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The Palestinian author and lawyer Raja Shehadeh has kept a diary since the 1967 Israeli invasion of his homeland
AFP/Getty Images
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The author and lawyer has kept a diary since the 1967 Israeli invasion of his homeland.
[AS
ALWAYS
PLEASE GO TO THE LINK
TO READ GOOD ARTICLES IN
FULL: HELP SHAPE
ALGORITHMS (and
conversations) THAT EMPOWER
DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE &
PEACE... and hopefully Palestine]
Saturday 28 July 2012
13 December 2009
I'm just back from a lovely day spent in Wadi Kelt, the ravine on the
way between Jerusalem and Jericho. This is one of the few places in the
West Bank where one can be sure of finding water even after the drought
of the past eight months. Turned out we were not the only ones who had
the idea of an outing there. Just after we put down our rucksacks and
stretched out on the rock in the sun, a Palestinian family of nine
arrived. They were disappointed to find us there but settled for the
second best slab of rock on the opposite side of the pool. Their smaller
group included two bearded men and two young women with hijab, another
of undetermined age with the niqab and four children. We, on the other
hand, were a mixed group of Palestinians and foreigners, photographers
and teachers, all of whom live and work in the West Bank.
As soon
as I saw them I wondered how they had managed the rocky path without
falling in the water. The women in our group invariably wore jeans and
colourful shirts. I had been thinking as we passed the Israeli
checkpoint of how clothes distinguish the various groups in our tiny
land… the Israeli women soldiers wore tight khaki trousers with a low
waist emphasising the contours of their hips, bedecked with mobile
phones. They looked at us through their dark sunglasses giving us orders
with their hands while exchanging flirty looks and sexual innuendos
with the male soldiers with whom they conversed in loud Hebrew. To them
we were mere specks on the terrain that belonged exclusively to them,
where they could move us around with a flick of their small finger like
pieces on a chequers board.
From the way we looked and dressed,
the sombre-looking family at the picnic must have suspected we were
Israelis, but our fellow picnickers were within earshot and could easily
hear us speaking Arabic. Unfortunately we did not do what would have
been normal a few years ago, perhaps because we drew an imaginary line
between us, with them, the suspected Islamists on the one side, and us
seculars on the other, with the fresh water pond between. No one from
our side either greeted them or went over to their side to invite them
to join us on our side of the rock which was large enough to accommodate
them as well. So a distance was established between us from the
beginning, much wider than the natural divide, the small pool of water
that separated us.
4 January 2010
Penny and
I went today to Bethlehem to look at the work of Banksy, the British
street artist, on the Annexation Wall there. This conflict and the
methods Israel uses to repress Palestinians are producing responses in
many parts of the world. Banksy is one artist – but not the only one –
who has come to express his feelings about the situation using his wall
as the canvas.
We took the Walajeh Road heading f southwest on a
circular route to Bethlehem which is directly south of Jerusalem, all in
order to avoid the checkpoint between the two cities. We were stopped
at the Walajeh checkpoint which I had heard also checks whether those
crossing have paid their taxes to Israel, just to make life more
complicated...
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