time is now 05.45 AM and a small group of us are just back in from a very early morning trip, on foot, to the local checkpoint here, at the main gate of the Wall, that is the only entrance and exit into this part of Beth lehem for local workers trying to get to the other side to their places of work.
For us it is a 10 minute walk, and on arrival we are greeted with hundreds of people......
Waiting.
Some of them have been there for 5 and a half hours.
Remember please that this is not a rock concert or football match they queue for.
This is a line, a crowd, of mainly men, a few women also, who do this every day of their lives.
They need to do this to go to work
They have no work to go to this side of the wall, the imprisoned side.
So they wait for hours and hours every morning just to travel a few metres through the checkpoint to then begin their long walk to wherever their work is on the other side.
Of course, at the whim of a 19 year old kid soldier holding a rifle in your face, you do risk the danger of being told, no, not today, you will not pass. You will not work today.
Suddenly, after a few minutes of me getting there to witness this, everyone starts to run up to the gate..... they have opened it, its a scramble, a dash, and there is much commotion.....
What awaits them at the gate itself, is nothing more than a cage, 4 or 5 men deep where they again, must stand for another yet unknown time, to actually be allowed through more gates and checks.
This is every day just to get to work, how can I get you to understand that this is yet another human crime of the wall.
Its purpose is to beat hope and will into submission.
It is a cancer-snake, and its prey are the Palestinian.
It is choking them to a slow and humiliating death.
It cannot be allowed to go unchallenged, and how we try to assist those who would challenge this human indecency I know will be revealed in good time.
But I do pray that it is in short time, quickly and the cry of many reaches the ears and hearts of those who walk with the oppressed in all countries.
We are all Palestinians.
1 comment:
By spreading the word by telling some of their stories.....by painting pictures for us brings their plight alive. It makes it real. Keep writing your thought provoking and heart breaking stories......and we will keep reading and praying.
The more who know........the better
we've got to carry each other, carry each other.
ps. thank you for the invite on facebook. i joined up.
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