The Request [Under Construction]

Blog Post #1: Tourist or Tourespasser?

Julie Adams

June 5, 2016

Day 3: Tel Aviv

The dictionary defines freedom as the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants. So far, I have seen none of that shown towards the Palestinians here in Tel Aviv. Today's post, brief as it may be, opens the focus on the unfair society these occupied people live in.

Third day in, and I wish this place had more real media coverage. Today I acquainted myself with a small strip of shops near my hotel and spoke to a few locals. A solid fact I picked up: Many of the taxi drivers and street cleaners are Palestinians, and all of them told me that they are not allowed back into whichever Palestinian territory they came from. Several of them have tried to go back, but were denied entry, with no valid reason. The very, very few who travel from occupied land into an Israeli city have to go through extensive searches and questioning when crossing the "security pass" every morning.

The similarities between what is happening here and our own Apartheid regime is endless. The Palestinians need their work passes, and citizen documents that show which occupied Palestine land they come from. If they do not have the right documents, they get detained. The Palestinians and Israelis have separate buses, separate roads, separate lives.

I walked into a curio shop on my way back to my hotel, and bumped into a lovely South African Muslim couple. We chatted for a few minutes and swapped a few stories. The woman told me how difficult it was for the pair to get their visas the first time they wanted to visit Palestine. Like any normal visa system, they had sent their passports over to the Israeli Embassy to see if they would be accepted. The Embassy took several weeks to get back to them, and when they did, it was with a simple response saying that the Embassy had not received their proof of payment. The couple then forwarded the proof to the Embassy, only to be greeted with another couple of weeks of silence. Finally, tired of the endless wait, they made their way to the Embassy in Johannesburg, only to be stopped at the front gates by a guard. He asked what they wanted there, their response being to pick up their visas. The guard went further and asked what religion they were from. When faced with the answer "We are Muslims", the man turned up his nose, took their names and walked into the Embassy. A while later, he came back with their passports, that had no visas in them, and dismissed them by saying, "sorry, we didn't receive your proof of payment."

Really, how terrible is that? My visa took less than a couple of days to get approved, and I didn't even physically do it myself, my boss did. To add to that, the visa was delivered straight to the office once it was done, no shenanigans. There is an unfair bias mechanism at work here, and it is not cool.

I cannot wait to uncover more and delve deeper into this mess.

Tomorrow I'm off to Jerusalem, to see some of the history and how the West Bank is cordoned off. From there, I'll head to Gaza, and report from there.

Stay tuned, and remember to read my article this Friday in Spark! 

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A/N

New, but short, chapter out. Both incidents are true. They have happened. 

The picture is of one of the forty checkpoints in occupied Palestine. These checkpoints control all activity that happens within the Palestine county. Palestinians that work in Israeli cities have to pass through these checkpoints every morning to go to work, with half of them not being allowed to pass through. Terrible, hey?

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