Ini kutipan dari sebuah buku tentang Palestina. Baca deh gimana apartheid berjalan. di ATM aja gak tesedia bahasa arab, yg ada malah hebrew, inggris dan rusia. Baca juga soal layanan perbankan lainnya yang apartheid. ::: The Palestinian couple in front of us was trying to use the ATM, pushing buttons slowly and awkwardly, and pausing at intervals to stare down at the monitor. After a minute or two, the man turned around, slightly embarrassed, and asked us something in Arabic. “I don’t believe it,” my friend said, “there’s nothing written in Arabic.” We got closer and looked down at the display screen. Hebrew, English, and Russian were the only language options. Arabic—one of two official languages in Israel —was simply missing. This right in the heart of Palestinian East Jerusalem. I pressed “English” and we guided the couple through the steps necessary to withdraw their money. That incident was to repeat itself and I noted it. After all, if full-out political suppression of a language by definition constitutes a form of ethnocide, the absence of Arabic imposed by Israeli banks on a coveted Palestinian area should at least raise an eyebrow. This Hapoalim branch, and Leumi, Israeli Discount, and Mercantile Discount, are the only banks operational in East Jerusalem on the Israeli side of the Wall. Exclusively Israeli, these banks enjoy a roughly 99.9 percent Arabic-speaking clientele, but none of them offer Arabic-language statements. Beyond their involvement in illegal territorial control and systemic linguistic discrimination, these banks offer a window onto the flip side, as banking obstacles are deeply woven into the all-important Israeli “legal” fabric that is smothering Palestinian East Jerusalemites. This legal fabric is the dynamic framework in law that works at the core in articulating Palestinian oppression in Jerusalem. Mortgage loan services for Palestinian homebuyers, for example, are completely unavailable at all four bank branches. But the issue goes deeper: “I do not absolve the banks by any means,” Israeli economist Shir Hever emphasized, “but here it is also essential to consider the broader context: When the Israeli authorities don’t give any building permits to Palestinians, services for housing loans become impossible for banks to offer.” Israeli building permits for Palestinians are only available in 13 percent of East Jerusalem. But even here these permits—also needed for expansion and renovation—are extremely difficult to acquire, and partial land owners may be flagged as “absentees” in the process, triggering expropriation. While buildings crumble, as many as 130,000 Palestinians live in homes considered illegal, which the State of Israel can demolish or expropriate at any time. Fieldnotes from Jerusalem and Gaza, 2009–2011 Author(s): Elena N. Hogan Source: Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 41, No. 2 (Winter 2012), pp. 99-114 Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the Institute for Palestine Studies Stable URL: jstor.org/stable/10.1525/jps.2012.XLI.2.99 .
Posted on: Mon, 01 Jul 2013 11:54:37 +0000
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