Wow. I have seen so much and I want to take everyone of you and to listen and see and participate in it all. I cannot yet wrap my head around the information and stories that I have been so lucky to hear, so instead of trying to give you a sense of everything, I will tell you the story of yesterday.
We drove from Ramallah to the Sulfit district of the West Bank. On the drive we saw the wall snaking through farmland and we saw the way that it was being constructed in order to grab as much land and water as possible, rather than to separate Israel from the West Bank.
In the morning we met with Issa Suf, a non-violent activist who was shot 6 years ago and paralyzed from the waist down. He had left his house to warn the children of the village that soldiers were coming and was shot in the back. Today he works to stop violence within the Palestinian community and to promote non-violent Palestinian activism. He talked about how living under occupation has caused an increase in stress and psychological problems for Palestininians and has increased violence within the community. Some of his words really stuck with me: "It is a time to build justice, not peace. Peace must be built on justice or it will not work."
He, as well as the other activists I have met talked about acknolwdging Israeli and Jewish rights as well as Palestinian rights. He talked about equality.
Later we went to visit the house of Munira and Hani Amer. I have never seen anything like this house. It is located in the village of Mas'ha. The Israeli army built the separation wall (also called the apartheid wall, the separation barrier, the fence, depending who you are talking to) between the Palestinian village of Mas'ha and the neighboring Israeli settlment. Keep in mind that this settlement is illegal under international law, as I was talking about in my last email.
Anyways, the settlers did not want the wall too near to their houses because, of course, the wall is very ugly, so the army decided to build it on the other side of Munira and Hani's house, thus putting their house on the side of the settlement. Palestinians are not allowed on most roads that settlers use, and are prevented from entering settlements, so the army planned to destroy the family's house that Hani had built himself and lived in for over 30 years with his family.
International activism and the family's resistance resulted in the house not being demolished, but the wall was still built so as to cut off Hani and his family from their village, and the house was completely surrounded by fencing, the wall, and barbed wire. He was, after much effort, given a key to get through the wall and onto the side that the village is on, but there is a constant presence of soldiers and settlers around his house and they often harrass the family. The most heartbreaking thing to me was that his children are growing up literally fenced in on all sides, afraid to move around when the soldiers are there, and afraid to leave the house at night. His young son is traumatized by the situation and cannot interact normally with people. One day he ducked under the soldiers gate and started running towards the settlement. His mother yelled and yelled for him to come back but he wouldn't and the soldiers would not let her go get him. When eventually the soldiers returned him to his family they blamed Hani for letting his son run through the gat.
It broke my heart. No one should grow up like this. This is not childhood.
I have to run. I love you all.
Rachel
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