Everything depends upon what you are willing to sacrifice.

Everyone has sacrificed a lot, but for the most part it has been a forced sacrifice, and a forced sacrifice is one, which has no power. It is the equivalent of being backed into a corner.

Those who are schemed upon often don’t know what to do until it is too late. Hindsight is a muthafucka, for the oppressed as well as the oppressor. It’s what ends you up as a museum piece or as a collector.

The other night I had a dream about planning a violent attack on a shopping mall. In the dream I was very conflicted about it. I felt desperate; backed into a corner. I wanted to do something meaningful with my life, and make a decision, and take action, and not just waste away. I felt strange for having this dream. There are many feelings I have being here that I am uncomfortable talking about.

I am optimistic that there is a way forward, I am just not optimistic about the ability of anyone around me to forge that path.

My friend told me about this Polish Catholic man who went to the gas chambers even though he wasn’t Jewish. His name was Janich Korshak (spelling). He knew that he was going to be slaughtered, and he didn’t have to go, but he went anyway. Supposedly they made a movie about him.

The other day our landlord came across the army in our village. A soldier was threatening to beat a young man, and he intervened. So of course the soldier turned his attention to our landlord, Abu Rabiyya. Abu Rabiyya is good at standing up to soldiers and he’s pretty fearless, since he was already in prison for 13 years and is not afraid of death. He was handcuffed and made to stand with his head down and they put a hood over his head. Then they stuffed him in the jeep. The soldier was about 18 years old and Abu Rabiyya is around 45. The soldier told him that if he had his way all Palestinians would be dead. Abu Rabiyya told him that when he is older he would rethink what he is saying. After a while the commander of the unit came and they let Abu Rabiyya out of the car. They took the hood off his head and undid his handcuffs. As many Palestinian men do in stressful situations, Abu Rabiyya went for a cigarette. He asked one of the soldiers for a light. The commander lit his cigarette, but one of the other soldiers said, “Why are you lighting the cigarette for him, let him get his own light.” But another soldier said, “No, I think it’s a good idea that you light his cigarette. Help him kill himself. One less Palestinian.”

What else should I tell you? The wall is coming here and every day I worry about it. It is scheduled to travel right through the backyard of our house; perhaps our house will even be demolished. The exact path is still not known and is never known until people are served demolition orders. How many more olive trees will have to die. Yesterday as I rode toward our house on a settler road in a yellow plated car (we are relying more and more on Palestinians with Israeli identity to drive us since there has been a severe closure for a couple of weeks now and no Palestinian cars on the roads), through the landscape that has been marred by Zionist dreams, hills that have been blasted through to create unnatural roads, I thought about the landscape.

I thought about a story I heard about right after the 1967 war when the Occupied Territories were captured by Israel. I think it was Ben Gurion who took a plane ride over the land right after it was captured. He was reported as saying “we should give all of this back right away”. When I ride on these settler roads through this landscape that is being so quickly being destroyed, covered with suburban pre-fab tract housing, crisscrossed with apartheid roads and now the wall which destroys everything in its path, I think about what that plane ride must have been like. Over every Palestinian village, every olive grove and terrace, every minaret, without the red roofs of the settlements, the streetlights on the settler roads, the guard towers, outpost caravans, settlement sewage leaking into streams and water sources, breeding mosquitoes. I can imagine myself on that plane ride, seeing everything from the air. In just 36 years, how many thousands of people and olive trees have been uprooted?

Did you hear last week in Gaza the Israeli army destroyed 100 homes and left 2,000 people homeless?

I continue to work. There is a packet of resources on our website to help with the international response to the wall at www.womenspeacepalestine.org.

Also check the website of the Palestinian Environmental NGO Network: www.stopthewall.org

Gush Shalom also has a great flash presentation about the wall:
www.gushshalom.org.