Thursday, August 14, 2008

I'd Like To Walk Freely, Too

...Because when I do walk, I get shot at, stones are thrown at me and it's otherwise extremely dangerous.

But this guy gets literary praise for it:-

There is an Arabic word for Raja Shehadeh’s pastime.

“Sarha is to roam freely, at will, without restraint,” he writes in “Palestinian Walks: Forays Into a Vanishing Landscape,” an account of six walks in the West Bank,


And what does he see, or wish not to see, on his walks?

Spilling around the southernmost ridge in Mr. Shehadeh’s line of view were also orderly rows of red-slanted rooftops, unmistakably those of an Israeli settlement. Asked the name, Mr. Shehadeh’s voice fell.

“Beit El,” he said, adding, after a pause, “On walks, I try not to see those.”

Finding walks in Ramallah on which an Israeli settlement cannot be seen is nearly impossible. There are roughly 130 settlements and outposts in the West Bank and about a dozen in the Ramallah area. They remain one of the most contentious matters of the conflict, and for Palestinians who hike, a source of considerable vexation. Mr. Shehadeh, a Christian, says he cannot count the number of times his hikes have been halted by settlers, some armed, who will not accept as an explanation for his presence in the hills that he is simply on a walk.

But Beit El was far enough in the distance that one could make out neither its bunkers nor its coils of razor wire.


And see the lovely Land of Israel.

1 comment:

Ruchie Avital said...

First he writes: "Finding walks in Ramallah on which an Israeli settlement cannot be seen is nearly impossible." Then he contradicts himself when he says: "But Beit El was far enough in the distance that one could make out neither its bunkers nor its coils of razor wire."
Make up your mind!