Help for Palestinians in the Closet - From Israel

Well, there's one place for Palestinians in the closet to get help. And, that's in the Open House, a community center in Jerusalem for gay people.All sorts of jews show up for meetings, secular and religious, and some Palestinians as well.

But their willingness to cross the informal borders dividing all-Arab Jerusalem from all-Jewish Jerusalem and come to Open House give Maikey the hope that they are the nucleus of a Palestinian gay liberation movement. Aside from sharing tales of hardship, the men are also at work with Maikey setting up an Arabic language gay website, a telephone hotline for Arab homosexuals, and coming further out little by little. They are among the Palestinian crowd that shows up for a monthly get-together at Shushan, one of the capital's main gay hangouts.

"At the last one about 70 Palestinians showed up - there were about 30 I didn't even know. Things are changing," says Maikey, 26, who has been working at Open House for three years. "If there are 10 Palestinians coming to Open House each week, next month there may be 11 and the month after that, 12. It makes me feel that the work we've been doing here is paying off."

Unfortunately, the Palestinian gay community only exists in 'exile', unable to be truly free in on their own home. If Israel can serve as bridge to this community, all the better.