Justified Discrimination or Just Racial Discrimination

I just added a new item to my Arabs in Israel blog, I check it out if your are interested, it is called: Justified Discrimination or Just Racial Discrimination.

The Civil Marriage (Photos soon)

Even though I had a wedding, a ring and a wife, I was not officially married yet. In the state of Israel no entity has the authority to wed a Muslim man to a Christian woman, not anymore. Even though such marriage is allowed in Islam, the Muslim religion court no longer sanctions such marriages. I don’t know why this change came about, I am inclined to believe it was a restriction imposed by the state of Israel, and since the judjes and personal of the Muslim court are all employees of the state, they are obliged to conform to such directives. They could have at least protested it, but I have feeling that they were happy to the woman she had ot convert to Islam before they sanction the marriage.

Since my wife had no intentions of converting to Islam (nor I to Christianity), civil marriage was our only remaining option. Yet civil marriages don’t exist in Israel, our only option would be to get married abroad. Luckily it seems many couples face this same problem in Israel, and have no other option other than the ‘Civil marriage abroad’ loophole, and were there is demand there is business; tour companies offer ‘civil marriage abroad’ packages, were they have everything arranged for you: flights, hotel, transportation, and the marriage ceremony. The closest destination for such marriages is Cyprus, that small Mediterranean island of the cost of Lebanon.

A lot of drama preceded our first trip; in order to get married we needed certificates that we were single, each from his own country. Mine was easy to get, Mauge on the other hand had to get hers from Bolivia. She asked a friend to do the paper work for her in Bolivia, and we sent some money for her to pay for the expenses, including a translation by a notary and the DHL shipping fee. Unfortunately that friend sent us a birth certificate inasted; despite the fact Mauge had made it very clear to her that she needed a social status certificate. We had a problem time wise, we were not sure we would be able to get the document in time for our trip, and we considered postponing the trip, but after some consideration we decided to try to get the paper in time. This time we gave the task to Mauge’s cousin, and before mailing the document we asked her to scan it and sent us an electronic copy. In order not to waste time, I sent the electronic copy to a notary, to starty the translation work (the document needed to be in English). But we needed to have the original document, before the notary would hand us the certified translation.

We tracked the document at the DHL web site, we were pleased to see that after two days the package had already arrived to Madrid, we figured in a couple of days we would have the package in our hands. Yet that could not been further than the truth, instead of the package being put on a direct plane to Israel, it went through England, Belgium and Germany, taking several more days to arrive to Israel. The package arrived to Israel only to be detained at the airport. We were told that customs has detained, but in Israel that usually means the shipment was held for security checks. It is unlikely that our envelop had aroused suspicions, it is that DHL usually send many package in one big container, and it is likely that the whole container was held for security checks, and our package was an innocent victim of the circumstances. Anyway I was in trouble, I needed the original document to pick the translation from the notary, and I had set an appointment with the notary on Sunday, one day before my trip. I decided it was time for a creative solution, I made a color print of the electronic copy I had, and made look as good as possible. I took that with me to the notary when I went to pick up my translation, the woman there just asked me if I had the original, I showed her the print, but she did not bother to check it, not even a quick examination, and just handed me my translation. When I arrived home, I received a call from DHL telling me that my package was finally released, and that it would be delivered to me the next day, unfortunately that would be of no good to me, as I was going to fly early morning, and I had the certified translation anyway. The package took about 12 days to arrive with DHL, with normal mail one could get it 14 days, with less than 10% of the cost.

After all the hardship we went through to get this document, we were delighted to finally be able to hold it in our hands. Yet our joy was not to last, at midnight we set out for Cyprus, but we made it no further than the Tel Aviv airport; it turned out that my wife needed a visa to travel to Cyprus, and we were turned back at the airline check in desk.

I had checked this matter when planning my vacation, and I was sure that she did not need such visa, at least that’s what it said on web site about Cyprus which listed the visa requirement for various countries. Even if I had called the embassy, that probably would not have helped, since even they were not aware of this; when I called and asked, they told me no visa was required. “If no visa is required, then how come we were turned back at the airport” I told her, so she passed me to the consulate were I was told that Bolivians do need a visa. You see Cyprus has recently joined the EU, and one of the effects of that was a change in Visa requirements for some none EU states. It was not fun to make to the airport in the middle of a very cold night, depriving our selves of sleep only to be tuned back home.

The issue got more complicated; the Cyprus embassy told us that in order for Mauge to get a visa to Cyprus, she would be required to have a valid visa for Israel for at least two month from the date of the trip, but Mauge only had one more month left on her Israeli visa. So we decided to rebook the trip at the end of January, giving us enough time to take care of all the paper work. We lost half of the money we paid.

We decided to leave matter until after the holidays, we had both Eed El Adha (The Muslim festivity), and the end of year Christian festivities upon us. After the new year we got back to the business of taking care of the paper work. We went and extended Mauge’s Israeli visa for three more month, then applied for a visa at the Cyprus embassy, this time things went smoothly and we got all the paper work done.

On Sunday midnight we set out for Cyprus again, this time I decided not to sleep before the trip. We traveled by train to the airport, and boarder our flight at 7am, and arrived to Cyprus at 8am, we then headed to our hotel. Our ceremony was scheduled at 10 at the municipality building. I had decided to put on my nice outfit at home before leaving, so I would not need to change in the morning, Mauge opted otherwise. After we checked in, Mauge stayed to take a shower and change, meanwhile I took the opportunity to have my breakfast.

Then we walked to the municipality, which was a couple of blocks down the road. There we handed our papers, along with a few more couples. One of if the couples was an English guy and an Australian young woman, another couple was from Lebanon I think. We waited a while, and we both felt quite nervous. Eventually we were called into a room, were we read our vows in front of the marriage lawyer, we kissed, and then signed the document.

We would have preferred to head back home straight after this, as they were forecasting a stormy cold weather for the days to come. Unfortunately because of the scarcity of flights during this period of the year, we had to spend another three days in Cyprus.

Cyprus has an interesting history; basically during the sixties the northern part of the country was invaded by Turkey, they drove out all the Greek speaking residents out of there homes, and took over their properties. Kind of reminds me of another occupation that took place in a close by country: Palestine. Anyway these refugees still live today in the southern part of the Island, and the occupation of the northern side continues.

Cyprus had recently joined the EU, and in the first of January changed their currency to Euros. I had not known about this, but I was pleased to realize that I could pay with the Euros I had brought with me, without the need to exchange money.

The weather forecast turned out true, it was rainy, windy and very cold, and we did not have much gusto to do any sightseeing. We found a nice restaurant a few blocks from the hotel, which had fireplace and a chimney, and we would spend long periods of time there. We would order our launch, then desert, then some tee, taking our time and enjoying the warmth of the fire.

Every now and then we would gather our forces, and go out for a short excursion, to do some shopping or just take a walk on the beach. Cyprus offers some exciting sightseeing possibilities, but we decided we would leave it for another time, a time when it would be warmer.

Our return flight no more convenient than our going flight; we arrived to Israel at midnight, and made it our bed only at 3am. But we were lucky our flight was allowed to land, as Israel was in the middle of a snow storm, and we heard that some earlier flights had been diverted to Cyprus. Anyway I could not even enjoy much sleep, as I had to report to work the next morning. But at least we could feel content; we finally had in our hands an official document, recognizing our marriage.