Diaries: Live from Palestine

Ayman missed his second birthday. He was only 18 months old. Mohammad did not pass the age of four, Diana was only five, Mona was killed with her children, four-years old Subhi and six-years old Mohammad, Mohammad al-Shawa died with his five-years old son, Diana Matar was only two months old and Ala Matar did not even get into high school, he was only eleven.

Heaps of concrete, broken pillars with wire sticking out, people’s shoes, clothes, bedding, strewn haphazardly among the rubble, dust everywhere, a hole in the landscape where a two-story apartment was just yesterday: ‘the hardest part for me is how familiar it has all become’.

Wednesday night, I went to a concert of Vusi Mahlasela. He was performing in at the Jerusalem festival, a musical festival under the theme of ‘songs of freedom’. Vusi Mahlasela was born in Lady Selbourne in Pretoria, during the apartheid regime of South Africa.

“Welcome to the Erez Crossing”. The sign on the way out of Gaza really says this. Yes. Greetings. Welcome to a half a mile of concrete barriers and barbed wire. Welcome to electrical wires and fortified soldiers’ bunkers.

435 Israelis are nestled within the city limits of Hebron in co-habitation with approximately 180,000 Palestinians. The settlers are “guarded” by approximately 1,500 to 2,000 Israeli soldiers costing Israel millions of dollars in operations cost; the ratio is 1 settler to 4 soldiers guarding the post.

Armed Israeli settlers who went on a rampage throughout Hebron yesterday shot dead Nevine Musa Jamjoum, a 14-year-old Palestinian from the town.

Ever since the horrific carnage in Gaza, when Israeli leaders knowingly, willfully and with malice aforethought dropped a 1,000kg bomb on a civilian apartment building killing 15 people, ten of them children, everyone has been expecting a bloody revenge against Israelis.

A 23-year-old mentally retarded man apparently wandered out of the hospital. An eyewitness saw him being chased by eleven Israeli soldiers who shot him dead.

As the Israeli army has reoccupied Palestinian towns and cities in the West Bank they have imposed complete 24-hour curfews for days at a time. Occasionally they lift the curfew to enable the civilian residents who are trapped in their houses without water, electricity, telephones or food, to buy provisions.

Unprotected, that is what Palestinians are. Palestinians are unprotected against war crimes being committed against them, they are unprotected against assaults on their lives, health, and they are unprotected against torture, degrading treatment, and humiliation.