PaddockLad

An eviction in East Jerusalem lies at the center of a conflict that led to war between Israel and Hamas. But for millions of Palestinians, the routine indignities of occupation are part of daily life. By David M. Halbfinger and Adam Rasgon May 22, 2021 JERUSALEM — Muhammad Sandouka built his home in the shadow of the Temple Mount before his second son, now 15, was born. They demolished it together, after Israeli authorities decided that razing it would improve views of the Old City for tourists. Mr. Sandouka, 42, a countertop installer, had been at work when an inspector confronted his wife with two options: Tear the house down, or the government would not only level it but also bill the Sandoukas $10,000 for its expenses. Such is life for Palestinians living under Israel’s occupation: always dreading the knock at the front door. The looming removal of six Palestinian families from their homes in East Jerusalem set off a round of protests that helped ignite the latest war between Israel and Gaza. But to the roughly three million Palestinians living in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which Israel captured in the 1967 war and has controlled through decades of failed peace talks, the story was exceptional only because it attracted an international spotlight. For the most part, they endure the frights and indignities of the Israeli occupation in obscurity. Even in supposedly quiet periods, when the world is not paying attention, Palestinians from all walks of life routinely experience exasperating impossibilities and petty humiliations, bureaucratic controls that force agonizing choices, and the fragility and cruelty of life under military rule, now in its second half-century. Underneath that quiet, pressure builds. If the eviction dispute in East Jerusalem struck a match, the occupation’s provocations ceaselessly pile up dry kindling. They are a constant and key driver of the conflict, giving Hamas an excuse to fire rockets or lone-wolf attackers grievances to channel into killings by knives or automobiles. And the provocations do not stop when the fighting ends. Home on the Edge No homeowner welcomes a visit from the code-enforcement officer. But it’s entirely different in East Jerusalem, where Palestinians find it nearly impossible to obtain building permits and most homes were built without them: The penalty is often demolition. Mr. Sandouka grew up just downhill from the Old City’s eastern ramparts, in the valley dividing the Temple Mount from the Mount of Olives. At 19, he married and moved into an old addition onto his father’s house, then began expanding it. New stone walls tripled the floor area. He laid tile, hung drywall and furnished a cozy kitchen. He spent around $150,000. Children came, six in all. Ramadan brought picnickers to the green valley. The kids played host, delivering cold water or hot soup. His wife prepared feasts of maqluba (chicken and rice) and mansaf (lamb in yogurt sauce). He walked with his sons up to Al Aqsa, one of Islam’s holiest sites. In 2016, city workers posted an address marker over Mr. Sandouka’s gate. It felt like legitimation. But Israel was drifting steadily rightward. The state parks authority fell under the influence of settlers, who seek to expand Jewish control over the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Citing an old plan for a park encircling the Old City, the authority set about clearing one unpermitted house after another. Now it was Mr. Sandouka’s turn. Plans showed a corner of the house encroaching on a future tour-bus parking lot. Zeev Hacohen, an authority official, said erasing Mr. Sandouka’s neighborhood was necessary to restore views of the Old City “as they were in the days of the Bible.” “The personal stories are always painful,” he allowed. But the Palestinian neighborhood, he said, “looks like the Third World.” Mr. Sandouka hired a lawyer and prayed. But he was at work a few months ago when someone knocked on his door again. This time, his wife told him, crying, it was a police officer. The Night Raid The knock at the door is not always just a knock. Badr Abu Alia, 50, was awakened around 2 a.m. by the sounds of soldiers breaking into his neighbor’s home in Al Mughrayyir, a village on a ridge in the West Bank. When they got to his door, a familiar ritual ensued: His children were rousted from bed. Everyone was herded outside. The soldiers collected IDs, explained nothing and ransacked the house. They left two hours later, taking with them a teenager from next door, blindfolded. He had taken part in a protest four days earlier, when an Israeli sniper shot and killed a teenager who was wandering among the rock-throwers and spent tear-gas canisters. Al Mughrayyir was one of the few villages still mounting regular Friday protests. They began after settlers cut off access to some of the villagers’ farmland. The boy’s death became a new rallying cry. The army says it raids Palestinian homes at night because it is safer, and ransacks them to search for weapons, in routine crackdowns aimed at keeping militance in check. But the raids