Ghassan Abdullah

A few months ago, a European professional in Ramallah threw a farewell party after completing part of the project for which he was recruited. The European himself, a Belgian, spent many years previously in the Palestinian territories and was very well liked locally, not least because he married a Palestinian woman, but that’s another story. A friend and old colleague of mine came up to me at the party and asked me discretely about A., a good-looking and outgoing woman who works with us.

Israel has decreed that my wife and I can no longer live together. I am Palestinian and she is Swiss and we have been married for 28 years. She was recently given two weeks to leave the occupied Palestinian territory. The Israeli Ministry of Interior wrote on her Swiss passport: “LAST PERMIT.” We have been living together in Ramallah for 12 years. We came in 1994, when, after the Oslo Agreement, we were encouraged to move to the West Bank by the prospect of ‘peace’ and development. My wife Anita speaks Arabic, likes the landscape, cooks Arabic meals, and she cares for my grandfather’s village house — an old stone building and the plants around it — more than I do.

I am sorry I am sending you best wishes for the New Year rather late. The reason is because I had to spend my New Year night in a detention cell at Tel Aviv’s Lod or Ben Gurion airport. Then I was deported to where I flew from.