At first, I hesitated to write. Expressing pain has never been easy for me. I have long struggled to find the right words because they collapse even as I try to articulate what truly hurts.
Some feelings and fears are too vast, too abstract, for language to contain – especially when the trauma is still unfolding before our eyes, growing more brutal by the day. The suffering and loss in Gaza are beyond my comprehension.
My silence, however, was not apathy. It came from a place of deep respect for a people carrying immeasurable grief. How could I, when our brothers and sisters in Gaza are being annihilated before the whole world, dare to speak of pain? Yet silence itself becomes a very heavy burden.
I am from the West Bank, where life is being suffocated in ways that do not compare to Gaza’s catastrophe, but are nonetheless devastating.
In recent weeks, Israel has advanced the E1 settlement plan, a step towards formal annexation that would carve up the West Bank and extinguish the prospect of a Palestinian state, while its forces escalate raids, detentions and daily assaults on our towns and camps. …..more
