About this Blog

"Ordinary People" is something of an intentional misnomer. I live and work with Palestinians practicing nonviolent resistance to the Israeli occupation. They are doing things that are hardly "ordinary": committing themselves to active nonviolence and to loving their enemies -- following the commands of One who was anything but ordinary. And yet, the Palestinians with whom I work are also very ordinary -- they are not some kind of spiritual superheroes/superheroines who do things most folks can't do. They are simply ordinary people daily committing themselves to living a higher calling -- a calling of love and active nonviolence.

Thursday, October 11, 2007

Welcome to the West Bank!

Came across this article today -- very good. Also thought it was timely (and very good, too), in light of my "Through the Looking Glass" post about land. It talks about an Israeli grab of Palestinian land in the West Bank.

Also, the article says, among other things, "According to a recent UN report, an increasingly separate road system is being built by Israel in the West Bank. About 1,660km of West Bank roads are for mainly for Israeli use, while Palestinian access is restricted by military checkpoints." To clarify: this means there are some roads that are for cars with Israeli license plates only. (Cars have either Israeli or Palestinian license plates.) Some Palestinians do have cars with Israeli license plates, but Palestinians with Palestinian license plates cannot travel on these "bypass" roads (which, compared to Palestinian-only roads, are generally in better condition and take a more direct route from one city or place to the next.)

I comment on this because I have seen (and traveled on) both the bypass roads and the roads for Palestinians. Just think -- segregated roads. They exist here.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Not cool. Not cool at all. But good post.