- 21 تشرين أول 2017
- أقلام مقدسية
By : Walid Salem
On Wednesday morning, 18 October, at 6:15 am, I went to the office of the Interior in the Wadi Al-Joz neighborhood, hoping to get in early.
On my arrival I rejoiced because I had only two people ahead of me : a man and his wife.
I stood in the line turning the electronic news sites until 7:30 when the guards began to enter the waiting people through the iron gate to line up in another queue to be searched one after the other.
Before the inspection begins, the guard said: Today is only for those who have appointments arranged by phone, and to leave everyone who has no appointment, and you can return at one o'clock, you may have access by then.
Since I did not have an appointment, but I came to try to change an appointment made by phone to next March to my son, who is studying abroad. The guards refused to let me in. So I had to leave after I lost two hours of my time and decided to return at 1:00 pm.
I returned at that time to find long lines waiting. We stood in the blazing sun for more than half an hour, followed by the entrance from the iron gate to join the inspection line, which also took time. After completing it, we moved to a new column that had not been in place before, waiting for an entrance to a desk that gives numbers. The wait here lasted more than half an hour. When I arrived at the station to get the number, I told them: I gave your office a phone call for my son who need to renew his travel document. You gave me a date for next March 2018 for him, while his curent travel document that he holds finishes in early January. He is studying abroad and will be coming in December to renew his travel document during the holiday period that he has between two semesters, and return to travel to join the second semester of this academic year. Therefore please submit the deadline by telephone from March to the earliest, so as he will not miss the next semester.
I was talking to an employ. Besides him sat a lady who seemed to be in charge of the office. She replied, "It is better for your son not to come and to apply for a renewal of his travel document to the Israeli embassy in the country where he is studying. They will send us the request from there. I wanted to say that I wanted my son to visit me and the family between the two semesters, so I'd rather give him a date here. And when I wanted to say that, the lady had moved to talk to someone else after me under the pressure and overcrowding existing, and then moved to another person, so I lost my right to inquire about everything else that is in my mind.
Maybe I will have to go back to the office of the Interior Ministry to complete my inquiries, which will be another loss of my time.
I closed back to my house, remembering in the way what a human rights organization told me two weeks ago that they had filed a complaint against the new internal procedures in the Ministry of Interior East Jerusalem Office, and that the situation had improved afterwards. Today I found that the exact opposite has happened: today you are forced to first contact six months ahead until you get a suitable date. Second, you have to dial on a specific number which need long hours to respond to you. Third: you are denied the right to set an appointment by going to the office of the Interior Ministry , where you will be told: It is allowed to set the date only by telephone. Fourth: You are denied the right to modify the appointment for any reason even if you lost an important trip, or a class abroad and so on. Fifthly, you have to wait hours and hours for your service to be offered/or not as what happened with me today. Sixth: The doors of the Israeli embassies abroad are open to renew the travel documents through them while you are abroad with the implication of this encouraging migration, and also finding a justification for withdrawing the Jerusalem identity on the pretext of staying abroad for a long time !.
We lose as precious times of our lives as a result of these measures, which are becoming more complicated day after day to push the Jerusalemites to leave their city. How long? And when is it possible to understand that the rights of the Palestinian Jerusalemites are also human rights and not less?