also inspire militance. Mr. Abu Alia seethed as he described seeing his son outside in the dark, “afraid, crying because of the soldiers, and I can do nothing to protect him.” “It makes you want to take revenge, to defend yourself,” he went on. “But we have nothing to defend ourselves with.” Stone-throwing must suffice, he said. “We can’t take an M-16 and go kill every settler. All we have are those stones. A bullet can kill you instantly. A little stone won’t do much. But at least I’m sending a message.” Settlers send messages, too. They have cut down hundreds of Al Mughrayyir’s olive trees — vital sources of income and ties to the land — torched a mosque, vandalized cars. In 2019, one was accused of fatally shooting a villager in the back. The case remains open. A Family Divided For Majeda al-Rajaby the pain of occupation never goes away. It slices straight through her family. A twice-divorced teacher, Ms. al-Rajaby, 45, is divided from her five children by the different ways Israel treats Palestinians depending on where they are from. She grew up in the West Bank, in Hebron. But both her ex-husbands were Jerusalem residents, allowing them to travel anywhere an Israeli citizen may go. The children were entitled to the blue IDs of Jerusalem residents, too. Hers remained West Bank green. Both her husbands lived in Shuafat refugee camp, a lawless slum inside the Jerusalem city limits but just outside Israel’s security barrier. West Bankers are not allowed to live there, but the rule is not enforced. She had thought she was marrying up. Instead, she said her husbands “always made me feel inferior.” After the second divorce, she was left on her own, with her green ID, to raise all five children with their blue IDs. The distinction could be life-threatening. When a daughter accidentally inhaled housecleaning chemicals, Ms. al-Rajaby tried to race her to the closest hospital, in Jerusalem. Soldiers refused to let her in. As a teacher in Shuafat, she had a permit to enter Jerusalem, but only until 7 p.m. It was 8:00. Her children are older now, but the distinction is just as keenly felt: Ms. al-Rajaby allows herself to be excluded from joyful moments and rites of passage so her children can enjoy advantages unavailable to her. She stays behind on the Palestinian side of the security barrier while they head off to Jaffa or Haifa, or on shortcuts to Hebron through Jerusalem, a route forbidden to her. “West Banker,” they tease her, waving goodbye. One daughter is 21 now and engaged and goes on jaunts into Israel with her fiancé’s mother. “I should be with them,” Ms. al-Rajaby said. Last summer, Ms. al-Rajaby moved out of Shuafat to a safer neighborhood just outside the Jerusalem city limits, in the West Bank. That means her children could lose their blue IDs if Israel determined that their primary residence was with her. “I’m not allowed to live there,” she said of Shuafat, “and my daughters are not allowed to live here.” Constrained as she is, Ms. al-Rajaby wants even more for her children than freedom to move about Israel. In 2006, her daughter Rana, then 7, was burned in a cooking accident. An Italian charity paid for treatment at a hospital in Padua. Mother and child stayed for three months. The experience opened Ms. al-Rajaby’s eyes. She saw green parks, children in nice clothes, women driving cars. “It was the moment of my liberation,” she said. “I started thinking: ‘Why do they have this? Why don’t we?’” Today, she urges all her children to see the world, and holds out hope that they might emigrate. “Why,” she asked, “should someone keep living under the mercy of people who have no mercy?” Working for the Occupation Try as they might to make their accommodations with Israel, Palestinians often find themselves caught in the occupation’s gears. Majed Omar once earned a good living as a construction worker inside Israel. But in 2013, his younger brother was spotted crossing through a gap in Israel’s security barrier. A soldier shot him in the leg. Mr. Omar, 45, was collateral damage. Israel revoked his work permit just in case he had ideas about taking revenge — something Israel says happens too often. He sat unemployed for 14 months. When Israel reissued his permit, it only allowed him to work in the fast-growing West Bank settlements, where workers are paid half as much, searched each morning and supervised by armed guards all day. Which is how he came to be the foreman on a crew that remodels Jewish homes and expands Israeli buildings on land the Palestinians have long demanded as part of their hoped-for state. In a small way, it’s like digging his own grave, Mr. Omar said. “But we’re living in a time when everyone sees what’s wrong and still does it.” The Checkpoint Violence is often sudden and brief. But the nagging dread it instills can be just as debilitating. Nael al-Azza, 40, is haunted by the Israeli checkpoint he must pass through while commuting between his home in Bethlehem and his job in Ramallah. At home, he lives behind walls and cultivates a lush herb and vegetable garden in the backyard. But nothing protects him on his drive