Preparing to Return

I have lived with a family in Ramallah each time I return, and ever since I first stayed in the Holy Land four and a half years ago. Last summer I took the two older kids of this family on separate weekend trips into a land they are unable to enter. Using my passport-privilege, I can take a West Bank Palestinian child into Israel; an act the child's mother could not perform without Israeli military permissions. The land that is the heritage of these children, the sea from which their people came and the waters by which their histories have been made are forbidden places. It always has struck me as perverse that I, as a foreign tourist, can visit one of the holiest Muslim places--the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa mosque--and yet a Palestinian Muslim whose holy place this is remains forbidden. Access to places, to movement, is a fundamental human right, and yet it is denied to many humans. How is that allowed in a country that is a UN member and a so called democracy? I honestly cannot understand it. When these kids turn 16 years old, they will no longer be able to pass military checkpoints with me as their chaperon. We only have a few more precious years during which time I can show them their past, and what should be their present. There is something horribly, horribly wrong in this system which bestows on a tourist the rights it systematically strips of the indigenous people. And so, I return again to live my life under occupation. A choice I get to make as a tourist. A temporary solidarity in the name of justice and the promise of peace. Meanwhile, millions of Palestinian refugees await their right of return. Millions.