As we cross roadblocks all around West Bank and Gaza, we get a million different feelings, and we get lost between agony, humiliation, fear and a strange desire to live.

How can a small roadblock, set this fire inside us?

We Palestinians are always afraid of getting used to it, of reaching this frightening stage and being broken internally.

But each morning as we pass these roadblocks, we are equipped with our humanity knowing that we are the ones who will defeat this space, and create endless horizons…

SURDA

For me this word doesn’t need definition! When I hear it, something inside of me aches.

The name Surda is actually the name of a village that is located near Ramallah, and the roadblock was named after it because it’s the closest to it. The roadblock is situated at the Ramallah end of the road, less than one kilometer beyond the borders of the town on the main artery to 33 villages. This road has been blocked for two years now and it is the only remaining road to reach Ramallah since all the other roads were systemically closed off by the Israeli army.

Then the roadblock became closed to vehicular traffic, including public transportation, so taxis started parking on both ends of the roadblock to pick up people after their walking journey.

Closing this road affected the majority of people living in Ramallah and in the nearby villages, approximately 50,000 villagers, because Ramallah is the service and commercial area, all goods destined to these villages have to pass through this city.

More importantly, more than 6,000 students and faculty members of Birzeit University, that is located in the village of Birzeit which lies eight kilometers outside of Ramallah, have to pass this roadblock daily to get to university. Not only are people forced to walk on a dusty road, but they are also stopped and humiliated by Israeli soldiers manning this roadblock.

You can never know what’s waiting for you because it all depends on the soldiers’ state of mind, sometimes they search your bags and ID’s, other times they refuse passage to endless lines of people for no specific reason, and sometimes if they are having a good morning, they let you pass. This means you have to leave your home a long time before in order to be on time for work or classes.

Allow me to share my personal experience crossing Surda. I am a student at Birzeit University. Before I got accepted into the university, I had lots of dreams I wanted to bring to life on its campus. I wanted to be a good student and make lots of friends and all the little details you dream about when you’re going to college. Sadly, from my first day I was struck by reality, as I reached the campus with dusty feet and a whole new perspective full of anger and despair.

I couldn’t be frustrated from my first day; I wanted to go on because a blocked road isn’t what’s going to decide who I’m becoming.

I decided to not let the roadblock get in my way, rather I would defy it everyday simply by continuing to cross the checkpoint.

Since that day, I have reached university soaked a hundred times, and dehydrated another hundred, but I know that with each passing day, I am more in touch with my humanity than before…

That’s just me.

Tania Nasir also lived this humiliation and came out with another perspective.

Nasir is a Birzeit citizen who I met on my first journey to Birzeit University. She shared with me her perspective about the difficulties of visiting her mother in Ramallah, something she used to do daily, but after the closure she couldn’t keep it up.

Before leaving to Ramallah that day she asked if the road was safe, and was assured that it was safe and that the Israeli soldiers who were manning the roadblock left it, so she might be able to pass without much delay. She was very happy and felt a glimpse of freedom at that moment when she thought she can pass the road and enjoy the sun.

She actually got to Ramallah, enjoyed her small rather short reunion, but had to get back home before the sun sets where Surda would become a hunted road, filled with unexpected fears and ghosts of guns and jeeps.

While walking back, an Israeli military jeep came storming out of nowhere turning the peaceful road into a battle field and people started running for their lives, men with goods, women with their children horrified and clutching at their mother’s skirts, students with books and lost people trying to find refuge.

Then the jeep started throwing gas bombs everywhere, people started screaming and collapsing, and Nasir was running and running, unable to comprehend the amount of anger and fear she was feeling, until she finally reached a taxi to drive her home to Birzeit.

Nasir was overwhelmed by this experience and she was trying to seek an explanation. She didn’t only feel physical pain, but she was humiliated by the arrogance, the immorality and inhumanity of the insolent power of Israel.

This traumatic incident that she was a part of, happens almost everyday, everywhere in Palestine. The injustice is unbearable.

The daily life of Palestinian citizens doesn’t hold any provocation or threat or danger to the security of Israel. To Nasir, the only explanation to what happened was that we are simple and ordinary civilians, who dared to go on with our lives as ordinary human beings do everywhere else in the world. Yes, despite thirty six years of occupation and despite attempts by Israel to crush us as a people and as a society, our only crime was that we dared to be ordinary citizens, living ordinary lives in our ordinary land.

My third testimony is by Omar Faraj El-Bargouthi who is a Taxi Driver on Surda –Kober* road.

When I read his testimony I was speechless. If I had experienced such pain and injustice, I wouldn’t have the strength to go on.

El-Bargouthi was waiting in line to transport passengers from Surda roadblock to Kober. There were around 150 civilians trying to pass the roadblock but the soldiers wouldn’t let them, preferring instead to provoke them and shoot at them. So, they started to run back in the direction of Birzeit and El-Bargouthi was behind them in his car.

The soldiers kept on shooting and Adel, a young man, was caught up with the receding crowd. El-Bargouthi yelled at him to run faster because he was slow, but it was too late, the Israeli soldier fired and Adel fell…

El-Bargouthi was confused, he started running towards Adel to try and rescue him, and he touched the wound which was a two-centimeter-diameter hole, and white matter from his brain and small fragments of crushed bones exited from the hole. He had been hit in the temple, above his left eye.

El-Bargouthi started shouting and called the men to help him carry Adel. They put him in the back of a car and took him back to Birzeit, but the doctors there couldn’t do anything because he was in a critical condition and needed surgery, and Birzeit clinic didn’t have the proper equipment.

So, they had to carry Adel again and take him to the roadblock, where the soldiers were still standing.

A young woman, who was also helping, got out of the car and asked the soldiers if they would let them pass, but they refused to listen to her and threatened to shoot her. El-Bargouthi and the rest with him ignored the soldiers and kept on walking. The soldiers looked at them as they passed and refused to help them deliver Adel to a hospital.

Eventually, they managed to get Adel admitted to the nearest hospital, but the delay had made his condition far worse and upon examining him, the doctors concluded that they expected him to pass away in a few days.

Adel died physically, but we die inside a million times every morning as we pass this roadblock and keep all the pain inside and try to be ordinary and “happy”.

I have nothing left to say and I will keep aching until this injustice stops.

No one understood us better than our renowned Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish:

“We do not seek to be victims nor do we seek to be heroes. All that we want is to be ORDINARY."

*Kober; a Palestinian village located near the city of Ramallah