(Hanan Ashrawi’s daughter telling her story)

I am Palestinian - born and raised - and my Palestinian roots go back centuries. No one can change that even if they tell me that Jerusalem , my birth place, is not Palestine , even if they tell me that Palestine doesn't exist, even if they take away all my papers and deny me entry to my own home, even if they humiliate me and take away my rights. I AM PALESTINIAN.

Name: Zeina Emile Sam'an Ashrawi; Date of Birth: July 30, 1981; Ethnicity: Arab. This is what was written on my Jerusalem ID card. An ID card to a Palestinian is much more than just a piece of paper; it is my only legal documented relationship to Palestine . Born in Jerusalem , I was given a Jerusalem ID card (the blue ID), an Israeli Travel Document and a Jordanian Passport stamped Palestinian (I have no legal rights in Jordan ). I do not have an Israeli Passport, a Palestinian Passport or an American Passport.

Here is my story:

I came to the United States as a 17 year old to finish high school in Pennsylvania and went on to college and graduate school and subsequently got married and we are currently living in Northern Virginia. I have gone home every year at least once to see my parents, my family and my friends and to renew my Travel Document as I was only able to extend its validity once a year from Washington DC . My father and I would stand in line at the Israeli Ministry of Interior in Jerusalem , along with many other Palestinians, from 4:30 in the morning to try our luck at making it through the revolving metal doors of the Ministry before noon – when the Ministry closed its doors - to try and renew the Travel Document. We did that year after year. As a people living under an occupation, being faced with constant humiliation by an occupier was the norm but we did what we had to do to insure our identity was not stolen from us.

In August of 2007 I went to the Israeli Embassy in Washington DC to try and extend my travel document and get the usual "Returning Resident" VISA that the Israelis issue to Palestinians holding an Israeli Travel Document. After watching a few Americans and others being told that their visas would be ready in a couple of weeks my turn came. I walked up to the bulletproof glass window shielding the lady working behind it and under a massive picture of the Dome of the Rock and the Walls of Jerusalem that hangs on the wall in the Israeli consulate, I handed her my papers through a little slot at the bottom of the window.

"Shalom" she said with a smile. "Hi" I responded, apprehensive and scared. As soon as she saw my Travel Document her demeanor immediately changed. The smile was no longer there and there was very little small talk between us, as usual. After sifting through the paperwork I gave her she said: "where is your American Passport?" I explained to her that I did not have one and that my only Travel Document is the one she has in her hands. She was quiet for a few seconds and then said: "you don't have an American Passport?" suspicious that I was hiding information from her. "No!" I said. She was quiet for a little longer and then said: "Well, I am not sure we'll be able to extend your Travel Document." I felt the blood rushing to my head as this is my only means to get home! I asked her what she meant by that and she went on to tell me that since I had been living in the US and because I had a Green Card they would not extend my Travel Document.

After taking a deep breath to try and control my temper I explained to her that a Green Card is not a Passport and I cannot use it to travel outside the US. My voice was shaky and I was getting more and more upset (and a mini shouting match ensued) so I asked her to explain to me what I needed to do. She told me to leave my paperwork and we would see what happens.

A couple of weeks later I received a phone call from the lady telling me that she was able to extended my Travel Document but I would no longer be getting the "Returning Resident" VISA. Instead, I was given a 3 month tourist VISA. Initially I was happy to hear that the Travel Document was extended but then I realized that she said "tourist VISA". Why am I getting a tourist VISA to go home? Not wanting to argue with her about the 3 month VISA at the time so as not to jeopardize the extension of my Travel Document, I simply put that bit of information on the back burner and went on to explain to her that I wasn't going home in the next 3 months. She instructed me to come back and apply for another VISA when I did intend on going. She didn't add much and just told me that it was ready for pick-up. So I went to the Embassy and got my Travel Document and the tourist VISA that was stamped in it.

