a curfew in the prison… a Palestinian story

I was driving back from Ramallah thinking of how much of a big prison, our life is about. The scene of the wall, the wires, a wall on a wall in another wall. The soldiers and their barrier zones. The internal walls among people that grew higher than the cement built walls. A state of imprisonment. An occupation was so systematic in its approach that everything is eventually falling into the planned perspective.

A perspective that intends to get the people into a state of self-destruction.

By the time you reach the checkpoint, and the visibility of the wall and wires and barrier becomes more and more visible. The scene of people walking between caged pathways to another destination is nothing but a real living image of this reality. Our reality of living in prison.

And then things erupted confusingly to all sides. I mean of course Palestinian Authority and Israel. We the imprisoned people have long lost our sense of confusion towards this situation. Something has been destabilized in us. There is a loss of real meaning towards reality. I admit that the checkpoint is a reality check that I enjoy experiencing. It reminds me of the existence of the occupation. Sometimes I also get destabilized thinking that soldiers’ “nicer” checkpoints are friendly people who are there to serve me as well. I cannot but exchange a smile as our eyes meet. They think I am like them. I am as well them. Not the other monster locked behind the wall. But in the other checkpoints such as Qalandia, there is no way for confusion. It is an exclusive Palestinian wanting to cross people versus an Israeli army of different uniforms. And the smile is not part of their role. Smiling to us to be accurate.

Of course, I am not looking for laughs. I have to say that sometimes I think, I want or buy some roses or bring clowns or cheer up the atmosphere. Those young soldiers are so full of denial and disgust I assume to what means to be Palestinian. We are those who check in and are all suspects until proven guilty.

As I enter a state of hallucination each time, I get in and out of Qalandia checkpoint. I kind of accepted the fact that this is how our reality is going to remain in expressing itself.Probably forever.

It was that image of a big prison that was torturing our mind as I was seeing the pedestrians crossing between that wire cages like the pathway.

But the Israeli occupation is all about innovative procedures of modern day humiliation.

The attack of yesterday, when a Palestinian police officer or security \special forces whatever, opened fire on the checkpoint of the DCO at Beit El settlement, has brought the intend-to-destabilize situation into a new eruption, where both Israeli and Palestinian officials don’t want to happen.

The Palestinian street has been taking the recent media exposure about security coordination handles through the high PA security officials with great disappointment and despair perhaps.

Somehow, we know well that the coordination will never stop. It shouldn’t. At the end of the day, we live in cantons that are separated and handled through security checkpoints. So we cannot pretend such coordination cannot exist. And then there is every single other thing that is related or Palestinian livelihood that is controlled by Israel, and it needs such coordination.

In many ways, there has been this false propaganda by the Palestinian authority on what is security coordination that was missed by people. However, the same body handled the issue of explaining this coordination the world and to Israel in a more actively involving manner that, put the people into shock when hearing it from the other side.

The Palestinian Authority and its leadership insist on dealing with the people as if social media and news circulation doesn’t exist except through them. They believe that perhaps Palestinians only watch Palestine TV, and hence all that they know is what the PA manage to tell or enforce on us.

I think they do actually believe that this way!!!!

What is critical of what happened yesterday is the stabilizing situation that was intended to be destabilized. We have also been fed with news from the Israeli media as well as some Palestinian ones in analysis on why people go out for such attacks. All focusing on schools and TVs that provoke emotions and young people sentiments.

What happened yesterday by Amjad Salary is a blow. An explosion in the face of all those who insist on seeing what it means. What it feels. What it is to live in humiliation. To see death turning into numbers. To see oppression becoming a way of living. To see corruption fostering and flourishing. To see that collaboration with the announced enemy becomes a heroic act or a gaining point to whoever intends to be part of the upcoming presidential race. In which the president’s supposedly happening death will make it happen.

It is a mess of a situation that drives people into their own deaths. And they don’t want to see it.

Israel continuous oppression and the authority’s ongoing lifestyle of corruption is nothing but an open ticket to hell…

The trap that both Israeli and Palestinian Authority finds them in now is how to put disciplinary procedures. How can the pa punish its security apparatus that has been so well trained or be destabilized for the last two decades? How did this happen? How did this man get to feel? How can Israel retaliate and fill in the vengeful feeling of contempt its people are having? Israeli public got used to that. Anyone touches an Israeli will pay a fixed price of destruction. Should they go and invade Gaza again?

But it is too obvious. It all happened in Ramallah. The man is definitely not Hamas or disguised in Hamas. He is a real Fateh production. He is not going to a school that brainwashes his thoughts. He is not a child actually. He is not a teenager. He is not a desperate Palestinian with any job or salary. The security people are the only secured people when it comes to benefits and wages.

Collective punishment?

Of course….

Putting a curfew on the prison and close it to those who were allowed visitations.

For a change…

The cynical situation is turning dramatic. Traumatic turn against all those who have been orchestrating it … Israel and a Palestinian leadership that has been benefiting from occupation …