The Bureaucracy of a Second Dispossession: A Personal Account of Returning to Jerusalem

Abstract

This article explores the author’s bureaucratic ordeal returning to Jerusalem from exile and applying for lam shamel (family unification) to live with her husband, a Palestinian born, raised, and living in Jerusalem with an Israeli-issued “permanent residency” identification card. It traces the couple’s unsuccessful and painstaking attempts at the Israeli Ministry of Interior in Wadi al-Joz to secure their rights to reside in the city. Using an arbitrary “checklist,” Israeli authorities repeatedly rejected their application for failing to meet the so-called center of life requirements, despite presenting them with many documents undeniably proving otherwise. The article posits that the Israeli occupiers deliberately put these restrictive measures in place to continually dispossess Palestinians from their native lands.

Keywords:

• East Jerusalem
• Israeli Ministry of Interior
• Wadi al-Joz
• center of life
• permanent residency
• bureaucracy
• lam shamel
• Lifta
• dispossession
• ethnic cleansing

Notes

1 For more on Jerusalem residency and its effects on the family as will be noted later in this essay, see Doaa Hammoudeh, Layaly Hamayel, and Lynn Welchman, “Beyond the Physicality of Space: East Jerusalem, Kufr ‘Aqab, and the Politics of Everyday Suffering,” Jerusalem Quarterly, no. 65 (Spring 2016): 35–50, https://www.palestine-studies.org/en/node/198346.

2 Rana Barakat, “Lifta, the Nakba, and the Museumification of Palestine’s History,” Native American and Indigenous Studies 5, no. 2 (2018): 1–15, https://doi.org/10.1353/nai.2018.a721563.

3 On the experience of Israeli permanent residency status, see R. Isa, “Precarious Living in Jerusalem: Return, Fear, and Sumud,” JPS 52, no. 1 (2023): 87–91, https://doi.org/10.1080/0377919X.2022.2157669.

4 Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, “Projected Mid-year Population for Jerusalem Governo­rate by Locality 2017–2026,” May 30, 2021, https://www.pcbs.gov.ps/statisticsIndicatorsTables.aspx?lang=en&table_id=707. According to these statistics, Palestinians with Jerusalem residency are in J1 or Kafr ‘Aqab, Beit Hanina, Shu‘fat, Shu‘fat refugee camp, Issawiyya, Sheikh Jarrah, Wadi al-Joz, Bab al-Sahira, al-Suwana, al-Tur, al-Shayyah, Ras al-‘Amud, Silwan, al-Thuri, Jabal al-­Mukabir, as-Sawahira al-Gharbiya, Beit Safafa, Sharafat, Sur Bahir, and Umm Tuba.

5 On Israel’s use of bureaucracy as a tool for its settler-colonial project, see Elia Zureik, Israel's Colonial Project in Palestine: Brutal Pursuit (London: Routledge, 2015); Helga Tawil-Souri, “Uneven Borders, Coloured (Im)mobilities: ID Cards in Palestine/Israel,” Geopolitics 17, no. 1 (2012): 153–176, https://doi.org/10.1080/14650045.2011.562944; Valerie Zink, “A Quiet transfer: the Judaization of Jerusalem,” Contemporary Arab Affairs 2, no. 1 (2009): 122–133, https://doi.org/10.1080/17550910802576148.

6 Danielle C. Jefferis, “The ‘Center of Life’ Policy: Institutionalizing Statelessness in East Jerusalem,” Jerusalem Quarterly, no. 50 (Summer 2012): 94–103, https://www.palestine-studies.org/en/node/78495.

7 HaMoked: Center for the Defence of the Individual, English translation of “AP 32869-10-14: Hamada et al. vs. Population Immigration and Border Authority Judgment,” p. 6, December 25, 2014, https://hamoked.org/files/2015/110435_eng.pdf.

8 Tamara T. Tamimi, “Revocation of Residency of Palestinians in Jerusalem: Prospects for Accountability,” Jerusalem Quarterly, no. 72 (Winter 2017): 37–47, https://www.palestine-studies.org/en/node/226899.

9 Legal land ownership documents from the Ottoman Empire.

10 Patrick Wolfe, “Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native,” Journal of Genocide Research 8, no. 4 (2006): 387–409, https://doi.org/10.1080/14623520601056240.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

D. A. Jaber

D. A. Jaber is a visiting assistant professor in human rights and international law at Al-Quds Bard College, Jerusalem.