My husband, my son and I were planning on going home to Palestine this summer. So a month before we were set to leave (July 8, 2008) I went to the Israeli Embassy in Washington DC, papers in hand, to ask 2 for a VISA to go home. I, again, stood in line and watched others get VISAs to go to my home. When my turn came I walked up to the window; "Shalom" she said with a smile on her face, "Hi" I replied. I slipped the paperwork in the little slot under the bulletproof glass and waited for the usual reaction. I told her that I needed a returning resident VISA to go home. She took the paperwork and I gave her a check for the amount she requested and left the Embassy without incident.

A few days ago I got a phone call from Dina at the Israeli Embassy telling me that she needed the expiration date of my Jordanian Passport and my Green Card. I had given them all the paperwork they needed time and time again and I thought it was a good way on their part to waste time so that I didn't get my VISA in time. Regardless, I called over and over again only to get their voice mail. I left a message with the information they needed but kept called every 10 minutes hoping to speak to someone to make sure that they received the information in an effort to expedite the tedious process. I finally got a hold of someone. I told her that I wanted to make sure they received the information I left on their voice mail and that I wanted to make sure that my paperwork was in order. She said, after consulting with someone in the background (I assume it was Dina), that I needed to fax copies of both my Jordanian Passport and my Green Card and that giving them the information over the phone wasn't acceptable. So I immediately made copies and faxed them to Dina. A few hours later my cell phone rang. "Zeina?" she said. "Yes" I replied, knowing exactly who it was and immediately asked her if she received the fax I sent. She said: "ehhh, I was not looking at your file when you called earlier but your Visa was denied and your ID and Travel Document are no longer valid." "Excuse me?" I said in disbelief. "Sorry, I cannot give you a visa and your ID and Travel Document are no longer valid. This decision came from Israel not from me."

I cannot describe the feeling I got in the pit of my stomach. "Why?" I asked and Dina went on to tell me that it was because I had a Green Card. I tried to reason with Dina and to explain to her that they could not do that as this is my only means of travel home and that I wanted to see my parents, but to no avail. Dina held her ground and told me that I wouldn't be given the VISA and then said: "Let the Americans give you a Travel Document".

I have always been a strong person and not one to show weakness but at that moment I lost all control and started crying while Dina was on the other end of the line holding my only legal documents linking me to my home. I began to plead with her to try and get the VISA and not revoke my documents; "put yourself in my shoes, what would you do? You want to go see your family and someone is telling you that you can't! What would you do? Forget that you're Israeli and that I'm Palestinian and think about this for a minute!" "Sorry" she said," I know but I can't do anything, the decision came from Israel ". I tried to explain to her over and over again that I could not travel without my Travel Document and that they could not do that - knowing that they could, and they had!

This has been happening to many Palestinians who have a Jerusalem ID card. The Israeli government has been practicing and perfecting the art of ethnic cleansing since 1948 right under the nose of the world and no one has the power or the guts to do anything about it. Where else in the world does one have to beg to go to one's own home? Where else in the world does one have to give up their identity for the sole reason of living somewhere else for a period of time? Imagine if an American living in Spain for a few years wanted to go home only to be told by the American government that their American Passport was revoked and that they wouldn't be able to come back!

If I were a Jew living anywhere around the world and had no ties to the area and had never set foot there, I would have the right to go any time I wanted and get an Israeli Passport. In fact, the Israelis encourage that. I however, am not Jewish but I was born and raised there, my parents, family and friends still live there and I cannot go back! I am neither a criminal nor a threat to one of the most powerful countries in the world, yet I am alienated and expelled from my own home.

As it stands right now, I will be unable to go home - I am one of many.

So today is the third day of Eid Al Fitr that all Muslims worldwide celebrate right after the culmination of the month of Ramadan. Not sure if it’s only me, but Ramadan seems to have lost its glory. Years ago when I was a child, people’s attitudes towards both Ramadan and Eid (festival) were way different than now. Maybe I have grown up to the extent that I see in them nothing but the mere fact that few arrogant relatives come for a visit for a couple of minutes, and everyone just sucks them up.

It has been a gloomy day in deed. Being self-centered often times, I thought that my own family never enjoyed the Ramadan that other people celebrate. But the night prior to the Eid, I went for a drive to Ramallah with my uncle and three sisters, we toured around Al Manara and the mall a bit, and felt the legendary atmosphere. People were happy. That hit me; I am not accustomed to seeing them vividly preoccupied with the preparation for the big “day.”

