Making More Refugees

[Violet_Crumble]

by Neve Gordon

JERUSALEM: The bulldozers have been working around the clock building the separation barrier, and it is now clear that the end is at hand. The residents' expulsion is imminent; they will soon be forced to move from their homes and ancestral land. This, at least, is the impression I had after leaving the small village Nu'eman.

Nu'eman is a Palestinian village located within the borders of the Jerusalem municipality, on its southern tip. After the 1967 war, it was annexed to the Jerusalem municipal boundaries together with 27 other villages and 70 square kilometers of land. Israeli law was imposed on this area as it became part of Greater Jerusalem.

Unlike most of the inhabitants of the annexed villages, who were subsequently registered by the Israeli civil administration as Israeli residents (as opposed to citizens), the inhabitants of Nu'eman were given West Bank identity cards. This created a juridical situation straight out of Kafka. The Nu'eman residents and their houses belong to different legal and administrative systems: The houses and land are part of the Jerusalem municipal system, while the inhabitants are residents of the West Bank and therefore subjected to Israeli military rule.

The inhabitants managed, nonetheless, to go on with their lives. The children went to school in Jerusalem, the residents had access to the city's hospitals and clinics, and many of the adults worked in the metropolis.

All this changed, after the eruption of the second Intifada. The roads connecting the village with Jerusalem were closed off, forcing the Palestinian residents to become dependent on the West Bank for their livelihood, health-care, and their children's education. Peculiarly, no other Jerusalem neighborhood was cut off at such an early stage.

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=22&ItemID=5700