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Palestinian businesses defy “Jerusalem Day”

If Palestinian identity and solidarity mean anything, two shops on Al-Wad Street in the Old City’s Muslim Quarter are high on the list of businesses to seek out this Ramadan and into the future.

Sometimes the fighters for Palestine aren’t protesting in the streets or debating in the courtrooms or negotiating at diplomatic missions. Sometimes the Palestinians best defending their rights and national identity are simple business owners keeping their shops open.

On the most recent so-called Jerusalem Day, celebrated by Israeli authorities as the time they captured all of Jerusalem during the 1967 war and began its bruising occupation over the entire city, the West Bank, Gaza and the Golan Heights.

Palestinians, especially those living in Jerusalem, are not exactly thrilled with this Zionist holiday. Normally something like this latter-day Nakba might be ignored by the Palestinians, except for the fact that state authorities encourage and support highly provocative actions by Israeli civilians and others intended to stick it to Palestinians, right in their face.

To shop owner Mohammad Abuspear, however, the provocations were an utter failure:

“I can barely see them around. That’s how small they are.”

This bear of a man declared this statement through an interpreter in the midst of hundreds of mostly prepubescent male Zionists hugging and dancing and singing in the main intersection at Al-Wad & Via Dolorosa streets between his convenience store at #68 and the front door of the Austrian Hospice.

Think of the annual provocative and contentious Orange Order Protestant triumphalist parades through Catholic Northern Ireland districts in Belfast and Derry. Same thing here in Jerusalem’s Old City, except Zionist Jews are parading down the main thoroughfare of the occupied Muslim Quarter. The clear purpose of the Zionist parades is to remind the occupied residents about who remains on top and in charge in no uncertain terms. Right in their face.

For Abuspear, it wasn’t working.

Though it started the night of Saturday, May 12 with a few scattered Zionist dance and shout groups of playtime students giving no thought to their surroundings, the main parade began about 4pm Sunday, Mothers’ Day. Pouring into the Damascus Gate entrance for the Old City, thousands of mostly grammar and secondary school youths proceeded into the market area and then down through Al-Wad Street toward the Western Wall plaza entrance, normally about a 10-minute walk.

Lifelong Muslim Quarter resident Marwan Ganam explained what usually occurs:

“Every month, they have Zionist demonstration. Maybe 3 or 4 hours,” Ganam said. “If you are Arab, you can’t walk in this street. They close all the shops and put police barricades and you can’t walk.

“Marchers all push on the doors, knock on the doors. They shouting ‘We don’t need Arab! To Arab, you die!’ Everything. And many police. They was with them there. Every month. Settlers, just settlers. They came from everywhere. And they say ‘We go to the Temple Mount!,” yeah. ‘We built the Temple Mount!’ This is every month. And the police, they don’t give you to open your shop in this time. Usually 730pm to later in the night. They have flags and everything. Loudspeakers.”

The Jerusalem Day Zionist marchers were expected to be much worse than the monthly marchers this time. In addition to nearly all the Muslim shops being closed, many store owners resorted to taping off their door locks because many settlers take the ridiculous juvenile step of filling the locks with superglue.

Authorities told all Muslim shop owners to close by 4:30 or so in time for the Jerusalem Day Zionist parade or else they could not expect any police protection. But Abuspear was having none of it. He kept the shop open, surrounded by friends and onlookers as thousands of mostly young Zionists began to stream past. Up and down Al-Wad, it looked like every other shop was closed.

In previous years, things had gotten ugly between local Palestinians and passing Zionist settlers when fights and scuffles broke out with fists and sticks. Police came over to break things up, and though intense, no serious injuries had occured, said one Palestinian who was involved. He seemed to relish the memory of past confrontations.

But this year, outside of a lot of screams, chants, song and dance, nothing physical apparently went down at Abuspear’s shop. The parading Zionists appeared to be mostly children and students, not a lot of hardened crazed armed settlers, and not much of a threat to anyone. But they were relentless and stayed in the streets for more than 3 hours.

“He’s always up alone against them,” one comrade remarked in front of the convenience store’s assorted groceries, chips, sodas, sweets, ice cream, fresh juice, and other colorful neatly arranged and clean offerings. “He’s taking it easy. Chill.”

But he wasn’t alone this year. His cousin Gahad Abuspear’s family confectionary, Alasel Sweets, a few hundred yards up Al-Wads toward the Damascus Gate also defiantly remained open. The beautiful modern sweet shop is located in a narrow section of Al-Wad and was the target that day of much more intense and provocative Zionist behavior. Gahad said at the time that a few packaged sweet trays had been ruined and other items stolen or damaged by the passing youths streaming out of a tunnel-like portion of the street just to the left of the store’s entrance.

“We have no business today,” Gahad told me. Gesturing toward the parading Israeli-flag waving Zionists, he added, “That’s a problem today.”

Like his cousin’s shop, many family, friends and bystanders had rushed to the sweet store’s defense. A handful of foreigners stood like a guard at the entrance steps with phone cameras at the ready. The Zionist youth chanted and gestured, but mostly kept moving when they saw the store defenders.

These Palestinian shops that remained open on Jerusalem Day on Al-Wad Street were not afraid in an unusually tense climate witnessing the ongoing Gaza massacres by Israeli forces, the US Embassy move to Jerusalem, Israel’s 70th anniversary, and simultaneous Palestinian Nakba commemoration. Dozens of extra Israeli armed soldiers and guards assembled just beyond the Damascus Gate that afternoon in anticipation of trouble.

Of course, direct Zionist provocation in the Muslim Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City is nothing new. Parades of the type witnessed on Jerusalem Day this year are only the latest in a long line of aggressive demonstrations dating back to at least 1929 when these Zionist displays became a direct cause of the infamous Arab-Jewish riots in Jerusalem, Hebron and beyond that led to the deaths of hundreds.

Jews parading again today. Extreme provocation, but the Arabs are doing nothing. Small army of Haluzium — these precious Maccabees — passed half an hour ago, on their way to the Wall, with a flag, the Zionist national flag, I suppose, but I couldn’t see it; it was furled. Shouts and cheers come from down there; the whole thing makes me very nervous . . . The young heroes who passed a while ago were guarded heavily by the police; mounted police officers in front of them and behind them, with policemen on foot marching alongside them. The material for an awful three-cornered fight. What an exhibition of imbecility the whole thing is! And if it weren’t for the British police I think there would be a terrible pogrom. My affection for Zionism has certainly reached the zero point. If this keeps up it will soon go below that and turn into an active antagonism.

Vincent Sheen, “Holy Land” chapter of his noted Personal History nonfiction book (1935, Doubleday) regarding his on-site reporting of the August 1929 Jerusalem riots.

In the face of all that historical and current pressure to shut down and submit, the Abuspear families kept their Palestinian businesses open. The actual amount of business for both shops meant nothing in comparison to the reality of their defiant presence, open and unafraid, in the face of civil and official occupation forces who wanted them closed, like everyone else.

But a small convenient shop and sweet store operated by cousins remained open for everyone to see. []