A Security Threat in Tel Aviv

by hangama

Last summer I went to Tel Aviv with a fellow intern to interview an Israeli lawyer who represents Palestinians in military court. I have to admit that I was scared out of my mind, even though I was warned about the stares and the searches in advance. Nellie, the other intern, and I took a bus from Ramallah to East Jerusalem and then we walked to West Jerusalem to take a bus to Tel Aviv.

The walk from East to West Jerusalem is quite amazing. There is no formalized checkpoint between East and West Jerusalem that prevents Palestinians from entering, only an invisible filter. This filter is effective as walking the two or three blocks from the old city to West Jerusalem, I was unable to recognize a single Arab or Muslim. In West Jerusalem I felt like I was in another world, and I also began to feel the stares. People would look at me as if they had never seen a covered woman in their lives, quite ironic considering that 3 or 4 blocks down, the streets were full of them. Getting onto the minibus, I felt people sucking in their breaths as they saw me sit down. Honestly, I’ve never been so grateful for having a blond-haired blue-eyed “American” with me as I was that day.

Tel Aviv is a real city with suburbs and ghettos and nice areas and ugly areas. Driving through parts of Tel Aviv really destroyed a lot of my stereotypes. I assumed that everyone would be well off and everything would be Disneyland-like. But like many cities in the US,

Tel Aviv has its racial divide, where the poorer areas tend to be inhabited by people of color as opposed to the wealthier areas. Tel Aviv also has its fair share of beggars and restaurants and malls. It’s like any other city in Europe or the US. But it is nothing like Ramallah or any other part of the Occupied Territories.

After the interview, Nellie and I decided to go to a mall. Only one person could pass through the tiny door at a time. In front of the door was a security guard who would do a 5 second glance into people’s bags when coming in and a quick gloss-over scan with the metal detector wand.

Me, on the other hand, I got the deluxe security package.

The security guard looked a bit shocked when he saw me. “Is she with you?” he asked Nellie trying to maintain his smile. “I understand English,” I told him.

This made him do a double-take. Throughout my time in Tel Aviv, Nellie gave me legitimacy and I have no doubt that if it weren’t for her, I would have undergone a lot more harassment. I showed him my passport, which like all Palestinians, I have learned to super-glue to my forehead since I have to show it anywhere between 2 to 10 times a day if not more. Then I had my backpack opened and thoroughly inspected before the metal detector wand scanned slowly front and back over my entire body twice. Nellie only had to open up her backpack zippers for a two second glance. No passport, no wand.

In the 3 story extravaganza mall, Nellie and I were the main attractions. I got the full-body stares that required the passerby to stop in his tracks and turn his body and head to follow my movement. In one of the stores that we entered, Nellie was asked if she needed any assistance. I was completely ignored. After Nellie went off to look at something, another employee came up and snapped his fingers at me, half-yelling something in Hebrew. Even though I was quite shocked by his behavior, I tried to maintain my cool. “I’m sorry, I don’t speak Hebrew. Only English.” His only response was, “What do you want?”

To be completely honest, it wasn’t so much the overt racism and the negative treatment that bothered me. I had expected it and at many points, while it was bad, I thought it would be worse. It wasn’t even the drastic disparity in the material living standards between Tel Aviv and Ramallah or any other Palestinian city.

What really bothered me was the teenage soldiers. Nearly half, if not more, of the people I saw on the streets, in the malls and in the cafés of Tel Aviv were teenagers dressed in army fatigues. I would see a group of girls with their little pink backpacks and sparkly purses wearing their military uniforms. Or a group of boys in a video-store with their M-16s strapped to their backs. The mall was packed with these teenager soldiers and it made my stomach turn. They were normal human beings, with girlfriends and boyfriends, sporting the cutest little accessories with their fatigues.

The irony is that these kids are given the power and the encouragement to make Palestinians’ lives hell. Only a few days prior, I had gone to Nablus and one of these kids had pointed a gun only inches away making a bulls-eye out of my head as I showed the other soldier my passport. He did that to every single Palestinian at the checkpoint and with every new person at the window, he would re-position himself so the gun was always inches away from that person’s head. And the most horrifying part was the little smirk on his face. Service with a smile.

Looking into the eyes of these soldiers at the checkpoints, it is clear that they are kids, but seeing them in the mall made me realize just how young they were. Taking the bus home, I passed by the separation wall and it became too much for me. Seeing it standing in its massive glory, I couldn’t handle the irony anymore and I let go of many of my burning frustrations through my tears. In the distance, I saw Qalendia checkpoint and nothing made sense anymore. Nothing was acceptable. Everything was wrong. Seeing the checkpoint made me think of the teenage soldiers who made me think of all the children that had recently been killed in Gaza.

While in the States, many of us can legitimately say that the government does not represent the people, I wondered whether this could ever be true in Israel when nearly all the youth represent the worst of the Israeli government—its military. And for many of these youth, working in the military is the first and only exposure they get to Palestinians, which perpetuates this deeply problematic mental connection that Palestinians equate war…terrorism…enemy.

This reality is being propagated and bolstered on the shoulders of teenagers who will live their lives convinced that all violence against Palestinians is acceptable and any real due process for them is unnecessary. And while these Israeli kids are killing Palestinian kids, the old men are sitting in their boardrooms smoking and reminiscing of their military days, justifying their actions and their children’s actions on the basis of a concept that is on the verge of its breaking point—’security threat.’

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Hangama is a lawyer-in-training in the United States.