Rima Abu Ayesha -- "I am in prison"
By J.David
(Photo Credit: Tara Graham)
HEBRON -- The buzz of metal detectors and squeal of swinging turnstiles are familiar sounds to Rima Abu Ayesha. She hears them every day while patiently waiting for the Israeli guards to finish their inspections.
"Even if we just buy veggies at the market, the guards search everything," explains Abu Ayesha. "Our children’s backpacks, our grocery bags, they look through anything we are taking in or out."
The wrangle of the checkpoint gate, which was officially set up to protect the Jewish settlers in the area, is a daily reminder to local Palestinians that they no longer belong in Hebron, the second holiest landmark of the Jewish faith. The city is believed to be the burial site of nearly all of Judaism’s patriarchs and matriarchs.
As Abu Ayesha prepares for the mile-long, uphill walk to Tel Rumeida, the neighborhood she has lived in her entire life, she understands the fact that this half-hour walk would take less than five minutes if she could simply hop in a vehicle and drive.
“Palestinians are not allowed to have cars here,” Abu Ayesha says dryly. “Even if there is an emergency, we are still not allowed to drive on the street.”
She passes through the abandoned marketplace, which once boomed with Palestinian businesses. Its storefronts now sit empty, walled up and covered in hateful graffiti. “Arabs to the gas chambers!” is the theme of one wall while another announces, “The Arabs stole our homes and killed our people.” Shopkeepers and residents have since been driven out of the area but Jewish settlers haven’t yet replaced them, so the entire scene has been reduced to a ghost town.
After taking a sharp left turn up a dusty hill, the windy street comes to life again as Jewish children run and play games in front of their homes. A number of flat-roofed, stone houses edge the street. They all look alike, except for a two-story home that’s completely covered with rusted, chain-link fencing. The cage house.
This is Abu Ayesha’s home.
She hastily unlocks the gate and walks up the steps, past the trash, rocks and broken bottles lodged in the fencing, toward her front door. As she enters the house, a formal but faded living room quickly replaces the disorder outside. Framed pictures of family members line the walls, shelves and tabletops as the plastic flowers try to bring life to the palely lit room.
“That is my husband and father-in-law shaking hands with President Arafat,” Abu Ayesha says with a smile.
“Arafat paid to put up the fencing around the house to help protect our family from the settlers,” Abu Ayesha’s mother-in-law, who’s sitting in the center of the room, chimes in.
“It wasn’t always like this,” the mother-in-law admits, remembering when the settlers first descended on the neighborhood 30 years ago. “To be a good neighbor, my husband took grapes from our yard to the settlers almost every day.”
“But all our friends were eventually forced out of their houses, and settlers just moved in,” adds Abu Ayesha, as her son climbs into her lap. She begins bouncing the boy on her knee. “The settlers tried to pressure us to leave. Now, we’re the last Palestinians living in our neighborhood.”
The Abu Ayesha family has logged more than 200 complaints against the Jewish settlers with the Israeli authorities, but have yet to see any action taken on those complaints. The violence against the family has grown so intense in the past few years that B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights organization, gave the family a video camera to document offenses.
The family’s footage shows Israeli soldiers standing idle and doing nothing while settlers throw stones or scream obscenities at them. Abu Ayesha says the soldiers are sometimes even willing participants in the crimes.
“When I was first pregnant, the Israeli soldiers wouldn’t allow the ambulance to come to my house,” explains Abu Ayesha. “Because I couldn’t get to the hospital, my first child died.”
“Then I got pregnant with twins, and when it came time to give birth, they wouldn’t let the ambulance through the checkpoint,” she continues. “One of the twins survived, and the other did not.”
The grief still affects Abu Ayesha to this day.
“Our families are not allowed to come visit us,” she adds, with a look of frustration on her face. Palestinian friends and relatives are prohibited from visiting the family because the area is a closed military zone.
“My two daughters couldn’t even get married here,” laments the mother-in-law. “We had to go to an uncle’s house for the ceremony because no one could come and be with us.”
“I had to stay here at the house during the wedding,” she continues. “We must always have someone here to protect the house at all times. If we leave, the settlers will break in and take over.”
Her daughters, who now live outside Hebron with their husbands, are no longer able to visit the family nor their childhood home.
“Imagine when people gather during the holy month of Ramadan and we are not allowed to have anyone come in and share breakfast with us,” Abu Ayesha says.
Muslims arise early in the morning to feast on a traditional pre-dawn meal, known as Suhoor, during Ramadan.
“Usually it’s a time to spend with family, either they come to your house or you go to theirs,” Abu Ayesha explains. “Our children question why we’re alone and no one ever comes to visit us. They ask why we don’t go places. They become very sad and sometimes cry because they don’t understand why all this is happening.”
Abu Ayesha’s mother-in-law points in the direction of her son and grandson, who quietly sit near a window ledge, backlit by the afternoon sun.
“When the time comes, we won’t be able to find wives for our sons because no one can move in,” the mother-in-law says with a sigh.
For now, the two boys, ages 11 and 12, are less interested in finding mates and more concerned with getting to and from home safely on a daily basis.
The Israeli military took one of the boys into custody last week while he was journeying home from the market after selling a cage-full of pigeons. According to the boy, a 16-year-old settler approached him during his walk home and pushed him, so he used the empty cage in his hands to protect his face and ended up scratching his attacker’s arm in the process.
Within an hour, Israeli military showed up on Abu Ayesha’s doorstep. They took the boy into custody, questioned him for three hours and handed him over to the Israeli police. The police charged the boy, took his picture and fingerprints, and then sent him home.
“The settlers now send their kids to cause the trouble,” explains Abu Ayesha. “Because the soldiers don’t arrest the Israeli kids.”
Israeli law protects Jewish children from arrest until they reach the age of 18. This protection is not extended to Palestinian children. There are 343 Palestinian young people jailed in Israeli prisons right now, 41 of who fall between the ages of 12 and 15, according to the Defense for Children International.
“And so, none of us ever leave the house,” Abu Ayesha says definitively, as the afternoon call to prayer rings throughout the city. “We’re living in a prison, and we’re the only ones left.”