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Ironically, Sharansky, the Russian Jew whose struggle to emigrate to Israel won worldwide support, is now the interior minister. Of course no one ever held Sharansky's time at Princeton against his residency rights in Israel. Now Sharansky's staff is denying the Jerusalem-born Budeiri the right to stay and work in the city of his birth, where he has lived most of his life.

Budeiri is fairly confident that in the end a deal will be made -- not least because Israeli bureaucrats don't want his case to go to the courts, where precedents could be set that might limit evictions. Since the Oslo peace agreement in 1993, the Interior Ministry has revoked the residence rights of 1,600 East Jerusalem Arabs.

"It's nothing personal against me," Budeiri told Salon News. "It's against anyone they can get rid of. If they can find a loophole to edge someone out, then they will. It's happening every day," he explains. "Usually it's a question of people being married to someone in the West Bank. Instead of being allowed to bring their spouses to live in the city, they are forced to move to the West Bank."

If that seems a counterintuitive way to behave during peace negotiations, it is not. In advance of the final status talks between Israel and the Palestinians, which include the contentious issue of East Jerusalem's status, the Interior Ministry has been trying to create a new demographic reality, by reducing the Arab population while boosting the Jewish population. The Arab east has been surrounded by an almost continuous isolating ring of Jewish settlements, while Arab building has been strictly limited and what the Palestinians call the "quiet transfer" of Arab residents goes on.

The Israeli press is looking carefully at Budeiri's case for a hint of whether the new government will break with the policies it has inherited. Where the American press stands can be gauged from the reaction of one reporter for a major U.S. daily who was approached about the story. "She said that she didn't want her first story about Barak to be a negative one," laughs Budeiri. He is still hoping for a positive end to his own story.
salon.com | August 10, 1999

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