So I came back home and wrote to all my contacts wishing them a Happy Eid and expressed my astonishment and satisfaction to see promising smiles in the crowded streets of Ramallah. But the sad part was that I knew it was merely fleeting moments and that those smiles would be wiped off soon. Not only have my fears become true, but I was blind. Yes, blind. Or may be I just chose not to see it. May be I wanted to believe that we are actually happy.

Would I miss Ramadan? NO. Not really. It has been made hell this year.

While Ramadan is believed to be the holy month during which people get closer to Allah by fasting from food and drink all day long and focus on their faith instead, I am not pretty sure this was the case with us Palestinians. It was only a drug. Ramadan numbed our pain. We could handle both the Israeli and Palestinian political, economic, and security pressure knowing that the day of salvation was approaching; the Eid. But after the three days elapsed, then what?

Now thousands of Palestinians are waiting for the next phase. It has been seven months now. Seven months, and thousands of the PA employees have not received their salaries. And two months elapsed with millions of students deprived form their right of education. I have three sisters and two brothers who do nothing but stay at home. They have not attended school from the very beginning of this term. It is both sad and frustrating that they have to “do the time” and pay a high price.

Reading the news headlines on the first days of Eid is not healthy at all. It lessens the effect of the drug, and one starts to get sober. Sounds funny in deed, but that was the case.

Few minutes ago, I surfed some of the blogs and came across few Iraqi bloggers writing on both Ramadan and Eid. If the titles did not mention “in Iraq,” I swear I could never tell the difference between Iraq and Palestine. The hunger, misery, constant killing, and lack of security are all Palestinian symptoms.

I am speechless now; I can hardly verbalize the so many conflicting thoughts. Heaven knows how things would be like next Ramadan, but I would not speculate it already. It is not time to worry about it now, other issues are on stake; food, money, and education. Until then, there are a lot of things to sort out.

Yesterday, I realized that I believe in love at first sight. Not the romantic kind, rather the sense of connecting with another human being without ever having to say a word. Indeed, the person I was so enthralled with last night was a five-month-old girl, who smiled at me and then hid her face in shyness. Those few moments of interacting with this baby lifted my spirits, but it also made me reflect in sadness about the fact that many children in this current conflict are robbed of their joy and their childhood.

I often contemplate how mature Palestinian children seem. Sure, they play the childhood games that we all played in our day, but there is wisdom in their words that is eerily sobering. Their age defines them as children, but if you have a conversation with a Palestinian child, you will realize how much awareness she has of the world around her, of suffering in the next village, in Gaza, in Lebanon. She is a child that has empathy and understands that life, by nature, is wrought with all sorts of difficulties.

A Palestinian child knows better; life is not as it is depicted in cartoons, where those who die are miraculously resurrected not once, but several times, where injuries are healed instantaneously, where death is a joke and life is a series of slapstick moments. A Palestinian child escapes into imagination, but she is never far removed from the reality of children and adults alike being indiscriminately shot outside her window, in her classroom, at the local bakery.

Who would have thought that normal things, simply walking down the street to grab a falafel sandwich, could result in your untimely death? Perhaps the Israeli army mistook the falafel stand for a bomb-making factory, or an ammunition shop? Make no mistake about it; the Israeli military have made too many “mistakes” that there is obviously a pattern there, wouldn’t you think?

A child that is robbed of the sense of security, therefore, is a child that is mature beyond her years. She knows that the bullets and the tank shells do not discriminate. Her father can shield her from the neighbor’s vicious dog, from the crazy drivers, he will hold her hand to cross the street, but he will not be able to capture a bullet in his hand like the mythological superheroes in blockbuster movies out this summer in theatres near you. He might be able to take the bullet for her though. But once gone, who will be her protective shield against the harsh reality of life that goes on in what seems the periphery of the conflict? And who will be there to share some of her joyous milestones; graduation, marriage, the birth of a child? Hers is a joy that is always overshadowed by a greater sorrow.

