July 2007
They look like an ordinary family, with ordinary hopes for an ordinary life. But the Sarasrehs are divided by an Israeli law that has turned their whole life upside down.
Sanaa, 29, and Ali Sarasreh, 36, and their three children, are an ordinary family with ordinary hopes for a normal life. Schooling for Mohammed, nine, who is engrossed in computer games, Carmel, eight, and mischievous three-year-old Yaffa. Regular work. Enough money to get by.
In the kitchen in Ali’s house in Bethlehem, Sanaa fries onions and wipes down the surfaces. Her painfully thin arms look as though they might snap as she piles rice and chicken into a large dish.
She’s making maqlouba, Ali’s favourite, a rice and meat dish traditionally made for celebrations or to welcome family members who have been away. Maqlouba means ‘upside down’ in Arabic, because the pot is turned over just before the dish is served.
‘The children ask about their father all the time’
But it’s not the only thing turned upside down in this family.
‘My wife is a great cook,’ says Ali. ‘But I only see real cooking when she’s here.’ Because of Israel’s laws, that’s once every few weeks.
A broken life
After their lunch of maqlouba, Sanaa and the children will return to her father’s home in Jerusalem. Ali will stay behind in Bethlehem, where he has a small hardware shop. They see each other every week or two, from Thursday night to Friday afternoon. They have lived like this for five years.
The strain of separation is evident in Sanaa’s pale face. ‘What can I tell you?’ she says, her eyes wet with tears. ‘I’m broken. It’s a tragedy, being alone with the children.’
Ali, perched on the edge of the couch, looks over at his wife, and then reaches for his cigarettes.
‘All the pressure is on her,’ he says. ‘Looking after the children, helping them with their homework. If they get sick all the responsibility is on her shoulders.’
Together or apart
After Israel occupied the eastern half of Jerusalem in 1967, it granted permanent residency status to Palestinians living in the annexed areas. This status of ‘permanent resident’ is the same as that granted to foreign citizens living in Israel, despite the fact the Palestinians were born in Jerusalem, had no other home, and their families had lived there for generations.
The Palestinian residents of east Jerusalem began to be treated as immigrants – foreigners who had entered Israel – an astonishing act considering it was Israel that had entered east Jerusalem in 1967.
The Israeli government devised a legal mechanism called ‘family unification’ which meant that Palestinians with Jerusalem residency, such as Sanaa, could apply for their non-resident spouses to live with them. ‘Non-resident spouses’ include Palestinians from the West Bank, other than east Jerusalem, and from the Gaza Strip.
But after the outbreak of the second intifada in 2000, Israel stopped issuing these permits on security grounds. In May 2002, it officially froze the family unification law, leaving around 72,000 Palestinian families divided.
And this left Ali and Sanaa with a difficult choice: to live together in Bethlehem, or to live separately, with Sanaa and the children in Jerusalem, and Ali in Bethlehem. Under Israeli law she has been able to pass on her residency to her children but not to her husband.
As residency of Jerusalem is such a scarce commodity for Palestinians, it was not a status Sanaa wanted to relinquish. Schools and healthcare are better in Jerusalem than in the West Bank and there would be fewer restrictions placed on the children’s future.
‘Every parent wants to see their children grow. Why can’t I?’
There is also a physical obstacle dividing Palestinians in Bethlehem from Jerusalem: the separation barrier Israel is building throughout the West Bank, which has almost complete encircled Bethlehem.
Like many businesses in Bethlehem, Ali’s livelihood has suffered. ‘People from Jerusalem used to shop here because it was cheaper than in the city, but now they can’t. It is also difficult for me to buy stock for my shop.’
‘I have a pain in my heart’
As he dangles his giggling three-year old daughter Yaffa in the air, Ali couldn’t look happier. He hasn’t seen Yaffa for two weeks and he thinks she may have grown. ‘Being away from your wife and children is not normal – I missed them!’ he says.
‘Every parent wants to see their children grow before their eyes, and not to be separated from them for weeks at a time,’ he says. ‘I feel happy when I see them but I also have a pain in my heart. Why can’t they stay with me all the time?
‘We suffer a lot, particularly during Ramadan, which is a family time. In the past we used to break the fast together at the end of the day and sit as a family and eat. But now I am alone here in Bethlehem and my wife is in Jerusalem.’
Separation again
‘Once, Mohammed fell and had to go to hospital,’ says Sanaa. ‘I was with him for 24 hours but Ali couldn’t come to be with us.’ They had to rely on telephone lines to keep in touch.
‘The children ask about their father all the time,’ she says. ‘It’s very hard.’
The remains of the maqlouba lies scattered over the tablecloth while Sanaa chases Yaffa around the table trying to get her to have one more mouthful of rice. Then it will be time to clear everything away and get the children ready to return back to Jerusalem.
Without their father
‘When the children fill the house, it becomes alive – look!’ says Ali. ‘But after lunch I start to feel that time is coming. I hate it because it means it will soon be time for us to separate again.’