{"id":12789,"date":"2011-11-15T13:57:09","date_gmt":"2011-11-15T21:57:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=12789"},"modified":"2011-11-15T13:57:09","modified_gmt":"2011-11-15T21:57:09","slug":"palestinians-ride-in-the-front-of-the-bus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2011\/11\/15\/palestinians-ride-in-the-front-of-the-bus\/","title":{"rendered":"Palestinians Ride in the Front of the Bus"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Actually, they were merely on the bus as it entered Jerusalem, which is confrontation enough. Free and democratic Israel has such a convoluted and restrictive system of permitting for Palestinians going anywhere that Arabs living in what are considered Jerusalem outskirts are not allowed to ride the Jews-only bus into town without their papers, please. For security purposes, of course.<\/p>\n<p>This morning six Palestinian activists, accompanied by a phalanx of journalists, were <a href=\"http:\/\/www.boston.com\/news\/world\/middleeast\/articles\/2011\/11\/15\/palestinian_activists_locked_in_bus_standoff\/\">barred from entering Jerusalem<\/a>. Police ordered them off the bus, but they refused. After about an hour, they were arrested and pulled off the bus.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;My point isn&#8217;t go to jail &#8212; my point is to have the freedom to get on a bus,&#8221; said 38-year-old civil servant Badia Dwaik.<\/p>\n<p>The activists call themselves &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Freedom_riders\">Freedom Riders<\/a>&#8221; after the bus desegregation actions of the 60s in the United States, whose most well-known icon was Rosa Parks.<\/p>\n<p>Palestinians are not allowed to enter the West Bank Jews-only settlements in which certain bus companies exclusively run. One settler was angry the activists had boarded: &#8220;This is our bus,&#8221; she said, adding: &#8220;Quite simply, we are afraid of them.&#8221; One wonders why, then, she moved to Palestine.<\/p>\n<p>The interaction between the checkpoint policeman and Dwaik is a textbook example of the banality of evil, but also of calm courage in the face of an uncaring bureaucracy.<\/p>\n<p><em>&#8220;I am not going to obey your discriminatory law,&#8221; Dwaik told the policeman, speaking Arabic.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;So you are detained,&#8221; the policeman said, also in Arabic.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Fine. I am not moving.&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Actually, they were merely on the bus as it entered Jerusalem, which is confrontation enough. Free and democratic Israel has such a convoluted and restrictive system of permitting for Palestinians going anywhere that Arabs living in what are considered Jerusalem outskirts are not allowed to ride the Jews-only bus into town without their papers, please. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[683,693],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-12789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-israel","tag-palestine"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12789"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12789\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12795,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12789\/revisions\/12795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12789"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=12789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}