Apartheid contrasts. In the UK, we are working hard on the 3 upcoming Beyond the Checkpoints youth visits from Palestine (West Bank and Jerusalem). Today some of us went to a beautiful farm the Palestinian children will visit to do a risk assessment. Complete beauty but it made us think of Palestine.
There are dreamy beautiful green views and hills in the West Bank too. But under aggressive, expansionist apartheid, things feel dark.
Contrast one: When Palestinian young people living under apartheid are due to visit, we worry about detail in our risk assessments. But living under military occupation and apartheid puts them at clear risk a lot of the time in their normal lives in the West Bank – who can have a risk management strategy against armed soldiers?
Contrast two: Look at all this space! If you’d lived in this place, you could wander in many directions or drive along the roads. But that is dangerous in Palestine – there are settlers and soldiers everywhere.
Contrasts three to five: In the area where this picture was taken, there are hills with no settlements, roads without checkpoints, borders (England-Wales) with no soldiers.
Contrast six: On the whole, people living in the area of the picture have security of water, security of electricity. But in Palestine, Israeli settlement expansion into the E1 area newly announced this week (near Jerusalem, see last post) doesn’t just mean land seized from its owners, building on agricultural land, routes blocked, further checkpoints and oppression.
It also means that the Israelis have told the Palestinians (who are struggling already for adequatte suppies of electricity and water) that their supply will from now on be limited in favour of the new settlers and they will have to make do with less.
Apartheid affects every level of life.
At the same time we and our West Bank friends constantly remember the horrors of genocide in Gaza, children dying of hunger, enforced displacement, continued bombings and shootings.
#LinkingTogether4HumanRights#EndApartheid#STOPtheGENOCIDE#StopArmingIsrael
We hope that in both places people can feel the growing strength of the international movement against these outrages which has to be the source of hope.
