Education Under Occupation

How do I describe occupation? How do I convey to you the frustration and humiliation, the grief and stress of living under occupation? Even just to explain what occupation is...I don't know where to start. I don't know how to paint a picture for you that can possibly give you an idea.

Today I collected a one page descriptive writing assignment from my university students.

One girl described watching a little boy at a checkpoint who was trying to sell soldiers water. The soldiers knocked the boy's good to the ground and told him to pick them up. When the boy bent down, the soldier stepped on the child's back. When the boy succeeded in picking up all the bottles, one soldier grabbed the boy's shirt and demanded he use the water to wash. The boy said I will wash your face and then he spit on the soldier. They killed the boy. I don't know if this story is true, but a Palestinian student does not need a great imagination to write this story, even if it is not true.

One boy described the waves of the sea, and the sand, and the clouds and stars and the moon. And like many students who wrote happy descriptions, he closed by saying this was his dream. But his reality is that the sound of crashing waves, the sand between his toes, the water over his feet...it all remains a dream, and he knows that it will be a dream for years to come.

I left my class and walked through campus. Students, just getting out of class themselves, walked down the campus mall. Friends strolling along, laughing and chatting. Smiling faces, fashionable clothes, backpacks slung over shoulders. Normal students who are anything but normal. They are denied education, movement, health. They are denied their humanity. They are occupied in every sense of the word--these scary, threatening Arabs we all must fear. They violent Arabs against whom Israel must build a Wall and continue a violent occupation. They are my students and they write about another life, a life in which they are more human and free from the fear and pain of occupation.