Ben Gvir and the Bulldozer... Jerusalem

Writer

Younes Al-Amouri

The occupation's bulldozers in Jerusalem no longer need to hide behind their soldiers, and Ben Gvir no longer needs to send someone to speak on his behalf. This time, he personally climbed into the bulldozer, sat in its seat, and let it demolish a building in Al-Tur, then filmed the scene and published it, as if he did not want the rubble to remain just rubble, but wanted it to become an image, and the image to become a message, and the message to become policy. Five floors, ten apartments, and about seventy Jerusalemites, including women and children, found themselves outside their homes, while the Israeli minister looked down from the bulldozer as if announcing from there that Jerusalem, for his government, is not a city inhabited by people, but rather a space that can be demolished and reshaped.

Why did Ben Gvir climb into the bulldozer? He could have stayed in his office, signed or ordered, or received a report about the demolition operation. But he chose to be in the picture. He chose for the Jerusalemites to see the minister above the machine that is demolishing their house, and he chose for the world to see the scene as well. This is not a detail in the picture. This is the whole picture. When a minister becomes a witness to the demolition of a house, then part of the demolition process itself, the demolition becomes a political declaration, and the rubble becomes a backdrop for a policy that wants to tell the Jerusalemite... we are not just demolishing your stones, we want to show you who has the power, who decides, and who can make your house in the morning a house and in the evening without a house...

They say the construction is unlicensed. Well, who made licensing in Jerusalem an exam that is nearly impossible for a Palestinian to pass? Who tightens planning and imposes restrictions, then waits for the Jerusalemite to raise his children in a room that does not fit them? Who allows the need for housing to multiply, then opens a violation file when the cement rises above the ground? The issue is not that there is a law on paper, but who writes the law, who applies it, on whom it is applied, who has the right to build, and who has the right to demolish. And when the result is that a Palestinian house is demolished while settlement projects expand, talking about the law alone becomes an attempt to hide the politics within a cold bureaucratic word.

For the occupation government, Jerusalem does not need just one bulldozer, but a complete system of bulldozers: one bulldozer to demolish the house, another to open the road for the settlement, a third to change the shape of the neighborhood, and a fourth to push the residents to leave without being told to leave. The demolition here does not begin when the bulldozer arrives, but starts years before, when Palestinian construction becomes a problem, Palestinian housing becomes a problem, and the very existence of Palestinians becomes a problem that needs to be reorganized. Therefore, we should not read the demolition of Al-Tur as an isolated incident. It is a link in a broader policy aimed at reshaping Jerusalem both demographically and architecturally, making the Palestinian presence there more costly, more fragile, and more susceptible to threats.

But in the Palestinian scene, there is another question, and perhaps it is time to say it frankly without giving the occupation a pretext, and without diminishing its responsibility... What does it mean to enhance the steadfastness of Jerusalemites if the citizen whose house is demolished by the occupation authorities will come out in the morning from among the rubble and does not know where he will sleep at night? What does it mean for Jerusalem to be a national priority if there is no real, rapid, and announced emergency system that receives the family at the moment the walls fall, provides them with temporary housing, pays for their displacement, secures them a lawyer, follows up on their case, and then helps them rebuild their lives?

We know that there are Palestinian institutions and programs that talk about enhancing the steadfastness of Jerusalemites, and we know that there are legal and social assistance and aid for those affected by demolitions. All of this is important, but the citizen who left his house yesterday does not live within a budget paper, nor does he sleep within a government program. He needs a house key, or a temporary roof, or a place that protects his children from turning overnight from residents of a house to residents of the street. Here, the question becomes directed to the authority and its institutions... Does the scale of the response match the scale of the assault? And are the programs and assistance we have truly capable of confronting a systematic demolition policy, or are we still moving after the disaster occurs instead of preparing for it before it happens?

Here, our criticism of the authority should not turn into an equation between the victim and the perpetrator. The occupation is the one that demolished, the occupation is the one that issued the decision, and the occupation is the one that owns the bulldozer, the power, the weapon, and the law that it applies on the occupied land. However, the authority is not only required to say after the demolition... the occupation has demolished a new house. This is the function of the statement, while the function of the authority is to ask before the demolition... What will we do if it is demolished? Where will the family go? How do we protect them? How do we help them stay? And how do we prevent every bulldozer from becoming another step in the path of pushing the Jerusalemite to leave?

The Jerusalemite does not need a new statement after the demolition of his house. He needs to feel that there was someone waiting for him before the house fell, not after it. He needs an institution that knows his name before it becomes news, and knows his address before it turns into rubble, and knows the number of his children before the search for shelter begins. Resilience is not a word said at conferences, nor is it an image of an official standing in front of Jerusalem, nor is it a statement condemning the occupation that ends its effect with the conclusion of the conference. Resilience is an alternative home when the house is demolished, a lawyer when the demolition order is issued, money when life stops, a school when children are displaced, and treatment when the family is struck in its social security, and a national network that makes the Jerusalemite know that he is not alone.

The bigger question here is ... why isn't there a permanent state of emergency in Jerusalem? Why isn't there a real, open, and announced fund to resettle every family whose house is demolished by the occupation? Why don't we move from a policy of compensation after the disaster to a policy of prevention before it? Why doesn't every Jerusalem neighborhood have a legal, engineering, and social team working with the people before the bulldozers arrive? Why doesn't the housing issue in Jerusalem turn into a permanent national project, instead of remaining a file that appears every time a bulldozer demolishes a house and then returns to the drawers?

The occupation wants a Jerusalemite who is tired, in debt, afraid, threatened in his home, thinking every morning of one question... Will I stay here or leave? And this is the real battle. Therefore, resisting demolition is not only in front of the bulldozer, but in the citizen's ability to remain afterward. The bulldozer destroys concrete, but whoever succeeds in pushing the family to leave has achieved something much greater than demolishing a house.

Here, exactly, Ben Gvir and those behind him must understand that Jerusalem is not a bulldozer. Jerusalem is not a seat for an Israeli minister to imagine himself as the driver of the city. Jerusalem is not the sound of iron crushing concrete. And Jerusalem is not an image published by a minister to prove to his audience that he is capable of demolition. Jerusalem is a human, a house, a neighborhood, a memory, and a city in which the Palestinian lives before the minister decides what to do with it.

As for Ben Gvir, he has chosen this time to place himself above the bulldozer. And this may have been the clearest image of his government's policy... a minister above, a house below, a family searching for a place, and a bulldozer between the two. But he made one mistake... rubble does not erase the owners of the house, just as demolishing the house does not erase the owner's right in Jerusalem.

We must, as Palestinians, authorities, institutions, factions, the private sector, and civil society, ask a question that cannot be delayed: If the occupation's bulldozer can, in hours, make seventy Jerusalemites homeless, can we, in the same hours, make them know where they will go, who will pay the rent, who will protect their children, who will stand with them in court, and who will rebuild what has been destroyed?

Because Jerusalem does not need more talk about steadfastness as much as it needs to create steadfastness. The house that the occupation destroys once should not be allowed by the Palestinian reality to be destroyed by its owner twice.