Heartbroken...

Last night I heard one more story of Palestine, and while it was one I heard before, this time for me it was especially powerful. My favourite bookshop here was showing a documentary - the story of Budrus, which like so many other Palestinian villages has lost land to the building of the highly controversial wall.

As the people of Budrus acknowledge, if the Israelis want to build a wall for security, then that’s fine – assuming it’s on the line between Israeli and Palestinian territory.

Instead, thousands of acres of West Bank Palestinian land are being confiscated by the occupying power – against all international law, and against obvious common sense and most of all morality – and the wall is being built on and through Palestinian homes, farms and villages with no redress for the people losing homes, land, incomes and more.

In this case, the Israeli plan was to build their massive ugly concrete wall literally through the village. The villagers stood to lose not just their land but three hundred acres of farm land, and three thousand olive trees – their lifeblood, and income, and as both sides here know, a symbol of life. To rub salt into the wound, the wall was to be within 40 metres of the school and be built through the cemetery…on top of the graves of the villagers' ancestors.

As I watched, a range of emotions flowed through me. At some points I felt inspired by the strength and courage of the villagers who chose to fight all this non-violently, at other times horror and disbelief that anyone could think that it was OK to devastate a village, to desecrate the dead, and to brutalise the living to make it happen.

My heart bled most seeing women weeping for their trees – some a thousand years old, and nurtured ‘as if family’, and I was at my most angry when I saw these middle aged and elderly women being clubbed by soldiers simply for standing on their farms – despite knowing in my head that this is going on every week throughout Palestine.

I was also inspired and heartened by the involvement of Israelis and internationals who joined the Budrus movement, and that this unity and solidarity – with a commitment to non-violence – ultimately resulted in the proposed wall being shifted. A victory for the village, and an example to other villages who are still fighting this same battle every week – many choosing the same non-violence as Budrus.

The fifteen year old young woman Iltezam Morrar, who along with her father Ayed, led the non-violent resistance - and won

Nonetheless, I still came away heartbroken, knowing that these small victories are little in comparison to the war which Israel is waging every day through their occupation. The daily humiliations, the hours lost at checkpoints, the massive loss of land and property, the harassment of ordinary people, and the brutal violence of arrests, beatings and deaths at the hands of settlers and soldiers make this a very one-sided battle. I weep for Palestine tonight and pray for something to change . . .

A young Palestinian man arrested for being on his village land simply because the military can declare it a 'closed military area' any time they like - this time at At-Tuwani - but just like Budrus, a pattern repeated weekly across the West Bank.