Is it fair that 31 Palestinian children have died in a 31-day period? A child-a-day; is that the new Israeli army mantra? Khaled was just a one-year-old, Aya was seven, Sabreen was only three. What lost potential, what lost promise – who knows what Khaled would have grown up to be? An astronaut? A veterinarian? A philosopher? What about Aya; she could have become a fashion designer, a teacher, a mother. By what right has this promise been so violently plucked and trampled upon cruelly and without a moment’s hesitation on the part of the Israeli soldier, who heartlessly unleashed a fiery rain of bullets and shells on a neighborhood as if he is in a simulated video game and those who die are fictitious and unreal? Perhaps that is what he is made to believe, otherwise, who in clear consciousness is so willing to pull the trigger and with one spray of bullets destroy life, potential and rob joy?

If you can see the smiling face of your own child, then how do you go out and unquestioningly take the life of others? If you value life, then how do you live with the burden of knowing that you have taken it so unjustifiably? Perhaps that is your perpetual punishment; the judgment of a child scorned is the harshest of them all.

Maha Abu Dayyeh is director of the Women's Center for Legal Aid and Counseling (WCLAC) in Jerusalem.

MAHA ABU DAYYEH: "AS LONG AS THERE IS A SOCIETY THAT RESISTS THERE IS HOPE."

My office is close to my house—I just walk across the street. Now, the Wall ends just before the intersection of where I cross. When its construction is completed, I will have to drive all the way through Qalandia checkpoint, turn right around, and cross the check point again and go to Dahiet Al-Barid, before I can get to my office.

I live on the left the hand side of the street going from Jerusalem to Ramallah which is the Jerusalem side. However, all the services for my daily existence will be on the side that will be blocked off. Think about getting vegetables or food, or getting maintenance and household support. Half of all Jerusalemite Palestinians are going to suffer from this because electricians or maintenance people all live in areas that are blocked off. Because they will be harder to get, they will be more expensive. Life is going to become much more expensive, and not only monetarily.

We also will pay heavy social and emotional costs. We will become disconnected—literally and figuratively—from family and friends. Going to them in Ramallah or Beit Jala, places actually not very far from here, will be very difficult.

Practically speaking, the Wall is imprisoning us. The gates are not in the house itself but beyond the house. To go in and out you will need to have a special permit, and you will need to pay for it. On top of that, there is destruction to the environment in areas close to the Wall because of the digging in the streets, the dust, the fuel, and the fumes.

Dust and fumes are always in the house; you can't ever get it totally clean. Going in and out of the house means jumping over rubble and concrete, over all kinds of building refuse. You destroy your clothes, your shoes. You have to have extra budget for all those expenses. And the Wall blocks the view. You can see only a few meters beyond. You wake up in the morning and face the massive, ugly, grey cement blocks. We are living in chaos.

One has to realize how the Wall specifically and the overall living conditions also block us psychologically. When you are psychologically blocked, your thinking is also blocked. Your ability to be creative is blocked. Your ability to feel is blocked because you have to protect yourself all the time from feeling frustrated. These are what destroy the person. It's a sort of psychological torture.

You always have to be on the alert. You can't be relaxed. You always think how you are going to deal with the next obstacle. You can't ever plan and fully expect to complete one plan. You always have to have plan A, plan B, plan C. It often happens that you can’t achieve the goals you worked so hard for. All the time you face disappointments.

An outsider to this situation has to go through this to understand what it really means. The Wall is one of the most violent forms of psychological and physical aggression directed against the Palestinian collective and against the Palestinian individual. This is especially true for those whose daily existence requires them to cross the Wall or go around it.

Maybe there are a few people in the center of Palestinian towns who can manage and who do not have to move, but these are very few. The majority of the people have to cross the Wall all the time. You cannot cross without a permit issued by the Israeli government, so the Israelis control our movements. They decide who is able to move or not. In so doing, they control the lives of the Palestinians. They decide who is important or not; what is valuable or not; who can go to work or not.

On a day-to-day basis, these decisions are up to soldiers who guard the gates. These soldiers on the ground make a lot of their own, independent decisions. They can sexually harass the women if they want to. They can choose to be easy, hostile, or violent. And when they have violated the rights and dignity of Palestinian people, they can always find an excuse and the government will cover up the violations. We live our daily lives within this violent situation.

