How do I describe what life is like here – of the sadness in the eyes of my colleagues, of theexhaustion that results when every daily action requires an extraordinary effort, whenperseverance is no longer enough and futility and despair fight for a place on the proud facescarrying bags and babies and the burden of poverty through checkpoints, over dirt piles, pastsoldiers and tanks and the bombed-out shells of buildings. On rainy days the muddy waterswells around the feet, slowing passage. The soldiers stand in shelters and never seem to getwet under their helmets and uniforms and weapons, protected by arrogance and hatred and astate and an army and the world’s superpower. They pull people out of the battered Ford Transitvehicles that always seem to drive too fast to make up for lost time, jostling the schoolchildren and old men and mothers who ride in them, if they can afford the 3 shekel fare and if theyare not males between the ages of 18 and 35 and if they have permission to enter Jerusalem and ifthere is no curfew or closure. The soldiers line them up, face to the wall, make them sit in thedirt, or stand in the rain or the scorching sun for minutes or hours while they chat on theirmobile friends, joke with their friends, eat, smoke, laugh, abuse, with words and withactions.
How do I explain that when the wind blows it does not bring respite from the heat, but ratherfills the mouth and the nose with grit, ripe with the smell of sewage and garbage and exhaustfumes. An Israeli woman asks “Why don’t they clean up their streets?” “Why do they live likeanimals?” And the children play in the refuse that can never be collected in villages and townsand cities which remain for hours and days and weeks and months under crippling curfews.Curfews which are enforced with a shoot-to-kill policy. Curfews which are not lifted duringschool hours. Curfews which prevent pregnant women from giving birth in hospitals, whichstop ambulances in their tracks, which forced a Bethlehem family to live with the decayingcorpse of their family member for days.
How can I express the feeling of death that lurks around every corner – of the children shot ontheir way home from school, of the old woman killed while sitting on her porch, of the people inGaza killed in their homes when the bomb was dropped on their apartment building, of therefugees killed in their homes in Jenin when the tanks and the bulldozers ate up their camp,razing houses on top of their inhabitants, of people killed in taxis and on sidewalks when theIsraelis carry out “preventive pinpointed killings”.
How do I tell the story of refugees made homeless for the 3rd or 4th time, of the woman who throwsup her hands, in the middle of her house, with the gaping holes from the bulldozers in the wall,and the windows shot out by snipers, and the rooms filled with the debris of a family’s life, andbegs me to tell the people of the US to please make it stop, this terrible nightmare. And wipesaway my tears which I am ashamed to shed, and hugs me and gives me some of the precious drinkingwater that is so hard to come by in Rafah these days since the wells have been destroyed. And thepeople next door who invite us in for coffee, while sewage washes past the steps of theirbattered home which is sure to be demolished, standing as it is on the front line of Rafah, emptyland where the next row of houses once stood. And the farmers chased from their olive trees byarmed settlers and the people in Hebron who live with sandbags blocking their windows becausethe settlers have shot the glass out so many times, and my colleague who only sees his 4 adoringchildren, once a week, because the closures make the distance between his home and his work,just 30 KM apart, a 4 hour journey.
How can I show the faces behind the statistics – 70% unemployment, 75% poverty, 13%malnutrition in children under five. The number of dead, and injured, and blinded, andhandicapped, in wheelchairs, and hospital beds and orphaned and homeless. The children thatplay funeral in the schoolyard, or ambulance stopped at the checkpoint, or soldier abusingpassersby. The number of school days missed and the number of schools invaded and closed andthe number of teachers who can’t get to work and the number of students who can’t afford toreturn to university. And the number of people in administrative detention, held withoutcharge, without trial, without lawyers, without family visits, in tents without adequatefood and water and sanitation and protection from the elements. And the number of treesuprooted, and dunums of land raised and kilometers of bypass roads built and wells destroyed.And of the courage and the dignity and the determination and the family who rebuilds theirhouse again and again, each time it is demolished. And of the fear and the loss and thehumiliation and the despair that has robbed even the living of their lives.