Jerusalem’s Ramadan Is Different This Year
Emma
Green, The Atlantic, May 18, 2018
The
Muslim holy month began during a dramatic and deadly week in a region where
even religious events are shrouded in politics.
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Women
pray near the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem on the first Friday of Ramadan. Ammar
Awad / Reuters
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The
mundane ins and outs of permits and politics pervade life for Palestinians
here, but especially so as Ramadan begins this week. On Monday, the U.S. embassy
opened in Jerusalem. On Tuesday, Palestinians observed what they
call Nakba Day—nakba is the Arabic word for “catastrophe”—commemorating
the Arab defeat in the 1948 war to prevent the formation of the
Jewish state, and the subsequent displacement of Palestinians from their
villages and land. Throughout all of this, violence
raged in Gaza, as protesters massed along the border fence with
Israel. As some protesters rushed the barrier, Israeli forces released tear gas
and fired on those who approached, fearing a massive breach. Hamas, the
militant group–cum–political party that runs Gaza, organized the so-called
March of Return with the goal that Palestinians would be able to reclaim their
ancestral homes in what is now Israel. The group later claimed
that 50 of the 62 Gazans who were killed during the riots on Monday and Tuesday
were their members, although that claim is nearly impossible to verify, and the
group may have been purposefully overstating its influence.
As the
Gaza protests wind down, at least for now, and the television crews pack up,
this will be the story that continues: a daily existence of permits and
politics, of special sweets and prayerful seasons, with constant reminders of
the underlying tensions that blew up this week but will soon settle back into
an uneasy status quo before blowing up again.
While the
cloudy arcs of tear gas and towering plumes of smoke from burning tires in Gaza
captivated the Western media, the quieter story—of what it’s been like this
week for other Palestinians, who haven’t been part of massive, chaotic
protests—is just as important.
“I don’t
come out a lot. I stay inside,” said a woman named Sara, an American-born
Palestinian who lives in Jerusalem with her husband, Samr. Still, the political
situation has pervaded everything, she said, from conversations at iftars, the
late-night meals that break the Ramadan fast, to gatherings at Al-Aqsa. “You
can’t concentrate when you’re praying.”
Samr told
me he was nervous about coming to Al-Aqsa through crowds of angry people and
Israeli soldiers, who stand in clumps at the every entrance to the mosque. “I’m
kind of an old guy. I just want to live and take care of my family and my work.
I’ve got a lot of bills,” he said. “But deep inside, no one is happy.”
Most of
Jerusalem is currently in a festive mode. Jews will soon celebrate Shavuot,
when they believe God gave them the Torah at Mount Sinai. Christians will
observe Pentecost, when they believe the Holy Spirit descended on the early
apostles and the Church was born. For Muslims, Ramadan marks the first
revelation of the Quran to the Prophet Muhammad. Throughout the holy month,
Muslims say special prayers, don’t eat or drink during the day, and gorge
themselves on Ramadan-specific treats at night.
“I wait
for this day to come every year,” said Bader. She and her family usually buy
big piles of ka’ek, a kind of long, SpaghettiO-shaped bread covered in sesame
seeds. (“They’re like bagels, somehow,” she said.) She loves saying the special
evening prayer for Ramadan, called tarawih, at Al-Aqsa: “It’s night and the
wind is going, and everything is just so cool,” she said. “You feel so close to
God when you are in a holy place like this.”
Even
though Bader is from Hebron, just 20 miles away, she has to wait for Ramadan to
visit because Palestinians who live in the West Bank normally cannot come into
Jerusalem outside of special circumstances like a medical emergency. During
Ramadan, however, the Israeli government widely grants travel permits to people
who want to come pray on Fridays. For many people, the holiday is more than an
opportunity to pray and buy delicious rosewater desserts. It’s a rare chance to
visit family who live in Israel, shop, and take trips to see the Mediterranean.
During
Nakba Day gatherings in Ramallah earlier this week, some Palestinians worried
about the possibility that Israel would shut down these permits due to the Gaza
protests. “I think Israel and the U.S. decided to announce to open the embassy
on this day, before Ramadan, to make the people very nervous and very
stressed,” said Ahed Awad, a 28-year-old woman. The U.S. has said it selected
the date to coincide with Israel’s independence day. Her brother-in-law, Omar
Hammad, pointed out that it seemed unlikely that Israel would cut the permits,
since Muslims spend a lot of money in Israeli stores during Ramadan. “Anything
is possible with the people who kill children,” she replied, likely referring
to Layla Ghandour, an 8-month-old baby who died during a Gaza protest after she
inhaled tear gas. (Her doctor
later said she may have died from effects of a congenital heart defect.)
Nearly
everyone I spoke with in Ramallah and Jerusalem said they were praying for the
people who died and were injured during the Gaza protests. “It’s a tragic
opening of Ramadan, really,” said Hammad. According to the Palestinian Health
Ministry in Gaza, roughly 2,700 people were injured on Monday and Tuesday, in
addition to the 62 killed. “Ramadan should be a celebration—a month of peace
and a month of tranquility for all Muslims around the world. … Opening Ramadan
like that is just terrible.” Like many other people I spoke with, he said he’s
felt spiritually distracted by the news. “You need some patience during
Ramadan,” he said. “Experiences like the ones in Gaza yesterday just affect
your emotions.”
Even
though many Palestinians are clearly angry about what they see as an Israeli
abuse of power in Gaza, Jerusalem and the West Bank have been fairly calm this
week. The protest in Ramallah on Tuesday drew only a couple hundred people,
some of whom appeared to be European tourists eagerly waving their Palestinian
flags in solidarity. Like in other Palestinian cities and villages, most
businesses and public institutions were on strike all day to protest the nakba.
The shuttered city felt relaxed, rather than poised for conflict. Men sat
around talking and smoking on street corners, while most people stayed home.
The lack
of demonstrations in the areas closest to Jerusalem undermines the narrative
that Trump’s embassy move was the primary cause of the chaos in Gaza. The
long-term conditions there—lack of clean water and electricity,
an unstable banking system, widespread
unemployment, restricted movement—are the main undercurrent that
swept the protests along. Hamas also actively encouraged people to head to the
border, including
women and children. In other Palestinian territories—where the
economic situation is less dire and which are not controlled by Hamas, which
the U.S. and others consider a terrorist organization—people’s anger seemed to
seethe rather than boil over. As one young woman told me, revolutions in places
like Ramallah are always temporary.
So a
dramatic and painful week has come to an end. But despite the death and
destruction, despite the monumental symbolism of the embassy move, many other
things remain the same. Ramadan began. Palestinian Muslims got their permits
and caught their buses. For a few weeks, at least, people from Ramallah and
Hebron and Jerusalem will all be able to pray and eat together, to enjoy the
little boys spraying water on their sticky faces as they file out of Al-Aqsa.
They’ll come every week until they can’t anymore, and pray that an unchanging
situation will change. Salaam Abu Saleem, a high-schooler from Nablus, says she
will be in Jerusalem every Friday. “I come here,” she said, “to say to God that
we are afraid.”
