Emma Williams

The reek of injustice

Emma Williams says good and conscientious Israelis live in denial of what is being done to the Palestinians

Emma Williams says good and conscientious Israelis live in denial of what is being done to the Palestinians

Living in Jerusalem for the past two and a half years has meant living Israeli fear: the fear of taking children to school and hearing a suicide bomber detonate himself outside the school gates; of not wanting to go to a restaurant or bar or coffee shop for fear of being blown up; of hesitating to call Israeli friends for fear that one of their children had been killed in the latest Palestinian terrorist atrocity.

Living in Jerusalem also means seeing the suffering imposed on three million Palestinians because of these fears. The realities are ugly, difficult to talk about, difficult to believe: the brutality, the injustice, the silencing, the denial, the racism – above all, the Occupation.

Most Israelis never go to East Jerusalem; most Palestinians avoid the West. Jerusalem is desperate, beautiful and divided – so clearly divided that you could put up a wall along the seam. Indeed Israel is putting up a wall, but not along the seam. It doesn’t so much divide Israelis from Palestinians as Palestinians from each other, and Palestinians from Israeli settlers, grabbing yet more land in the process; all part of the extremists’ plan to make any future Palestinian state unworkable by expanding the network of colonies, intersecting roads and industrial developments, leaving the Palestinians living between the mesh, in ghettoes.

Unhappy word, ghetto; but there is no other word for the enclosures being built around Palestinian towns. Qalqilya, a once thriving market town of 45,000 people, is now shut off from the world by a fence and wall of concrete 24 feet high. There is one exit, guarded by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF), who determine whether the occupants, their produce, their food and medicines may or may not pass.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Keep reading with a free trial

Subscribe and get your first month of online and app access for free. After that it’s just £1 a week.

There’s no commitment, you can cancel any time.

Or

Unlock more articles

REGISTER

Comments

Don't miss out

Join the conversation with other Spectator readers. Subscribe to leave a comment.

Already a subscriber? Log in