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We are in One Big Prison...

...or rather two separate prisons, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. In both I have seen how Palestinians are prevented from travelling to the larger world, or more simply from moving from their homes. The Eretz gate that guards Gaza is closed, groups of teenage Israeli soldiers sit on the tarmac in circles and smoke. If it wasn’t for their uniforms they could be on a college campus. A few hours taxi ride to the Egyptian boarder and the town of Raffa brings you through checkpoints that consist of a traffic light and gun towers. If the light is red you cannot pass. You can only pass in a car. Single drivers pick up children on the road to drive with them for a shekel or they will be shot. The taxi driver asks us to keep our hands low. The windscreen has a bullet hole in it. In Raffa they are building a wall that has cost so far 550 houses and counting in order to increase the Israeli “security” zone along the Egyptian boarder. Someone should really tell the Israeli government they are not doing a very good job in “securing” the houses riddled with bullets from Israeli sniper towers and tanks.

The situation in Nablus is very different. There is more direct contact with the soldiers and more internal checkpoints. I can see far more roadblocks here then I did in the summer. The most serious deterioration has been for the villages of Salin, Azmut and Beit Dajan which lie together past Askar refugee camp. Around all three villages has been dug a trench, twenty foot deep and wide, filled with sewage. The only way to enter or leave the villages is over the roadblock created by the Israeli army. They have put a checkpoint there, and everyday the soldiers prevent people from passing and arbitrarily arrest people. Yesterday they were detaining a man when we arrived at the checkpoint, he was sitting in the mud with his hands cuffed. We stayed and negotiated various things, for a waterproof, removing the hand cuffs and I helped him smoke. Eventually (after three hours) they released him. The most interesting thing I found was when an ambulance arrived, and the workers were trying to carry someone on a stretcher over the steep hill of mud and sewage both soldiers turned their backs and refused to even glance at what was happening. One of their phones rang, and he said “Hi Dad, I’m still at the barrier. There are some peace people here, I’m practising my English.”

Obviously these villages are experiencing severe problems, the teachers are turned back nearly every morning, the students can’t get to university and there are obvious problems of supply, no vehicles can enter. The people of the village want to protest this, and international attention must be brought to this place. The only reason I can see for the moat around the villages is to make life so difficult for the people that they will have to leave their homes.

Ellie Schling