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From Challenge # 80  July-August 2003

 

Overcoming Fear at the Employment Bureau 

Asma Agbarieh and Michal Freedman

Part One (written on June 8, 2003)

TWICE IN MAY 2003 we visited the Employment Bureau at West Jerusalem's Koresh Street, established especially for Palestinians. The conditions are abysmal.

Although there is an air-conditioned waiting room, it is empty. Hundreds of jobseekers, some of them aged, some sick, are forced to stand long hours in the sun, without access to washrooms or drinking water. At other employment bureaus, by contrast, people sit inside, there are facilities, and the waiting time is measured not in hours, rather minutes. 

The conditions at the Koresh bureau were exacerbated by two guards, whose duty it is to call people into the office when their turn comes. They take every opportunity to provoke them. First, they arrange them in a queue and forbid them to cross a certain line - to "keep order". To this end, they shout and threaten them: whoever disturbs the order will be sent to the end of the queue, which means a wait of several more hours. They call out the names in low voices; anyone who fails to hear his summons is treated as if he was absent; he too is sent to the end of the line.

During our second visit, two people who had stood for hours in the sun leaned against a fence, which shielded a tree near the entrance to the bureau. A guard began to shout, telling them to stop leaning on the fence. When one claimed it was hard for him to wait so long in the sun, the guard replied that this was his job: to stand in the sun for hours in order to get money from the state. "I also stand in the sun," he said, "and I don't complain, so you'd better stop complaining and stand up straight, or I won't let you into the office." The two did not argue, fearing to lose the chance of entering at all.

The campaign of harassment, affecting about 3000 Palestinian jobseekers, has been going on since the outbreak of the Intifada in October 2000. At that time, the Employment Bureau in East Jerusalem was set on fire. As a means of collective punishment, the government kept the office closed, and hundreds of Palestinian jobseekers lost their benefits for months.

After WAC exerted pressure on the Employment Service to resume the handling of cases from East Jerusalem, the latter established the Koresh bureau "for Arabs only" in the western part of the city. As we have seen, this has functioned as an office for harassment, humiliation and punishment.

Many of the jobseekers believe that the motive of the harassment is to make them despair of coming to the office, thus denying them their benefits and saving money for the state.

 

Part Two (written on June 29, 2003)

On June 4 WAC held an emergency meeting of its members in East Jerusalem. They decided on two demands: 1) that the Bureau be re-opened on their side of the city; 2) that the Bureau provide services under normal conditions. As an immediate step, the members decided to hold a protest vigil on June 11 at the Koresh Bureau. They also established a monitoring committee.

As the day of the vigil neared, we alerted the Israeli media, which in turn alerted the Employment Service about the upcoming vigil. On the appointed day, as we were driving to Jerusalem, a member of the Monitoring Committee phoned to say: "There's no one waiting outside. The Bureau is handling people fast, so the media won't have anyone to photograph." We arrived at last, and lo! At the place where for two whole months, at this very hour, hundreds had been jammed up against one another in sun or rain, we were astonished to see no line. Inside, we found not a trace of the earlier humiliations. A journalist from Channel One arrived. She too was surprised. She asked the clerks how this was possible. The show was decisive proof that when the Bureau wants to behave as it should, it can. The earlier delays had resulted, clearly, not from a situation of too many people and too few clerks, rather from a policy of harassment.

The effective use of vigil and media showed jobseekers the power that lies in organization. When the vigil was over, all committee members came to WAC's office to consider future steps. Nah'la Ghoshe was one of them. She said: "This is the first time we've succeeded in breaking people's fear of the Bureau. For the first time we were able to stand up straight before the guards who'd abused us. They were forced to look at us as equals. The people standing before them seemed different, all of a sudden, from those they had tormented during the last two months."

The pressure has helped. Reports since June 11 indicate that the Bureau has continued to receive jobseekers at a satisfactory pace. Thousands enjoy the fruits of an action taken by a few dozen who got organized. The achievement will not last, however, if the pressure eases. The Monitoring Committee continues to meet, aiming toward a larger goal: the re-opening of the Employment Bureau in East Jerusalem.  n

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