to work, not even his position as a manager in the Palestinian firefighting and ambulance service. Recently, he said, a soldier at the checkpoint stopped him, told him to roll down his window, asked if he had a weapon. He said no. She opened his passenger door to take a look, then slammed it shut, hard. He wanted to object. But he stopped himself, he said: Too many confrontations with soldiers end with Palestinians being shot. “If I want to defend my property and my self-respect, there’s a price for that,” he said. His commute is a 14-mile trip as the crow flies, but a 33-mile route, because Palestinians are diverted in a wide loop around Jerusalem along a tortuous two-lane road of steep switchbacks. Even so, it ought to take less an hour — but often takes two or three, because of the checkpoint. The Israelis consider the checkpoint essential to search for fleeing attackers or illegal weapons or to cut the West Bank in two in case of unrest. Palestinians call it a choke point that can be shut off on a soldier’s whim. It is also a friction point, motorists and soldiers each imagining themselves as the other’s target. Idling and inching along, Mr. al-Azza compared traffic to blood flow. Searching one car can mean an hour’s delay. The soldiers are so young, he said, “They don’t feel the weight of stopping 5,000 cars.” He thinks only of those delayed. “When they impede your movement and cause you to fail at your job, you feel like you’ve lost your value and meaning,” he said. A few nights each week, delays force him to sleep at work and settle for video calls with his three children. On weekend outings, the checkpoint takes a different toll on his family. “I try to keep my kids from speaking about the conflict,” he said. “But they see and experience things I have no answer for. When we’re driving, we turn the music on. But when we reach the checkpoint, I turn it off. I don’t know why. I’ll see them in the mirror: All of a sudden, they sit upright and look anxious — until we cross and I turn the music back on.” Deadly scenarios constantly play out in Mr. al-Azza’s head: What if a tire blew out or his engine stalled? What if a young soldier, trained to respond instantly, misconstrued it as a threat? “It’s not possible to put it out of mind,” he said. “When you’re hungry, you think about food.” In the Bubble No Palestinian is insulated from the occupation’s reach — not even in the well-to-do, privileged “bubble” of Ramallah, where Israeli soldiers are seldom seen. Everyone Sondos Mleitat knows bears the scars of some trauma. Her own: Hiding with her little brother, then 5, when Israeli tanks rolled into Nablus, where she was raised. In the dark, she said, he pulled all his eyelashes out, one by one. Today, Ms. Mleitat, 30, runs a website connecting Palestinians with psychotherapists. Instead of reckoning with their lingering wounds, she said, people seek safety in social conformity, in religion, in the approval gleaned from Facebook and Instagram likes. But all of those, she said, only reinforce the occupation’s suffocating effects. “This is all about control,” she said. “People are going through a type of taming or domestication. They just surrender to it and feel they can’t change anything.” After her uncle was killed by Israeli soldiers at a protest, she said, his younger brother was pushed into marriage at 18 “to protect him from going down the same path.” But a nation of people who reach adulthood thinking only about settling down, she said, is not a nation that will achieve independence. “They think they’re getting out of this bubble, but they’re not,” she said. Homeless Mr. Sandouka earns about $1,800 in a good month. He hoped the lawyer could quash the demolition order. “I thought they would just give us a fine,” he said. Then he got another panicked call from home: “The police were there, making my family cry.” Khalas, he said, enough. He would tear it down himself. Early on a Monday, his sons took turns with a borrowed jackhammer. They almost seemed to be having fun, like wrecking a sand castle. Finished, their moods darkened. “It’s like we’re lighting ourselves on fire,” said Mousa, 15. “They want the land,” said Muataz, 22. “They want all of us to leave Jerusalem.” In 2020, 119 Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem were demolished, 79 of them by their owners. When all was rubble, Mr. Sandouka lit a cigarette and held it with three beefy fingers as it burned. His pants filthy with the dust of his family’s life together, he climbed atop the debris, sent photos to the police and contemplated his options. Moving to the West Bank, and sacrificing Jerusalem residency, was unthinkable. Moving elsewhere in Jerusalem was unaffordable. A friend offered a couple of spare rooms as a temporary refuge. Mr. Sandouka’s wife demanded permanency. “She told me if I don’t buy her a home, that’s it — everyone can go their separate ways,” he said. He turned his eyes uphill toward the Old City. “These people work little by little,” he said. “It’s like a lion that eats one, and then another. It eventually eats everything around it.”