Because of the current situation the number of women who are able to reach our office is declining. We are not able to help as much as we could. It forces us to open more centres throughout the region, which is more expensive, unnecessarily expensive. It is a terrible waste of resources. We end up using our money on administration, on rents, on other overhead expenses including transporting staff, rather than on doing program work.

There is nothing like one's own real experience. I internalized the violence of the Wall after I heard that it was built around Qalqilia. But hearing about it and internalizing it in an intellectual way are incomparable to the actual experience of having to go around or walk or drive by it. You drive next to the Wall but there are also buildings bordering the other side of the road. They built the Wall in the middle of the street and you're stuck between it and the buildings in a narrow channel, like cattle.

You know what happens with cattle: The cattle are lined up and the machine takes them one by one while they can't move, like in a cage. The same happens to us. You cannot run away. You cannot backtrack. You cannot go left or right. You are stuck between the Wall and the other buildings. You're in a line and whatever happens, you cannot act on your own or control your own destiny. This happens all the time.

You get the feeling that, inevitably, you are going to be destroyed, killed, stampeded, caught in the middle of a shooting, as if you are living your life in one giant, ubiquitous crossfire. You are constantly on the alert, and feeling very vulnerable. To say this is a disempowering experience is an understatement. In fact, you are being choked unmercifully, cold-bloodedly.

All our lives we have to deal with crises. You become weaker as a person. Your capacity to tolerate difficulties becomes much smaller. You are emotionally charged most of the time.

Personally I am deeply affected when I observe the children. The kids are nervous all the time, agitated, so much of their energy and effervescence is restrained. They are afraid, especially of soldiers. When they see a patrol, they all run away and start crying. If they start crying, I start to cry myself. And that shows I too have been, and continue to be, traumatized. It is a new thing in me. I am affected by the whole situation. It is a horrible way particularly for children to grow up.

Freedom, for me, is the ability to walk endlessly without being stopped. To be able to keep moving forward. For me this ability is physical and also mental. To think without being restricted. I find that my ability as a thinking and moving human being is handicapped because my physical movements are continually hindered and restricted.

Freedom also is being able to do what I want to do, see my friends when I want to see them. Freedom is not to be restricted irrationally and arbitrarily, that is, when I don't understand why I am restricted. In my childhood I never could accept a "no" without an explanation. I wanted to see friends, to be with people, to have activities, and to be able to participate with my friends in joint activities. And to be able to think freely and to express my thoughts freely without being shut up or being told that I am stupid or unrealistic or otherwise blocked in my ability to think.

As an adult living under Israeli occupation, I see the same patterns. The restrictions and hindrance are more sophisticated but the same principles are still there. There is an English expression, “the sky is the limit.” That means that one's imagination and ability to be an actor in the world should be far-reaching, limitless, unrestricted. But in the Palestinian context, the Wall is the limit.

As an individual, I cannot complain. Indeed, if I compare myself to many other people, I am a lucky person. I am able to travel abroad, and meet very interesting and creative people. They help me overcome my own thinking blockages. I think with them, learn from them.

When I return home, I am better able to overcome my own limitations in thinking freely. Traveling and seeing other realities enable me to regain my sense of balance. When you travel you see that the situation here is abnormal and the normal should be what people out there experience. When you stay here you get used to the situation and come to believe there is no other way of life.

So my level of anger is elevated when I come back and see the situation again. My anger means that I am alive. My anger makes me act more, be more constructive with my colleagues, with my kids. I try to help them cope with the situation they are in. Being able to use my anger to help others is important to me because it gives me energy.

If I can maintain my anger at a steady level, I am energized. Anger means that I am trying to act on what happens. I think people need to be angry all the time about the situation. People have the right to be angry and express their anger. It's a sign of living, a refusal to die.

