Alien in my own land....

A few days back, during my training, I was trying to divert my attention from the cross trainer. I rolled in my earplugs and focused on one of the four Plasma's that hung in a row just a few yards away from me, each playing a different channel. I just picked a channel and focused on the plasma that hung right across my cross trainer. I did not want to, but just in a hope that my remaining 15 minutes would pass quickly I started to watch SKY NEWS. And there it was! the news I have been ignoring for sometime now. The news about Gaza. I have been trying hard to stay away from this news as it just breaks my heart over and over again when I see the faces of those poor children and women being killed in a deadly battle with the enemy attacking from everywhere. It makes me angry and frustrated that I can't do anything about it rather than just signing a few useless petitions and updating my status reporting how many people have died so far in Palestine on Facebook.

So as I focused my attention to the channel, the newsreader began to interview an Israeli spokesman in Israel. She seemed a bit furious at him. The anger was understandable. "Despite all the efforts to call for a cease-fire, we see Israel still shelling bombs in Gaza what you have to say about it?" " well we are just shelling the bombs because Hammas is throwing the missiles at us from Gaza" " but do you know you are killing civilians, there are children and women who are being killed everyday because of those attacks", "You don't know! Hammas is using these civilians and these kids as a 'human shield', we get missile fired at us from within those places", "so you do know that Hammas is using those civilians as human shield, at least you can back out because they are a 'human shield' and they are meant to be protected" ... but needless to say there was the same old answer that one could expect, like two kids fighting over the same piece of toy and the first one would just make it up and say "unless Hammas won't stop, we will continue to do what we are". One of the other Israeli official said "Hammas instead of building schools and providing with education has made a infrastructure of homes and mosques and we will remove all that". The next she interviewed was a Palestinian writer in Gaza (i can't recall the name). She asked him about why Hammas was using civilians as a human shield, to which he replied "I don't think we are being used as a human shield rather we are the ordinary civilians living in Gaza. The Israeli's are killing innocent civilians" "So you are saying that their are no missiles being fired from the residential areas of Gaza?", " Well no, in fact they have already killed so many of us, we are just civilians, they have killed so many of our children. We really want all this to end. We are desperate for a cease-fire and as we speak now, you can still hear the bombings in the back.. taking place right now!".

After this course, I called one of my very good friends 'Amani'. She is a Palestinian and now lives in Grimbsy. We studied Msc Management together in the University of Sheffield. When I first met her, it was the first day at the Univ. I was actually surprised to see someone from Palestine. I was really excited to know about her life there. So one day I asked her, "how is it living in Palestine?" She said "well where i live now is a part of Israel, so we don't see many problems there. It is completely developed, like any western country. But you can see the difference, from when you enter a Palestinian area". She told me about the difficulties she had to face going to the Jerusalem University with all eyes following a Muslim lady in a Hijab. I asked her "Do you want to go back?" "Yes, off course I do! Like every Palestinian I want to live in my country and that is the reason why, we Palestinians don't want to leave Palestine. We believe that we will win it back, InshAllah".

So as we spoke over the phone, I told her how sorry i felt for the people of Gaza. I asked her about what she thought about Hammas. I said to her, don't you think Hammas could be playing a game with the civilians in Gaza? She said, "I really don't know, but we just think we have nothing to loose now, and after all these years, we still might have a chance to raise our voices, in a hope that we might get heard and tell the world of what we are going through"!!

I began to wonder, we all know, what Palestine is. How it was taken from those people, how the massacre continues. We all know the facts and the figures of how many people are killed everyday and and are being killed uptill now! We all know everything... and yet.. what can we really do about it?... the answer is simple.. 'Nothing'.

And her voice just echo's in my mind...... "but it is difficult to live in a land which is yours but seems alien"