Can you explain how the public vote works for us mate? Graham Norton was a couple of bottles in by then and couldn’t be arsed ...

Three Commonwealth countries didn’t give UK a point Russia, Ukraine, Moldova, Israel (they’ve just finished murdering the people they keep in an open prison but still got 100+ points ) etc didn’t give UK a point Nothing to do with Brexit, UK sent an atonal potato to croak along to a backing track that sounded like a three minute cry for mercy just before a lethal injection. Try sending someone with talent, charisma and a decent song next time Having said that, it was the first time I’d watched it since I was old enough to drink and it was better than all the Newcastle United games I’ve watched this season put together Voted for Ukraine. Liked Azerbaijan very much indeed. There was about 10 very decent acts/performances, including the winners Italy who looked a bit like extras from Velvet Goldmine who’d recruited Lenny Kravitz to play guitar. Switzerland song was insipid wank, liked the French Edith Piaf girl though.

Fuck off

Simeone wins La Liga with Athletico ...Real may be regretting recent business

You gimps think Europe is a pre season friendly on the Isle of Wight you six fingered sister fuckers

https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/boxing/josh-taylor-jose-ramirez-fight-preview-b1848671.html Good stuff from Bunce, this is the first fight I’ve fancied watching in ages...coverage looks painful though..any aficionados know if it will be shown on BT or Sky? ...highlights?

So, Brexit is less than six months old and has already seen off the UK fishing industry and the agricultural sector... the mental acrobatics going on in Brexiteers heads at the moment may actually put their health at risk

26 October also around then & heading into next year Garbage (current Mrs PL’s favourites) Echo & TB, Libertines, Charlatans, Stiff Little Fingers and Sleaford Mods in December somewhere near where Millwall play 👊

Its the father in law’s laws sky go account...it’s gratis so I’ve no complaints really...updated the laptop and am now regretting having the technical knowledge to do so because it’s now working perfectly and we’re still utter shite

Anyone's Sky playing up? 😒

As the young people are fond of saying "you love to see it"

Just to say Leicester have won one league title, one FA cup & two league cups since we demolished them 7-1 at St James Park in May 1993. We’re fuckin cursed.

Some of my worst memories are of London football supporters with faces like a smacked arse after beating us at Wembley. Entitled ungrateful fuckin wankers. One of our lot ordered some gooners to try to enjoy themselves in the tube after the cup final. That didn’t end well 👊

We wouldn’t have played like that v City’s first team in say January but it was a really good end of season game. Willock was plainly shafting Arteta’s missus

4 people dead from Indian varient... they'll be no fucker at football next week after all...

If you’re suggesting there are giant server farms/data centres dotted around the planet specifically to err “mine” Bitcoin then what you’re saying makes a bit of sense. If, on the other hand, these things lurk in normal server rooms and hard drives am not no sure the power consumption is any more than part of normal every day demand. But it appears to me to that it’s a difficult thing to quantify....think Musk knows his power and is “at it” ....

Someones going to have to explain this to thicko here. As far as I can make out Bitcoin is basically a fuckin IT unicorn? which roams the fertile plains of hard drives? What the fuck are people banging on about? Can someone post a picture of a Bitcoin mine? Is it like Percy Main or Bilston Glen? Why are people talkimg about the environmental impact of a fairy story? I get that it’s an electronic currency marketplace, but now it’s apparently a physical manifestation that’s going to kill the planet?

Plainly something equally as infantile but as yet not fessed up to on this esteemed forum

What's more important than LIFE ITSELF Dave?

He went on to talksport and said precisely what they wanted him to say, the fuckin disingenuous cunt

@ewerk do you think if there had been some sort if "truth & reconciliation" process in the late 90s things would be different in NI nowadays?