November 22, 2007

Taking a family vacation is usually a chance to relax, kick back and enjoy oneself. Hopefully, in my case, it will eventually be so, once I get to my destination. The problem is all the procedures that must be endured before that can actually happen.

I am off to London, to attend my little sister’s wedding. A joyous occasion no doubt, and one that my entire family is looking forward to. However, whereas my father can quickly book a flight from the United States to London and my brother just as simply from Berlin, I had to map things out much more carefully and began planning this trip months ago.

This is why. Of dual Palestinian-American citizenship, fate had it that I would marry someone with Jerusalem residency. Almost a decade after our wedding, we are still trying to obtain family reunification that would effectively make me a Jerusalem resident and hence deem me "legal" in my own home. Until this gargantuan feat is conquered, I live, like approximately 40,000 other Palestinians "in the palm of a goblin", that is, without ever having any real security or stability.

Hence, my "illegal" status in Jerusalem means I cannot travel along with Jerusalem residents through Israel’s Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv. In this case, the Jerusalem residents in question are my husband and children. Yes, absurd as it may sound, my children are legally registered in Jerusalem (even though my name is filled in the slot allotted for mother’s name).

So, this is what we had to do in order to make this trip to London. First, my husband and children needed to obtain visas from the British government to be allowed entry into the United Kingdom given that they only have Israeli issued laissez-passer’s or travel documents that fall short of citizenship. Luckily for me, I have an American passport, which means I was saved this extra step. After getting their visas, they will now travel out of Ben Gurion.

I, on the other hand, bearing Palestinian citizenship with which I must enter or exit Palestine, am lower on the food chain and cannot travel along with other Israeli citizens, foreigners or permanent residents (unless I am granted an Israeli permit allowing me to do so, which is considered a rarity among Palestinians). Therefore, I must cross the Allenby Bridge over to the East Bank of Jordan in order to travel anywhere outside of Palestine. The bridge is the only border crossing available to Palestinians in the West Bank, creating a virtual bottleneck for outgoing and ingoing travelers. The Gaza Strip is worse, with only the Rafah Crossing into Egypt available for Gazans, and which is closed by Israeli authorities more times than not, leaving tens and sometimes hundreds of people stranded at the border for days or weeks on end.

So, there you have it. I cannot leave my own country with my own husband and children. We are going to meet up in London because I would rather not venture into even sticker territory and expound why Jordan is not an option for the rest of my family. That would require a whole other article.

At this point, my family is only hoping to pull this vacation off without a hitch. I only have to spend one night in a Jordan hotel away from my kids, something neither they nor I am used to. Oh, and one night on the way home, since there are no flights from the UK that arrive early enough in Jordan to be able to cross the overcrowded bridge back into Palestine before it closes.

Such Kafkaesque procedures beg obvious questions. Is there anywhere else in the world where mother and children cannot travel together, where, under the so-called "law" it is illegal for us to live under the same roof? Where else are basic human rights like the right to a safe and secure home used as political leverage to empty one of the world’s holiest cities from its Palestinian-Arab inhabitants? Only in Israel does such absurdity not merely occur but is allowed and even rewarded. Only Israel can carry out such flagrant rights violations and still feign democracy and equality.

If something as simple as a mother’s right to live and travel with her own children cannot be taken for granted, one can only imagine how many more injustices this so-called "Middle East democracy" is capable of.

Joharah Baker is a Writer for the Media and Information Programme at the Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy (MIFTAH). She can be contacted at mip@miftah.org.