How does this law tie in with our report, which for the first time offers a gender perspective on a city that was annexed to Israel in 1967 and has been under its rule ever since? Because our report focuses on Jerusalem’s women, their daily life experiences, and their unique needs, and because many of its women residents are directly affected by it.
And how do we know that this law has such a profound effect on Jerusalem’s women? Thanks to the unique work process we chose for this project. We began with a comprehensive review of the plans, proposals, and political processes concerning Jerusalem that have been presented to date. As we looked at these plans, it soon became clear to us that not only were women absent from most of them, but so did a gender perspective that would take into account their unique situation as status-less women as well as the issues that preoccupy them and affect their lives.
We then realized that we wanted to draw our knowledge and understanding of the city from in-depth interviews with Jerusalem’s women who would tell us in their own way and in their own words about life in the city from their point on view, along with the issues that most preoccupy them. We set out to challenge the conventional look at Jerusalem from a distance and from above, with maps and aerial photographs or via a gunsight, and instead “zoom in” on the city itself, its neighborhoods, homes, and people.
I TALKED to quite a few Israeli and Palestinian women of different ages, occupations, and parts of the city. The theme that stood out in every single one of these conversations was the difficulty stemming from geographically-dependent status issues, or in other words, from aspects of the Law for the Prevention of Family Reunifications. In fact, this theme was so prominent and was raised by so many of the women I interviewed that we chose to place it first in a list of nine key issues in the report, and to devote to it double the space given to any other subject.
A 27-year-old single woman from Beit Safafa told us: “As an unmarried person, I stay away from the idea of marrying a person living in Palestine even in my thoughts. I have to, or else I will suffer later. What will happen to my children? What will happen to my family? What if one day there is a decision to close the crossings?”
Another woman said that due to the difficulties with family reunification, in the first years of her marriage she and her husband hardly saw each other. When they eventually met, many times they had to do so in Jordan, and they even had to spend their honeymoon there.
A third woman, who said these difficulties created the need to maintain two homes, one in Jerusalem and another in the West Bank, added: “Imagine if your kids have to be separated, some with the father and others with the mother.”
A young girl from Jabal Mukaber, whose mother holds Israeli citizenship and whose father holds only a residence permit, described how the difference in status creates a significant imparity between the rights granted to them, and how this affects her and the rest of her family. Another woman, who works in the city’s welfare department, spoke about the violation of rights and of the possibility to get aid when “people from Jerusalem who marry somebody from the territories with a Palestinian ID card.”
THE INTERVIEWS, which were open-ended so as not to orientate women toward specific issues but instead allow them to raise their own concerns, repeatedly brought the Law for the Prevention of Family Reunifications to the fore. It was clear that this issue had a far-reaching and daily impact on most aspects of life of the city’s Palestinian women, including their social life, the right to a family life, marital relations, child-rearing, freedom of employment, the right to education, freedom of movement, the right to own property, the possibility of receiving aid from the city’s welfare department and more.
Also evident was a considerable gap between the spirit of the law and how women perceive the reality of their own lives. Here is what we wrote in this context: “Most Palestinians say that the geographical separation between east Jerusalem, the West Bank, Gaza, and the State of Israel is inconsistent with the fact that they share a national identity, language, culture, traditions and customs. The events of 1948 and 1967, the official annexation of Jerusalem, the creeping annexation, and the construction of the separation barrier created countless absurd situations of artificial separation between Palestinians from the same family, neighbors and spouses.”
So, as fate would have it, the law that so preoccupies the women of Jerusalem cropped up on the agenda at the exact same time that we published our report.
Or maybe this has nothing to do with fate? Israel’s rule over the West Bank and the Palestinians living there is not a matter of fate but of policy, a deliberate and calculated Israeli policy that has been perfected over 54 years. It is not by chance that women with rights live in Jerusalem’s western side while women whose rights are blatantly violated every day reside in the eastern side. It is no coincidence that the eastern part of the city is neglected and that its daily reality is set by the Israeli security forces more than by the municipal system. It is no coincidence that the residents of east Jerusalem live in a limbo, as residents in a territory to which the State of Israel has applied its law on the one hand, and perceived as the enemy and treated accordingly on the other.
This is no coincidence; this is a policy. And this policy has been shaped over the years primarily by men who, on behalf of all of us, adopted militaristically tainted decisions that ignored most other aspects of life here. Not only the lives of the Palestinian women living under occupation, but also of the Israeli women living on the side that has been running this regime for 54 years.
In order to get a complete, reliable, direct, and comprehensive picture of the reality of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it is henceforth necessary to see not only to the representation of women, but also to the unique perspective that women bring along, the different stances they stand for, and the needs they raise. When the government sets out to discuss this reality and make decisions about it, it is important and even necessary that women and gender thinking be included in the process.
The writer is coordinator of Zulat’s research department and the author of the new report, “Jerusalem from a gender perspective.”