move to east jerusalem, vote for pedro?

when i first met samar and her two daughters almost 4 years ago, they were living in haifa. it was nearly two years into the intifada, despite illness and many other setbacks, my grandparents were still focusing all of their energy on getting their dream to build a camp for middle eastern kids (israeli, palestinian, jordanian, etc) with life-threatening diseases (a la paul newman's "hole in the wall gang"camp) off the ground. through these efforts they had met samar, a palestinian israeli woman, and recruited her to be both a member of their board and their new friend. in my grandmother’s personal quest for peace and coexistence, she suggested i go spend the weekend with them since her daughters are about my age. my grandmother is hard to disagree with so off i went.

samar has since remarried and relocated to bir nabala, a neighborhood in east jerusalem. her husband, a native east jerusalemite, grew up under jordanian control. in may 1967 he left his jordanian controlled city to attend university in beirut. in june 1967 the israelis gained control of the west bank and east jerusalem. it was over 25 years before he was able to return to his hometown. in the post-oslo era, as an educated and successful economist, he was allowed back to help build palestinian infrastructure. despite the necessity of such brain power in palestinian society, the israeli authorities gave him "temporary resident" status in the city of his birth, pretty much one step above my tourist visa. every six months he hopes someone will be kind enough to renew it.

i was set to have lunch at their home on a saturday afternoon- take a taxi to the checkpoint, cross by foot and then another taxi to their house. through a mix up with keys, saturday morning I found myself locked into my mom’s temporary apartment (“the president’s residence” at hebrew union college). stocked with plenty of food and drink, new yorker magazines and a rooftop view of the old city walls, its far from the worst place to be locked in. still, I called to say I might be late for lunch. forty minutes later, I called again to let them know I got out and was on way and samar joked, “now you can better appreciate your freedom.”

samar has learned to appreciate her freedom. living in haifa with israeli citizenship, travel was relatively easy. now on the outskirts of east jerusalem, freedom of movement is increasingly limited. no matter which direction you go (into israel proper or the occupied territories) you have to cross a checkpoint. when she first moved to bir nabala, her office was in nearby ramallah. but since the separation wall went up, the commute became too difficult.

a year had passed since my last visit to their home and I struck by the new walls that had popped up around the neighborhood (not just the separation barrier). one of samar’s daughters, who had showed me around haifa over 4 years ago, is now a student at hebrew university’s mt scopus campus, less than 10km (which is even less in miles if I knew how to do the conversion) from their home. door to door, her commute to class takes an hour.

at lunch (as with many lunches in this region), the conversation turned to politics. next wednesday much of the palestinian population, including many east jerusalem residents, will go to the polls to vote in parliamentary elections. hamas has made a historic decision to take part in these elections and is expected to win a significant number of seats.

then in a couple months, israelis will go to the polls. as a temporary resident, samar’s husband certainly won’t be voting, but he claims it doesn’t bother him since he believes there are no potential leaders ready to talk about genuine peace. he isn’t the only one. a lot of people i know who are eligible to vote in the upcoming elections don’t know who to vote for (not that they knew before sharon’s stroke either). and speaking of sharon, he has all but faded from the news. i think the public started to realize that there are more important events going on in the world after this report appeared in haaretz.com last week:

“Among the ways in which physicians hoped to stimulate Sharon's senses Tuesday is to place a plate of shawarma, the sliced meat dish said to be the prime minister's favorite, close enough for him to smell it.”