I'm Back

I’m not sure where to start. I’m back in Palestine. The first change I noticed was when I entered Israel, all of the Israeli soldiers, staff, and passport control especially, were so friendly to me. A lot of friends have asked me how I thought Gaza would affect my ability to enter Israel and return to Palestine (for those who don’t know, the occupation of Palestine means that anyone coming to Palestine enters through Israel and their passport control before crossing into Palestine, which has no air, land or sea control). I answered frankly that I didn’t know. I didn’t have any idea if entering would be more difficult or what. My experience says Israel is giving itself a makeover, embodied in that line repeated to me a good six times as I went through security and passport control: “Welcome to Israel.” My analysis is that the image of Israel is so poor after their massacring the people of Gaza that this is one of Israel’s attempts at rectifying the damage. The problem is, the damage is not just one of image. The damage is someone’s home that they built after 20 years of saving their salaries. The schools destroyed. The mosques decimated. The brothers, the daughters, and grandmothers dead. The father who lost his legs and the mother who lost her skin. The child who lost her eyes. The burned school books and pictures. The clothes and food supplies. Life. The health, safety, education, and future of an entire people. Maybe more than those futures are their presents. No shelter, no food or water, no mother or brother now. All dead, destroyed, massacred. Wouldn’t it be incredible if fixing the damage was an honest endeavor, not about branding Israel differently but of rebuilding lives and changing a decades long policy of ethnic cleansing. That sounds so simple that it rings of absurdity. And yet, how is it that halting violent ethnic cleansing could possibly sound absurd?