Travel Restrictions and People in the Office

Please read the Amira Hass article linked below, and keep it in mind as I write something about the conversation I just had with the woman who cleans the office. It is impossible to encompass in one piece the massive effects travel restrictions have on the lives of individuals in Palestine, and Palestinians in Israel. There are, however, many small stories and conversations that I can write down to start to build some illustration of how massive and invasive into people's lives and history the restrictions on travel are.

After sharing a ride with Um Faris for a week and basically exchanging niceties, she started talking to me today when she came up to my part of the office, asking me where I was from. It turned out that she is from Jenin. Oh, I've been to Jenin! Her father, she explained, was from Shefa Amr, but he fled to Jenin in 1948, and she was born there and grew up in the refugee camp.

She went to school up to the 12th grade. She wanted to go to university, but Israel shut down the universities in the West Bank in 1989, so she did not. She ended up marrying a man from Shefa Amr, and so, now she is here inside of Israel, married and with children in Shefa Amr. She spoke to me in English at first, what English she remembered from school. She speaks Arabic, but as she grew up in the West Bank, she never learned Hebrew.

Now, married to an Israeli citizen who is Arab, and having had children who have Israeli citizenship, she is still in some type of uncategorized category. She is not allowed to travel outside to Jordan, to Egypt, or on Hajj.

Um Faris has applied three times for a passport, and all three times has been told to "learn Hebrew, and then come back."



http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/905563.html

As a result, the ministry's head, Hussein al-Sheikh, had already announced the happy but false news on Tuesday: Students from Gaza would be allowed to go through the crossings to study abroad. There are currently several thousand Palestinian students who have been accepted to universities abroad, but cannot leave the strip through Israel to attend.

A Palestinian official said that no more than 100 students have been allowed to leave since June. The Israeli authorities had agreed to allow 700 students to leave, but the remaining 600 are still waiting.

Some of these 600 students arrived at Erez Tuesday, expecting to be allowed through. One of them, call him B., realized something had gone wrong only after getting there. Eventually, he was told to head back home.

click here for the full article http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/905563.html