January 2005
THE NEW MEXICO JEWISH LINK
OPINION: Life in Israel by Mati Milstein
ARMENIAN QUARTER, JERUSALEM—As the year drew to a close, a man who
doesn’t officially exist sang and danced for joy within the walls of the Old
City of Jerusalem.
Hrayr Yezegelian, 27, has lived half his life in the murky shadowlands
between war and peace. The Beirut-born Armenian fled the Lebanese civil war
to Israel with his family and has been stuck in bureaucratic limbo ever since.
He has resided in Israel for 15 years, but has no permanent Israeli
identification card—a document every resident is required by law to carry at
all times. He holds no passport. He cannot even return to Lebanon, having
forfeited his citizensip in that country. He said were he to return there, he
would be interrogated by the secret police as a suspected Israeli spy, beaten
and possibly killed.
He lives in fear the Jerusalem police, out searching for suspected
terrorists, will arrest him. He resides in east Jerusalem, is not an Israeli
Jew, and carries irregular documents, if any at all. He is, on all accounts, a
very suspicious character.
The Interior Ministry, for reasons known only to itself, refuses to
grant Yezegelian more than a temporary identity card and a six-month
laissez-passe even though his parents and siblings all hold regular Israeli
documentation.
With no permanent passport, Yezegelian cannot leave Israel; no country
will issue him a visa on a travel document valid for less than a year.
His employer, a security company, subtracts a significant amount from
his monthly salary for national health insurance, but lacking the proper
documents Yezegelian is ineligible to reap the benefits of such deposits.
A musician, Yezegelian met–and sang for–Yossi Sarid when the Knesset
member came to pay his respects at a memorial service for victims of the
Armenian genocide at the hands of theTurks. He has letters of support from MK
Tamar Gozansky and the legendary former Jerusalem mayor Teddy Kollek.
He speaks fluent Hebrew (as well as Armenian, Arabic, Turkish and a
handful of other languages), has Israeli friends and is integrated into Israeli
society (sometimes going by the Hebrew name “Ariel”). But he desires nothing
more than to be recognized by the State as a normal resident and citizen.
To no avail. Important Israeli personalities seem unable to provide
him with answers, never mind results.
Even the United Nations High Commission for Refugees has thus far been
largely unhelpful.
Yezegelian, originally, sponsored by the Armenian Patriarch, long ago
lost faith in religion and abandoned his seminary studies in the Old City’s
monastery compound. He is tired of the Middle East conflict and living on the
perpetual brink of war, sick of a home in the Old City cauldron amongst
thousands of Palestinian Arabs.
But in late December, Yezegelian the musician kept nearly a hundred
Armenian celebrants dancing, laughing and toasting for hours on end in a club in
the Old City’s ancient Armenian quarter. Disco lights twirled and flashed
and Yezegelian joined partygoers jumping for joy in the smoky, stone-arched
cavern.
What can he possibly be so happy about?
Music and America. Yezegelian dreams of America, of joining the large
Armenian community in southern California and developing a unique variety of
music. Or maybe France or Canada; someplace far from the Middle East.
How is Yezegelian —a trapped stateless man in a land that can’t quite
bring itself to accept him—able to remain so positive?
“I don’t know, ” he shrugged. “Everyone should be happy. You have to
be happy to survive.”
Mati Milstein [from New Mexico] has lived in Israel since 1998. He
began covering stories in Israel and the Palestinian Authority-controlled
territories for Israeli and foreign media outlets.