This was actually sent to me a long time ago, but I’m just now getting it posted
Hi All, it’s been a while I know! Partly my lack of emails is because i’m not very good at keeping in touch (as pointed out very clearly by my sister last week!) and partly because I didn’t think I had that much to report. I’m settled here now and my life has it’s routine just like it did in the UK. That’s what I thought until I had an instant-messenger conversation with a friend a couple of nights ago:
Me: “Everything’s good here, very quiet really, except for the birds, spring is definitely here!”
Neil: “I read things were bad in Hebron, have you been back recently?”
Me “Oh yes, i was there last week and couldn’t leave cos the army invaded and sealed off the checkpoint. The settlers had driven a JCB into the Old city- they want to expand their colony and were trying to knock down some Palestinian owned shops. Oh, and Beit Jala was raided early yesterday morning- I slept through it! And another raid into Bethlehem, I swear I’m bad luck, everytime I go to do my shopping the army seem to follow me! Not so quiet then I guess…”After only 5 months this has all become a bit normal for me. If I don’t see it happening with my own eyes i hear of it on the radio or TV- everyday- Hebron, Tubas, Nablus, Jenin, a village, a refugee camp raided, one teenager dead, one child shot but still alive, several with rubber bullet injuries, an elderly woman collapsed from tear gas inhalation. A couple of days ago Al Walajah was raided just as my friend Ahamd was leaving his home. They had come to arrest a 17 year old boy. The only reason Ahmad told me was because it was part of a funny story about the bad day he’d had- it started with the army raiding his village and making him late for school, then at school he got into trouble for being late from the headmaster, he was kept back after school but couldn’t call to tell his brother as his phone had no credit….etc etc. An army helicopter and harrassment from fully armed soldiers was just an incinental part of his story.
This isn’t accidental, this normalisation of daily violence and injustice, it’s a survival strategy. When I’d been here for about three months I went through a period when i couldn’t sleep. Whenever i tried my mind would begin to wander and i’d strart thinking and getting upset about things I’d seen and heard that day: my friend Wael worrying about money, playing with the four lovely children that he’s so worried about finding the money to feed, remembering going through the Bethlehem checkpoint and having to explain in bad arabic how it all worked to a bewildered woman visiting her family for the first time if 5 years or remebering that i’d noticed that the construction of the aparthied wall was creeping ever closer to Walajeh or thinking about a report on Al Jazeera that quoted Condaliza Rice saying that sanctions on Palestine wouldn’t lifted until Hamas recognised Israels right to exist and another report that said that the number of illegal Israeli colonies had increased again during 2006 and…….
It was driving me crazy, and this isn’t even my country…
I told a friend about this and asked how he coped with it day in day out. He said that he’d stopped himself thinking about it. If he saw a soldier beating a friend at a checkpoint he’d cry about it there and then, and then push all feelings and memories of it aside and lock them away. If he didn’t, he’d go mad. He advised me to stop watching Al Jazeera just before I go to bed.
So this is what i’ve done. Most nights I manage to fall asleep, if i feel my mind wandering i gather up those memories and put them aside. I have wild and crazy dreams and wonder what this is doing to my mental health, but at least i am sleeping.And all of this after just 5 months. Just imagine what it must be like if this was your country, your entire life, past present and foreseeable future….
Two weeks in Bethlehem (a city smaller than Leeds):
Bethlehem city raided three times.
Aida Camp raided twice
Al Walajah village raided one
Al Khader village raided once
Al Souwara village raided once
Beit Jala raided twice
16 taken to unknown locations by the Israeli army.www.palestinecampaign.org
www.bigcampaign.org.uk
www.enoughoccupation.orgSx
P.S. It was 23ºC here yesterday, spring in Palestine is beautiful!