Through anger, you say no to a brutal situation. We should not walk quietly in the face of brutality. One should resist, for instance, by showing anger to the soldier and by breaking the rules. Refusing to respond to instructions given in the Hebrew language is a form of resistance. Everybody has a chance to resist by any small way or means. It builds one's strength. Resistance is not the same as survival. Survival is barely making it, just going on with your dealings.

Resistance is acting consciously, purposefully on your situation. Some people just choose to survive because they are tired of resisting and fighting; I can't blame them. I consistently hope that not all people in our society fall into that mode. So far, it looks like they are resisting and fighting.

My organization supports coping strategies but also the fight to maintain humanity, the refusal to be dehumanized, to maintain hope. When we do our educational programs in the community, we just remind people of the issues of justice and the rule of law. You can always find hope for building a better life.

I personally refuse to be killed emotionally or psychologically. I will not give up. I am a resister. As long as there is a society that resists there is hope. I see people resisting as a profound, courageous expression of choosing life. I see it all around me. It may not be tangible in the immediate, but when people choose life, there is hope. I see happy children too all around me. As long as there are kids laughing there is hope.

Toine van Teeffelen is development director at the Arab Educational Institute (AEI) in Bethlehem. This interview is part of a series made for United Civilians for Peace.

Against the backdrop of the siege of Arafat's compound we could hear these weeks about some remarkable initiatives in Palestine. They remind of the popular movements of some decades ago against dictatorships in Eastern Europe or South-America: impressive mass prayers by peasants in a field near Nablous, the deafening noise of pots and pans in Ramallah, and courageous parents and teachers in various cities breaking curfews to guide their kids to school. In fact, some months ago plans of breaking curfews were already circulating and debated but it now seems that Palestinians under occupation have reached a point that many collectively want to act and join emerging forms of popular non- violent resistance. The reasons for this beginning change in attitude may be traced to two circumstances: the changing nature of the occupation and changes in the general political environment.

Nature of occupation

The three-decade long occupation of the West Bank and Gaza has never been benevolent nor accepted by the Palestinian population but in various periods there have been different degrees of repression and control of daily life. Over long stretches of time, the occupation was a sophisticated controling institution that used a variety of resources to enforce the population's compliance. Not force alone was activated; it rather worked alongside a myriad of dependencies and controling devices including massive Palestinian labour in Israel, a complicated permit system, friendly relations with local mukhtars and other proxies, the extension of 'favours' which one's neighbours did not receive, and an elaborate network of probably tens of thousands of collaborators.

Right now, the occupation has largely fallen back on crude, visible, and arbitrary force against the population as a whole. Most clearly in reaction to the suicide bombings, the Israeli army has stepped up degrees of control over daily life that have become unbearable. At checkpoints and other Israeli-Palestinian contact points, Palestinian civilians are systematically humiliated in classical colonial style. After two long years the majority of the Palestinian population in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip have been irrevocably damaged in their personal and family interests; in their possessions and lands, their own or their children's education, and their work. The purpose of this frontal assault is to break the people's spirit and to pacify the uprising.

However, the more plain force is exerted, the sooner also the limits of an army's deterrent and adaptive capacities are reached. As many observers have noted, in the last couple of weeks the fear threshold among Palestinians has significantly been lowered. The curfews are nowadays felt to be without real ending and have become so completely arbitrary and dehumanizing (people treated like mice in a cruel experiment is a suitable metaphor) that they are not anymore accepted as given facts to which one has to accommodate.

Political environment

Then the political environment is changing too. Threats against the civil population are palpably present. On the ground, the 'normal' processes of land confiscation and settlement building are continuing unabatedly. Public discourse has also become directly threatening. In Israel, the scenario of the 'transfer' of the Palestinian population out of the West Bank and Gaza has recently been so intensely debated - including 'variants' like internal vs. external transfer - that support for it has somehow become a legitimate stand in Israel as well as in conservative circles in the US. A superpower's will to change the political map of the Middle East in the wake of a war on Iraq may lead to a silent acceptance of a sudden change in the demographic 'map' as well. Many people in Palestine regard ethnic cleansing during or after a war on Iraq a real possibility.

