No wall of respect in occupied Palestine

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BILL FLETCHER JR.

(NNPA)β€”β€œIt felt like being in a huge prison.” That was how I responded to questions I was asked in January after returning from a visit to the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Yes, there were other ways of describing the experience. The land is beautiful; the people are generous; and with every glance, one sees reminders of a history dating back thousands of years.

Yet, the feeling that one gets in one’s stomach is of being imprisoned; of being vulnerable; of not knowing. And this was the reality felt by African-American visitors to the Holy Land. The actuality for Palestinians is far worse.

At every turn you never seemed to lose sight of the ignominious β€œseparation wall,” as the Israeli government politely references it; the β€œapartheid wall” as much of the rest of the world describes it. The wall with guard/sniper towers, running, not along the Green Line (the armistice line that was agreed upon in 1949), but through almost whatever terrain the Israelis choose for it go. A wall that frequently separates Palestinian farmers from their own land, making it next to impossible for them to consistently cultivate their crops.

My delegation and I found it both frightening and sadly familiar that the Palestinians had few rights that the Israeli authorities were bound to respect. Land has been seizedβ€”illegally–by the Israeli authorities, allegedly for security reasons, or sometimes, quite ironically, for archeological reasons. And it is never returned to the Palestinians, instead turned over to Israeli settlers.

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