by dan baron
jta

tel aviv | Belying its name, Electricity Park is shrouded in darkness, an ideal spot for curb-crawlers keen to avoid attention as they prowl for male prostitutes at night.

The anonymity these streets offer serves as a refuge for the young men who ply their trade in this dismal corner of Tel Aviv. Many of them have far more to fear than the police or the occasional abusive client.

Tricked out in drag or the tight, modish attire of Western urban youth, dozens of gay Palestinian runaways eke out a dangerous living on Israel�s streets.

For these gay men, life in the seedy parts of central Israel is far better than the virtual death sentences they fled in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Sani � not his real name � grew up outside Gaza City, in a refugee camp whose clan networks and congestion made privacy practically impossible. He said he realized he was gay at age 16.

Sani�s secret was safe from his father, a local sheik, but eventually it leaked out to the Palestinian Authority police.

�They brought me in, held me for hours. During one round of questioning, they made me strip and sit on a Coke bottle. It hurt. And all the time I was more worried my family would learn why.�

Torture by Palestinian Authority security services or vigilante attacks by relatives is a fate suffered by countless gay men in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, where sodomy carries a jail term of three to 10 years.

Those who survive torture and attacks either fade into meek self-abnegation or, like Sani, break away. But it�s an unlikely scenario, given the efforts Israel has made to tighten its borders over the last three years to keep out terrorists.

Sani�s freedom came at a price: He had to report other Palestinian gays to the police. But as soon as he got out of the Gaza lock-up, Sani got out of Gaza for good, posing as a day laborer to escape to the safety of Israel proper, where he joined an estimated 300 fellow gay runaways.

Now 22, Sani is always on the move, lodging with friends or rich clients he meets at Tel Aviv�s bathhouses. If he is short on cash, he knows he can resort to street-walking in Electricity Park.

Sani phones home every few months to assure his mother that he is all right � on condition that she doesn�t tell his father and brothers about the conversations.

�She says they consider me dead, and it�s better that way,� he said. �I have nightmares about them coming to kill me.�

According to Shaul Gonen of Agudah, Israel�s homosexual rights association, at least three Palestinian runaways have been abducted by vengeful kinsmen, never to be heard from again.

�Being gay in the Palestinian Authority is, quite simply, deadly,� Gonen said.

Israel�s preoccupation with security also means that the runaways run the risk of being summarily deported if caught.

�The first danger to them is from family and community, as well as authorities� in the Palestinian Authority-controlled areas, Donatella Rovera of Amnesty International said. �Going to Israel is a one-way ticket, and once there their biggest problem is possibly being sent back.�

Israel signed the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees covenant of 1951, guaranteeing asylum for anyone persecuted on the basis of sexual orientation. The country�s Interior Ministry said any gay Palestinian can apply to remain in Israel indefinitely if persecution is proven, but the ministry gave no figures on how many such applications have been filed.

Another option is to seek haven abroad.

In Israel, covertness is a way of life for Palestinian runaways. The really lucky ones adopt a new identity altogether.

A 30-year-old runaway from a village near Jenin works in a Tel Aviv restaurant using an identification card loaned to him by an Israeli Arab friend. He lives with his Jewish partner in a quiet Tel Aviv suburb. �With any luck, I�ll go unnoticed until there is peace,� he said.

For anyone interested in the dynamics of using a liberal cause to bludgeon the “Wretched of the Earth”, here’s a more recent take on “Queer” As A Tool Of Colonial Oppression: The Case Of Israel/Palestine by Blair Kuntz.

The Zionist Power Configuration inc. will HAPPILY arrange for complimentary transportation for you to join your soul mates in Gaza.

This week. (pack a lunch)

Why punch a keyboard at all hours when you have a shot at becoming a genuine bad-ass , throat slitting martyr?

Just one little problem that our last Ozzie Jihadist ran into.

You see he’s gay. Like me.

And if you get your silly ass blown off launching rockets at day care centers or whatever, one of your big rewards when you go to Hamas heaven is 72 virgins to play with.
Problem is that they’re all girls.

I suppose the last fellow could have made do and turned them around, but it put him off the idea of killing Jews completely. Other than that I thought he was a real hero.

It’s what we Zionist Power Configuration types call “an unreasonable expectation.”

It’s O.K., we don’t expect you to be able to plan that far ahead.

Why not just give ALL Jews and Arabs dual citizenship and allow all the people equal access to all of Palestine/Israel? Of course the Palestinians who had their homes stolen or bulldozed would have to be compensated, but why not reciprocate and allow the Arabs that same dual citizenship that you’d appropriate to Jews who illegally settled Palestinian land?

The Hamas in Gaza will continue to attack Israel with rockets and mortars – for a time.

The Israelis ratchet up pinpoint assassinations and continue to kill upwards of 30 Hamas soldiers per week. All Borders shut indefinitely, the folks in Gaza learn to live without gasoline and electricity and cook the food that they grow, plus whatever supplies manage to come in through underground tunnels over animal dung fires.

In 2009, the West Bank Palestinians under Abbas or his successors finally iron out a deal with both Israel and the UN, and settle on borders, including Jerusalam. Israel keeps the major settlement blocks, and all other Jewish settlers on the Palestinian side of the line become Palestinian citizens, with dual Israeli status.

Huge amounts of foreign investment and returning ex-patriots enter the new Palestine, and it becomes a banking haven much like Hong Cong and the Caiman Islands. Co-ventures in historical/religious tourism, and many kinds of industry abound between the Jewish and Palestinian states. The occupation is over, the roads are for everybody, and over time, the separation wall is dismantled.

Gaza continues to wallow in violent and backward misery well into the next century, especially after the next Iranian revolution, which displaces the religious autocracy with a secular democracy, and accords women equal rights with men.

Greed has sort of gotten the best of Israel. Given an inch, they took a yard; given a yard, they took a mile. As such they have pretty much predetermined that a one-state solution is the only possibility.

And so a true democracy of all people and all religions they will have to cope with. Poor them! Perhaps they will lose their Jewish majority and have to stomach Palestinian leaders. Poor them!

An apt description of politics in the U.S.

It’s interesting how the only negative reviews of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse at amazon.com come from reflexive “supporters of Israel”.

In that other racial settler state of the Mediterranean, French Algeria, liberals like ‘Camus “opposed extremism and violence on both sides” and “favored a multicultural Algeria.”‘, yet their ‘”multicultural” vision presupposed French rule over Algeria. “I believe in justice,” Camus said, “but I shall defend my mother above justice.” This meant seeking solutions well short of majority rule and self-determination for Algerian Muslims, including bizarre schemes evocative of later Afrikaner designs to retain power in South Africa.’

One wonders how the world will regard the increasingly batty schemes Zionist true believers will have to devise to keep their ethnocracy intact.