In the face of such threats, Palestinians feel that their leaders alone are not having the power to move things into a different direction. While the Palestinian Authority and Arafat are recognized as the Palestinian representatives, they find themselves cornered in the international political arena and under political scrutiny at home. There is at present no clear and viable road towards some kind of broader political agreement. Under the circumstances, many common Palestinians feel that there is an urgent need to become themselves political actors again. Creating a popular movement could make a difference, locally and internationally. Commemorating two years of a militarized Intifadah, the Palestinian press is now full of articles about the need to go back to the popular roots of the Intifadah as it emerged in its original form at the end of the 1980s.

Strategy

A popular non-violent movement would need coordination and strategy. At this moment, such strategy is largely absent. The popular actions are locally and often spontaneously organized, with widespread media attention present only in exceptional cases.

One possibility for developing such a strategy would be choosing a broad societal field for a sustained concerted action that targets and involves the international public. Such a field could be medical, economical, educational or otherwise.The advantage of choosing a societal field for a public campaign is that such a field provides a very human illustration of the effects of occupation. For a broad international public that message would have more impact than general political statements. Let's take as an example the field of education. I am myself working in it (in the Bethlehem area), and so am familiar with its potential.

For the coming Wednesday (2/10), authorities, religious leaders and NGOs have announced a large demonstration in front of the Church of Nativity in Bethlehem. Children, parents and teachers will demand the right of education. Apart from inter-religious prayers and speeches, a banner with the text "Let Our Children Have Freedom" will be attached to helium-filled balloons and lifted into the air. Solidarity with education in other curfewed Palestinian towns will be proclaimed. While people in the Bethlehem area are 'privileged' to be able to go out of their houses - unlike other cities - students and teachers here too face problems in reaching schools, for instance when they have to cross checkpoints or settler roads.

In Ramallah, Nablus and other cities, people lately took many grassroots initiatives to organize forms of "underground education.". People challenged the curfew and offered their space, time and expertise to create alternative educational options at homes in case schools were out of bounds. It is not only the urgent need for education that guides them but also a knowledge of history. Teachers tell that their school communities are certain of one thing: students should not once again loose years of education as happened during the first Intifadah where underground education got publicity but was not done systematically. That lapse had a great impact upon the youth who afterwards were severely handicapped in their development. In my own environment, I see schools pressured by parents to make emergency curfew plans detailing how teachers and parents should call each other so that children are able to continue their studies as much as possible at home.

Palestinians have always been proud about the levels of education attained against all odds. Right now, visitors are impressed by the sheer persistence and improvising capacity young and older students (as well as teachers and administrators) display simply in order to realize the right to education. So many youth and teachers arrive exhausted at schools after being forced to take journeys through the hills or after long waiting times at checkpoints. Given these qualities of persistence and improvisational capacity, a sustained popular and public movement in education in which activities are coordinated across cities and regions (for instance, similar activities conducted simultaneously, such as the making of sounds or the holding of vigils) would have real potential. One central good slogan could be chosen. It would be possible to have local or regional committees with teachers, parents and representatives of the Ministry of Education. When face-to-face coordination is impossible, email would have to do the job. Such committees could organize, document and write about public actions conducted in their region. In Ramallah, there is a recent civilian initiative (called Jaras = Bell) to document the number of educational hours children are loosing in various cities and regions. After all, education is a field in which everyone has a direct or indirect stake, and in which massive participation is not impossible.

While it seldom happens that Palestinian youth - who are in fact the large majority of Palestinian society - are public spokespersons, a prolonged action in support of the right to education could give the floor to young Palestinians who are versed in different languages. They could be involved in writing and public speaking. Creative forms of raising one's voice could become part of extracurricular programs which could also encourage knowledge and discussion of the history of popular protest in Palestine. Students could make the texts of their placards and banners as they are presently asked to do for the Bethlehem action. Student choirs could perform a joint song in support of the campaign. An international committee of well- known personalities could without difficulty be formed to support such a large and sustained campaign, and volunteers and monitors on the ground could play a watchdog role. In this way, a broad movement with very concrete and human demands could expose the brutality of the occupation, move the international civil society and - hopefully - play some role in helping to prevent that Palestinian civilians become expendable pawns in a new Middle Eastern war.