Star-Crossed Lovers (One Israeli, One Palestinian) Quit West Bank

[liberalpragmatist]

Star-crossed lovers quit West Bank
By Matthew Price
BBC News, Jerusalem

Osama and Jasmine

The couple married three years ago after meeting in Jerusalem
She is a 26-year-old Jewish Israeli. Her name is Jasmine Avissar. He is a 27-year-old Palestinian Muslim, Osama Zaatar.

Jasmine and Osama's is a love story, and it tells you so much about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

They met when they worked at the same place in Jerusalem, and three years ago they got married.

First they tried to live in Israel, but the Israeli authorities would not allow Osama to join his wife there.

Then they tried living in the occupied West Bank, but some Palestinians made life difficult for them.

Now they've given up and are moving to Europe.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6405799.stm

[bumblebee1]

1. That's too bad!!!

People can be such a bitch. I wish them all the happiness they can find in Europe.

[breakaleg]

2. There is no excuse for this. n/t

[TomClash]

3. Come to New York!!

We take anybody and everybody! Even I am accepted! :freak:

[mitchtv]

4. This is a strate couple no less

Imagine if it was a gay couple

[Tom Joad]

5. Couple in West Bank cannot stay together... Israeli authorities forbid it...

http://www.wrmea.com/archives/Jan_Feb_2007/0701013.html

ISRAEL HAS DECREED that my wife and I can no longer live together. I am Palestinian and she is Swiss and we have been married for 28 years. She was given two weeks to leave the occupied Palestinian territory. The Israeli Ministry of Interior wrote on her Swiss passport: “LAST PERMIT.” We have been living together in Ramallah for 12 years. We came in 1994, when, after the Oslo Agreement, we were encouraged to move to the West Bank by the prospect of “peace” and development.

My wife, Anita, speaks Arabic, likes the landscape, cooks Arabic meals, and she cares for my grandfather’s village house, an old stone building, and the plants around it more than I do. She votes in Palestinian elections as the spouse of a Palestinian. She is active in serving the local society in Public Health. She has so many friends here and considers it home. She still has her valuable European element and contacts, but she doesn’t want to be separated from this environment or from me, and I certainly do not want to be separated from her. Our children are grown up and work abroad. But they are also not sure they will be allowed to visit us here. On her way to visit us in Ramallah a few months ago, our daughter, who has a Swiss passport, was delayed for six hours at Tel Aviv airport and grilled when she landed. She was lucky. Others are deported to where they took off from, often spending a night or more at the airport’s notorious detention “facility.”

For the past 12 years, Anita has managed to stay here by diligently renewing her permit or leaving and coming back every three or six months to comply with the Israeli “law” that applies in the occupied Palestinian territories. She is fighting now to stay here by going to a lawyer and to the Israeli courts, hoping for an injunction to be able to stay until a verdict is reached. She is also in touch with her embassy, and she has joined others facing the same predicament in addressing the European Union and the American consulate, and in talking to human rights organizations, both Israeli and Palestinian, and the media.

We don’t know what to do. But we have to do it quickly. What do we do about our shared life, our papers and accounts, the hundreds of little things that we have grown to share? What do we do about the new apartment that we made the “mistake” of purchasing at the wrong time? She was keyed up about what tiles to choose and how to remodel the kitchen. We can’t believe, or accept, that we are going to be separated. We believe it, though, when we are reminded by other “mixed” couples or families who have, and are being, separated around us. (more)