The beauty salon has always been more than a place to get hair and make-up done. All over the world, the local beauty parlor is a place where women congregate to gossip, drink coffee (fill in local variation), get pampered, and escape their daily routine.
Thus, it is not surprising that a hair salon in the Jerusalem neighborhood Gilo was the birthplace of a new Arab-Israeli coexistence initiative, the Border Line Beauty Pageant.
The idea for the pageant came from Cut 2004, a local “coexistence” beauty parlor in Gilo, owned by a Jewish Israeli and employing three Arab hairdressers, said Azi Nagar, the creative force behind the pageant. The salon serves residents of Gilo as well as Arab neighborhoods within Jerusalem.
Starting in 2001, members of Yassir Arafat’s Tanzim militia started firing at Gilo, at times on a nightly basis, from houses in Bethlehem’s northern neighborhood Beit Jala, located a mile south of Gilo. When the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) took over the city that summer, one of their main objectives was to gain control of the houses on the border.
Security in Bethlehem was returned to the jurisdiction of the Palestinian Authority (PA) in July 2003, but the IDF has entered the city several times since, notably in January shortly after the perpetrator of a bus bombing in Jerusalem entered the city via Gilo.
“Beauty speaks to everyone,” said Nagar, who is also a director of The Border Line neighborhood unity organization and The Border Line newspaper, a local publication. “Women have suffered the most and they don’t have a say in this whole conflict.”
Two months ago, Nagar started speaking with the patrons of Cut 2004 and their mothers and, from there, contacted women in Beit Jala. Because Palestinian women cannot get permits to visit Gilo, Nagar contacted them by phone.
“During the three years that there were attacks on Gilo, I helped the residents [of Gilo],” Nagar explained. “Now that things have calmed down, I wanted to start some sort of cooperation.
“The people of Beit Jala also suffered.”
In recent weeks, said Nagar, Jewish contestants and Arab participants from Israeli areas, aged 15-22, have been attending rehearsals in Gilo in preparation for the June 15 competition. He said he is currently “negotiating” with the IDF to secure permits for the Beit Jala contestants and their families.
“If we do not obtain permits, it will not be good,” he said, with frustration creeping into his otherwise enthusiastic tone of voice. “I am doing something small, not political. There shouldn’t be political ramifications for 15-year-old girls.”
The Jerusalem municipality is not involved in the pageant because “it involves factors that could influence the whole process,” according to Nagar. Thus, he funds the entire project by himself. Much of the publicity is done through The Border Line newspaper, which he owns along with an entire chain of local newspapers.
Gilo is located in the zone annexed by Israel in 1967, beyond the Green Line. Israel’s security buffer is currently being built on Gilo’s southern edge, just north of Beit Jala.
Nagar, who considers himself “center to left” in the political spectrum and “part of the co-existence camp,” said that his activities are not easy to sell in Gilo, where “70 percent of the residents are Likud members.”
As for the Palestinian side, Nagar said he contacted the peace center in Bethlehem and received no response. He also invited the mayor of Beit Jala to participate, but he refused, saying “I am waiting for peace.”
“I told him, ‘the brave do not wait for peace, they make peace.’”