Visas

If you know anyone who tries to work or live in Palestine, you know that the most effective way for occupation to keep us out of Palestine and away from doing our work is to deny us visas. We try to come in on tourist visas, and we are forced to either leave and renew at borders, or to attempt a visa extension at the Israeli Ministry of Interior—a branch of the government that is infamous for is disorganization and refusals. I am, like most others, a victim of the visa. I was naïve enough to believe it would work itself out, but alas I have not only had my requested visa extension denied, but I was forced to buy a new plane ticket and sign a document swearing not to renew the visa. And so, I’m leaving. The crazy thing is, I had all my ducks in a row. I even had official government recommendations requesting my extension. And yet here I find myself refused. What can one do? It is nearly impossible to get a work visa for the occupied areas and that is where my life, work, and heart all reside. I know another guy, with no papers or plans, who went through the Ministry of Interior and found himself leaving with a six month extension. Why> Is there really any method to this madness? Maybe the point is to not create policies, to not have rules, to not have structure or organization. I don’t know. All I know is that it is utterly impossible to build infrastructure and institutions when we cannot keep employees here.

Strike

I remember a Palestinian friend one time saying that even were there no occupation, we would have a state that looked like every other Arab state—is that so much better. Sure it is, well, maybe not so much, but certainly better. As I sit here in a shared taxi waiting for the empty seats to fill up, even if only just one person would come so we can leave, I am thinking about that comment my friend make a year or more ago. We have had more strike days at this university than teaching days. And for what? Apparently the PA was given international aid for the express purpose of higher education. Something around 20 million dollars, not a penny of which any university in Palestine has seen yet. Hence the strike. A day here. A day there. But people are starting to get fed up, and now we are on two or three days a week of open strike. All universities in the West Bank are standing together to demand the PA share the wealth. Personally, I can understand the demand for higher pay. It’s basically peanuts and I don’t know how anyone can support a family on the income of a teacher here. Clearly we have been ineffective so far at holding the PA accountable. And I worry. I worry as I see the taxis lined up for another day without work. I worry as I see the empty cafeteria and dirty halls, workers home for another day without pay. How many thousands of people are being affected by this strike? How many millions by this occupation?

Things Get Worse

Everyone is saying it. Everyone is feeling occupation squeezing tighter and tighter. More land. More water. More roads. More houses. More everything taken by force so that Palestinians are a people without. The military rerouted the Wall in the village of Jayyous. They "gave back" some of the land they had stolen. The new route took my friend's land. The IDF just came one morning and started uprooting trees. One olive tree: gone. Two olive trees: gone. Three: gone. Thousands. Hundreds of thousands. Gone. Dead. Everything that lives, everything Palestinian, including the olive tree, is in danger of extinction. Life is not sacred in the holy land anymore.

Palestine Stinks

I remember noticing the stench last summer. But it was only in particular areas, mostly the villages that were so unlucky as to have an Israeli Jewish settlement hovering atop them on the mountain. The sewage from the settlement was and is always routed to the Palestinian villages below.

But this year it’s everywhere. Palestine reeks. Maybe it’s the shear number of settlements and that much of the West Bank suffers from their sewage, but I think the land is breaking under the burden of destruction. Olive trees are burned from the sewage that seeps into the soil and shrivel up. It burns to breath in some areas. In Tulkarem the Israeli factories release chemicals into the air that burn your throat and nose when you breathe. And the trash piles, these huge mountains of rubbish that the settlements deposit outside of Palestinian villages. They stink and they rot the earth below them. I just don’t understand. Even if the Israelis want all the land for themselves, how can that happen if they destroy the land. And I can tell you this: they are destroying the land with their waste and pollution. They are killing Palestine.