ever will be.

But if you ever wondered what the world would have looked like if Hitler had won the War, I think this could give you a pretty good idea.

Happy Halloween.
www.antiwar.com/hacohen/h102703.html

Ran HaCohen was born in the Netherlands in 1964 and has grown up in Israel. He has B.A. in Computer Science, M.A. in Comparative Literature and he presently works on his PhD thesis. He lives in Tel-Aviv, teaches in the Department of Comparative Literature in Tel-Aviv University. He also works as literary translator (from German, English and Dutch), and as a literary critic for the Israeli daily Yedioth Achronoth. His work has been published widely in Israel. His column appears monthly at Antiwar.com.

Courtesy Raja Mattar

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Last updated 01/11/2003

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