Convoy to Nablus: "This is OUR Land!"

Beit Hanina, Occupied Palestine --- Sitting in between boxes of medicines, latex gloves, insulin and needles. Boxes all around me, I can't see outside. We stop for short moments, and I wonder if the first convoy cars are running into trouble with the Israeli army. Are we at a checkpoint again? Will they let us through this time? Will the convoy be shot at or simply turned back to Jerusalem?

The car doors open, and I stumble outside. The sun is shining and our convoy is stopped at a checkpoint. Ahead of us the convoy representative is negotiating with soldiers to let the trucks of medicine, food and supplies through, into the 'closed military zone', into Nablus. The fighter jets are heard overhead.

We wait--


No one really seems to expect that we will be allowed through. No one really expects that we will be able to make it to Nablus. If they shoot at UN convoys, and strip search the ICRC, what will happen to us?

Time goes by. Reports filter in from those trying to convince the soldiers to allow humanitarian assistance to go through. Only two trucks, only two. Which two? No, everyone must be able to pass. Every car in the convoy might not be full of supplies, but we must all have access. All organisations must have access. We must all be allowed into Nablus.

While we wait at the checkpoint, Israeli settler cars drive by us. They drive freely, drive freely to their settlements, their bypass roads free and open for them, as they strangle and squeeze the Palestinians into tiny areas, smothering them with military outposts, closed, destroyed, or inaccessible roads.