We walked around Balata Refugee Camp the other day with a friend from
the camp, well actually his family is from Jaffa, and if you ask him
where he is from, he will say Jaffa. But he was born in Balata Refugee
Camp outside Nablus, as a refugee he is not from there, he was only born
there.

Balata Camp, is the largest camp inside the West Bank. It has also seen
the most resistance, the most fighters, the most invasions, the most
everything, of any other camp in the West Bank. Even now, in this time
of 'peace' the camp is still seeing nightly invasions by the occupation.

Oh, and by the way, this time of peace is complete bull shit. (Sorry,
sidetracked a bit). There is no peace. Every aspect of the occupation
remains in place in the territories. Because Sharon, thanks to his good
friend Mahmoud Abbas are shaking hands with each other, everyone thinks
everything is ok.

It's a strange time really. During the heart of the intifada when
handfuls of Palestinians were being killed daily, the Israeli press
would usually cover most of the deaths. Of course not as well as they
should've, but if you searched you could find out about most of them.

But just today, as I went to pick up some film that I dropped off to get
scanned in ramalla, I heard gun shots. I waited a bit, and along came a
funeral procession for 2 young boys that were killed yesterday while
throwing stones at soldiers stealing THEIR land to construct the
apartheid wall.

I went to a computer afterwards and went to haaretz.com. The story was
buried underneath all of the rest of the crap making the day's news. It
was strange.

It wasn't just this one event, but many, where I've felt the supposed
'leftist' haaretz has been trying to keep quiet these stories of brutal
killings in this time of 'peace' to make readers think everything is ok.
Dishonest, right?

And please can someone tell me what happened to haaretz's best
columnist, the only Israeli journalist living in the territories, Amira
Haas? I havent seen her writing in haaretz in months.

I could just imagine the editor at haaretz calling Amira into his
office, 'Yeah, Amira, hmm? how to say this? Well, we here on the
editorial board feel your writings from the territories are, well, too
truthful about what's happening, and, well, it's peace time, and truth
is not good for anyone right now.'

Fuck this time of peace. It is complete bull shit. And everyone, well
every Palestinian knows that. No one I have asked, not one person,
thinks this time, whatever you want to call it, will lead to any kind of
lasting peace. The only thing that people disagree on is when the next
Intifada (popular uprising) will begin. Some say 3 years, some as many
as 10. But one thing is for sure, that it's going to happen, again, and
again, and again, and again, until the occupation -- in all its forms --
has ended. And Israel, perhaps the smartest military on the planet,
must know this.

They continue to build settlements, build walls, oh and by the way, that
'temporary' wall, with its 'temporary' route, is there to stay. Maybe
when Israel referred to it as temporary so many times, they meant
because they were going to keep tearing it down every year, and moving
it more and more into the west bank. This is exactly what they are doing
in many villages where the wall has stood for over a year now.

So they continue the occupation, (again, in all its forms) and nothing
changes. It's obvious that Israel clearly wants intifada. Now, in this
time of 'peace' they can only kill 2 Palestinian children every week or
two, instead of 100s like during the intifada.
They pretend and make moves like the gaza pullout to say, 'look how nice
we are'. Oh, so nice, a boy in Ramallah just lost 2 of his classmates,
one 14 and the other 15. Please tell him, or the dozens others who knew
the boys that this is what peace in Palestine is. Who would ever accept
this??

Of course, they will resist it. Not because they are crazy 'life-hating,
Islamic terrorists' as CNN, Time Life, NBC, CBS, ABC, Dan Rathers, Tom
Brokraw, Peter Jennings, The Times of London, the Economist, The Wall
Street Journal, FOX news, The Chicago Sun-Times, The Washington Globe,
The Chicago Tribune, The New York Times, The New Yorker, George Bush,
John Kerry, the BBC, that guy Matt from that stupid wake-up show, and
so many others like to say, but because they are people, and no one in
the entire world would ever lie down on their backs and let someone walk
over them in this way.

I'm sorry to burst all those bubbles of optimism for peace in the Middle
East, but it's a joke, and you've been fooled if you think things are
changing for the better.


Anyway, as we walked through Balata Camp the other day with my friend
from Jaffa, but who was born in the Camp, we went to visit a friend of
his.

(I apologize for not using names, but because I wasn't planning to write
about them, I didn't ask for permission.)

His friend opened the door and greeted us. He had a smile from ear to
ear. He greeted us and touched me on the back welcoming us into his
home. From the first moment I felt very comfortable around him, like I
had known him for a long time. It's hard to describe more than that, but
you know how some people are just like that.

Anyway, I didn't really notice anything strange until we went inside and
my friend told us what happened.

This man was a teacher at a local school for young boys. He spoke
English as good as anyone in Balata, and always enjoyed showing
internationals around the camp.

While he was walking home through the camp last year, a military jeep
approached him. He didn't move, he stood strong and waited until a
soldier on top of the vehicle was less than feet away.

The man and the soldier stared at each other. The soldier then lifted
his M-16 and shot him in the head. The bullet was not 'real' in that it
isn't supposed to be lethal. Its like a large metal BB, which has
definitely killed people in the past.

But after that he went unconscious and remained in a coma for weeks, and
in the hospital for 6 months. Now he has a large crater on the top of
his head (so you knew the soldier was elevated and close to him) where
the doctors had to perform surgery to remove the bullet.

Now, he has last most of the movement in half of his body. He can no
longer speak a word of English, and can barely speak Arabic. Only his
friends who have known him for years and his family can understand what
he's saying.

From only a few feet away that soldier looked at this man, a teacher,
unarmed, just walking home, and shot him. I couldn?t and still can't
imagine who could ever do such a thing. It's happened too many times to
say it's only a few 'bad apples.'

Many compare the occupation soldiers to some of the worst soldiers
throughout history. And always Jews go on the defense screaming, 'How
could you say such a thing'!?!?

Maybe we can never say X army is exactly like Y army, but we can and
must say that X army, like Y army is wrong when committing such brutal
acts.