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Voices From the Middle East:
Ala Uwainah
Ala Uwainah feels the degradation of being a second class citizen in Palestine.
By Ala Uwainah
 I
only have an hour in the Internet cafe to write this before curfew is up and
I have to return home. Strange things happen to me when I'm trapped indoors;
I suddenly start getting flashes of awareness of how bad things really are here
in Palestine!
As a survival mechanism, you get used to being a fourth, fifth
degree person wherever you go, but when you think about it for long enough,
you get to the point of realizing that Israel is willing to tear down whole
neighborhoods to allow "continuity and security" between settlements
(which are currently being built in Hebron). It blocks every access road to
every village in the West Bank, and simultaneously builds an elaborate road
systems for settlers (on confiscated Arab lands), so you are gradually used
to being paralyzed, and this paralysis manifests itself in other aspects of
your life. Even things you are able to do seem impossible, and you simply do
not do them because you got used to inertia, to paralysis...and this is the
worst feeling I ever had. (And I had my shares of bad days, being the social
misfit I often am, not good for teenage years!)
So basically, I'm pissed off — at myself, for not being able
to change things, and at the occupation for being so effective at controlling
both Palestinians and Israelis, and persuading them that they simply have to
keep fighting and spreading this gospel of death around.
I know it's hard to change people's conceptions of reality, but
it is just killing me that so many people are so completely ignorant of what's
really going on. I mean, sensational news coverage operating with the same underlying
logic of an action feature, has elevated events like suicide bombings (undeniably
significant and basically wrong,) above the virtual imprisonment and complete
stripping of rights of almost all Palestinians.
I have a lot more to say, but my time is up.
— Ala Uwainah is 20 years old and lives in Bethlehem.
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