A year has passed, it feels still as if it was yesterday not because the memories are fresh from what I experienced but because the relationships established stop me from distancing from it all.
I am not even sure I could, all things so closely felt... the news and op-eds, the declarations, the reports...I am as close to the situation as when I was there.
Next week I will be in Brussels with a Delegation of former EA's to speak to MEP, ambassadors, whoever who has hears, the will and the time to listen to what we've lived while on Israel and the Occupied Palestinian territories.
I am worried with a current trend in European Capitals pretending that inviting the parties to talks is enough. Each house built beyond the Green Line, each demolition of a water cistern, house eviction or demolition, relocation of bedouins occurring is endangering an already slim chance for a Two State solution.
What is the proposal then? If we do not want two sovereign States, what do we stand for? An Eretz Israel were a part of the population is neither a citizen nor a foreigner? I've heard this from a settler and couldn't really see for me how that would work. Neither could he, although he did his best to explain that the "palestinians" or "arab israelis"(in his words, his own concepts which he did not really explain) would enjoy all civil liberties but no political rights. Complicated reasoning he did not seem eager to explain.
A State where all, jewish, israeli-arabs, bedouins, refugees from 1948, refugees from 1967, West Bank residents and Gazans are citizens? I can't really understand where the Israeli Government is headed, but I am even more afraid that neither does he.
In a few hours I'll be meeting some Members of the European Parliament, I will tell them what I have witnessed. I hope they believe me, I have sometimes difficult believing it myself, as if it all was a bad dream. Then i read the Haaretz, the New York Times, El Pais and UNRWA, UNOCHA reports and i realize that I was awake.
I am hoping for the day in which this reality is nothing but a memory, replaced by equality true freedom and hopefully two sovereign States.
