Unfree in Palestine: Registration, Documentation and Movement Restriction

by Nadia Abu-Zahra, Adah Kay

Based on first-hand accounts and extensive fieldwork, Unfree in Palestine reveals the role played by identity documents in Israel's apartheid policies towards the Palestinians, from the red passes of the 1950s to the orange, green and blue passes of today.The authors chronicle how millions of Palestinians have been denationalized through the bureaucratic tools of census, population registration, blacklisting and a discriminatory legal framework. They show how identity documents are used by Israel as a means of coercion, extortion, humiliation and informant recruitment. Movement restrictions tied to IDs and population registers threaten Palestinian livelihoods, freedom of movement and access to basic services such as health and education.Unfree in Palestine is a masterful exposé of the web of bureaucracy used by Israel to deprive the Palestinians of basic rights and freedoms, and calls for international justice and inclusive security in place of discrimination and division.

Genres: History, Politics, Nonfiction

216 pages, Hardcover

First published November 7, 2012

Reviews

[Adam]

A very powerful, very depressing read. The authors start with an overview of the identification card and ID number system in Palestine, and then Israel. They document how the first Israeli census takers, twisted themselves into knots both to ensure that every last Jewish resident was counted, and as few Arabs were as possible. For example, registering Jews who were not physically present was not an issue, whereas any Arab who was away from their residence when the census takers happen to show up was simply not counted. In other cases, they simply elected not to register Arabs at all.

The most heartbreaking chapters are those on the health and education systems, which discuss how movement restrictions have made both untenable. How are you supposed to get medical treatment when neither you or your doctor are reliably able to travel to the medical facility? What do you do when you need treatment from a specialized facility in a town several kilometres away, and the soldiers manning the checkpoints refuse to let you pass? What do you do when they turn you away on the grounds that “you look healthy“ because yes, as long as you actually get your kidney dialysis, you will be fine? The anecdotes of people getting stopped on the way to the hospital, forced to give birth on the side of the road to children that die shortly thereafter, are outrageous. How do you write exams when Israeli soldiers are firing their weapons just outside your classroom window, for fun? How do you concentrate on your studies when you have to put so much mental energy into trying to get the class? What kind of system forces teachers to pretend to be students because the latter are allowed to pass through the checkpoints, but not the former?

With every book, I read, I only become more indignant and repulsed. There is no defending any of this. It is a racist, apartheid system to the core, and anyone that defends it is either too ignorant or too cruel to be taken seriously.