Abusing the wall

With little police presence beyond the security barrier, drug dealers make use of holes in the wall to make their transactions

By KSENIA SVETLOVA
West Bank security wall 521 (photo credit: Ksenia Svetlova)
West Bank security wall 521
(photo credit: Ksenia Svetlova)
Imagine that you are walking down the street with your kids and suddenly come across a drug dealer who is actively engaged in negotiations with a potential customer. What would you do? Call the police, of course, hoping that they’ll get there in time to arrest the dealer and confiscate the drugs.
But what would you do if you knew that there was no one to call because nobody exactly controls this particular part of your city? Since the erection of the West Bank security barrier in Jerusalem, the neighborhoods of E-Ram, Eizariya, Anata and others, which found themselves beyond the wall, became easy targets for drug dealers – Arabs and Jews alike. The addicts followed suit.
In E-Ram, a neighborhood located just five minutes away from Pisgat Ze’ev and Neveh Ya’acov, the openings stare you right in the face as you walk past the wall that has separated the neighborhood since 2003, causing inevitable changes in social texture and demographics.
“E-Ram was once a middle-class neighborhood. The rents were fairly high, and the population enjoyed a good quality of life,” says Essam Joyhan, social department manager at the E-Ram-based Al-Maqdisi NGO.
“Since the wall was constructed, the well-off people left for Jerusalem, fearing they would lose their Israeli IDs, while criminal elements took their place. Some drug addicts came to live here, some people with criminal records, and this social change negatively affected the whole neighborhood. Who would want to live here now?” he says.
We go out of the building, where most of the offices were shut down a long time ago – the businesses having moved to Jerusalem or gone bankrupt – and there was no use staying in E-Ram, Joyhan explains. The bottom part of the wall looks like Swiss cheese – as if large mice with steel teeth had been gnawing into the cement until they created these perfect round holes.
But Joyhan explains that people had been carving the cement to make the holes. One person would stand on the Palestinian part with a dose of cocaine or heroin, while the other person would be on the other side of the wall, ready with the money.
The meeting is arranged by phone, usually by people who know each other to avoid secret agents and moles, while those who are ready to drive behind the checkpoint would approach the dealers who lurk along the wall in the dark.
“Why isn’t there anyone who will stop them?” I ask Joyhan. He smiles bitterly.
“Once we were throwing a party in our office, and a head of the anti-drug department of the Palestinian police was invited. As we approached the office, we saw a dealer who was selling cocaine to a client. The Palestinian policeman tried to confiscate the drug and to have the person arrested, but the dealer fought him. He wasn’t afraid of him at all. Since these territories are in Area C [under Israeli control], it means that the Palestinian police are not allowed to be present there, and the policemen are forbidden to wear their uniform and carry weapons.” he says.
“At the same time,” he continues, “Israeli security forces don’t do anything, either. They take care of security problems only, while the drug dealers mostly get away freely,” says Joyhan.
THE NGO began to work in 2002 while focusing on various problems in east Jerusalem – house demolitions, youth crime and the war on drugs. Last year the organization published a pamphlet in Arabic entitled A Family Guide: How to Stay Away from Drugs. At the end of the pamphlet is a list of organizations and associations that help addicts.
Joyhan says there are definitely not enough facilities and trained personnel out there to combat the growing problem of drug addiction among the youth in east Jerusalem.
“East Jerusalem is full of drugs. It has always been this way, and especially now, after the wall was created,” says Yunes, a volunteer at the Al-Nur rehabilitation center. Ten years ago he himself had been a heavy user and and has come a long way since then.
“Many Jews come to these areas to get drugs as well because it is so easy. For example E-Ram is just a few minutes from northern neighborhoods of Jerusalem.
By the way, some of them end up in our rehabilitation center as well,” he reports.
Why would an Israeli Jew check into a Palestinian rehabilitation center? “Because the system there is thoroughly different,” says Joyhan, a person behind Al-Nur’s success.
“In Israel, a person can check out of the center at any given time, while in our centers only the relative who checked the addict into the center is entitled to do so. We are the last resort when there is no more hope,” says Yunes, who has been through the excruciating process himself.
The Al-Nur rehabilitation center is located inside the Shuafat refugee camp, beyond the army checkpoint, deep inside the narrow streets. The center looks simple but clean and brightly lit. There are separate wards for men and women.
In the men’s ward, a few men wearing jogging suits are watching TV. Al Jazeera is on, but no one seems really interested in what is happening on the screen.
These men seem to be looking inside themselves. It’s hard to imagine a Jewish patient in this crowd; however, Joyhan and Yunes confirm that once in a while it does happen.
Atalla, a large bearded fellow, approaches me with a smile. He is eager to tell about his personal success – he has been clean already for one week.
“It’s so easy to get drugs now in Jerusalem. Ten years ago we would buy them in the Old City. Now it’s in E-Ram and in Eizariya – you just need to get down to the street,” he says.
There are no official data on the number of addicts in east Jerusalem, Joyhan says, but he claims that since the construction of the security barrier in east Jerusalem, the number of drug addicts is on the rise, according to his own evidence.
“There were a few significant episodes for east Jerusalemites’ affair with drugs. The first watershed was the war of 1967. The city was unified, and the two very different ways of life mixed together. Until 1967 there were four Mahashish places in east Jerusalem – places where people smoked hashish.
After the war, Jews came there as well, together with their women, and the Arab youth were curious about them, so they came as well. Then, after the war in Lebanon in 1982, drugs became cheap and available, and the number of heroin addicts grew substantially.
Then, after the first intifada, we experienced this wave again. Many young people who had taken part in the intifada couldn’t adapt to peaceful life and filled the void with drugs. And eventually the separation wall came in 2003, and with it the accessible and cheap drugs,” Joyhan explains.
He calls for Israeli authorities to wage a war on drugs in east Jerusalem because otherwise this situation will continue to grow and might eventually explode in everybody’s face.
In response to In Jerusalem’s query, Jerusalem Police spokesman Shmuel Ben-Ruby said, “The Jerusalem Police, along with the Judea and Samaria Police and the IDF, operates beyond the Jerusalem envelope to eradicate the drug situation. This war includes the use of undercover agents, shutting down the drug stations, producing fake drug purchases, etc. During the last year, many dozens of drug dealers and addicts have been arrested and interrogated near the Jerusalem envelope. We recommended that they be taken to trial,” Ben-Ruby said.