Hind

When I was a kid, the Israeli army invaded all Palestinian cities in the West Bank including Nablus where we lived. They would impose days-long curfews where nobody is allowed to leave their house or even look out of a window. With no electricity, everything in the fridge goes bad so finding bread was the name of the game. We would spend our days between sitting around, often on the floor to avoid a stray bullet, and going to the downstairs car garage to play (where we assumed it’ll be safer). From time to time, I’d be responsible for going out during a curfew and run to a make shift neighborhood store to buy bread. The less than a block worth of walking, maybe 2 mins on a normal day, would take half an hour with the sounds of shootings and bombings in the background. I’d spend the time hiding between the bushes, trying to hear any tanks or Israeli jeeps passing by, and basically trying to avoid dying. From time to time, we would wake up with bread at our door. Our neighborhood store owner would simply risk their life to run to our building and place them at our doors at no charge when they felt less risk to do so. The Israeli army would shoot people on site for violating curfews so the fact that we survived is something. But the fact that we had to do this is just something else. All of this and we did not have a systematic policy to starve us at the time, like Gaza is facing. This kid won’t realize it now but he’ll grow up to think of these moments. The trauma inflected on millions of Palestinians children will define the few decades to come and every time, many of those uninterested in Palestinian life will pretend like it never happened. I was this kid. You lose a part of your trust in humanity for a long time. It’s our collective job to help him gain it back. I hope he lives to see a free Palestine.