A Smattering of Thoughts Around the West Bank

I have never been so proud of humanity as I have been in Palestine. Despite the overwhelming oppression and difficulty to survive here, there are people in the West Bank struggling not only to survive but thrive. I am in Café Sima now, owned by a Palestinian woman who graduated from Le Cordon Bleu and has returned home to Bethlehem. No matter how silly it may seem, I swear that every cappuccino and dessert she serves is an act of resistance.

It is nearly impossible to explain to my fellow Americans the lack of normalcy here. In the U.S. it is simple to travel between states--here it is difficult to travel between cities. If you have a love for America's highways, traveling the open road, freedom of movement in general, this would be a nightmare. Checkpoints dot the landscape, a throwback to feudal lords and an omen of what our brave new world might become. They aren't limited to the stone and barbed wire ones; there are "flying" checkpoints...three young men with guns and tire poppers, trying to find the enemy amongst the oppressed and the angry....the solider-boys are fearful for their lives and their loved ones, angry at the "insolence" of the dark other...

These checkpoints stop traffic, stop people from traveling for
enjoyment, stop unity amongst the people. Each city is isolated
against its will. I have been stopped and held in heat without water, shade or bathrooms for over an hour...

But I use the wrong word when I say "stop." It slows, it hinders, but stops? It is impossible to stop people from moving across their land.

The checkpoints are perhaps like cholesterol, it makes it difficult for the lifeblood to move....I of course can mention this likeness, of checkpoints to cholesterol, without forewarning of a heart attack that could rip this land apart...

________________________________________

I heard the call to prayer while being held at a checkpoint on Wadi Nar. As much as my soul told me to submit to God, I could not get past the anger my body felt over the injustice, cruelty and stupidity surrounding me.

I can not say that I answered my brother calling me to God. I can only say what I thought.

"The French were in Algeria for one hundred years."

________________________________________

I want to tell every one of my friends and family that nonviolent resistance is far more than anything else here. "To exist is to resist": it was written on the apartheid wall, and it is true. Every child who learns to read here is pounding a nail in the coffin for Israel's colonialism. Every college graduate, every women's society, every farmer....

I realize more and more that the Force is trying to tell me "patience"-- that it is better to build and wait than to fight and fail.

Submitted by: JZ