Jerusalem – Denied city

Sumaya looked at the way to go, once past the checkpoint. In about 15 minutes, she would arrive at the U.S. Embassy to apply for the visa. A taxi was waiting for her outside the checkpoint, everything had been planned in detail. She had received a permit to enter Jerusalem for three hours, not a minute more. She had to manage it!
At 9 am she had to be at checkpoint 300 in Bethlehem. She had left her home in the South three hours earlier, well in advance. As expected, the Israeli controls had detained her so much so that it had taken almost two hours to go past the checkpoint instead of half an hour. But at last, Sumaya was passing through the controls. She watched the Israeli officials look at her permit, scrutinize it. Behind them, a clock ticked away the minutes - the time she would not have used to enjoy Jerusalem.

Ofer Prison - Administrative detention

It was a day like any other for Ghassan. Nothing happened, nothing odd interrupted what he has called normality if one could define it as such. Settlers threw stones at the village houses scaring those children who were playing outside, then they targeted Palestinian cars on the Bypass road, namely the Israeli road that connects settlements throughout the West Bank. Ghassan has seen settlements and outposts springing up everywhere, day by day. He has proved evidence of their increase in number while he spent his days in the fields in small villages nearby Nablus, the beating heart of Palestine during the olive harvest.
While he was watching the television with his parents, Israeli soldiers burst into the house. This has happened before, Ghassan indeed has gone through such violence several times throughout his thirty years.

CURRENT SITUATION

During the month of May, Israel tried again to form a government, after the last election occurred two months before. At the end of May, the parties of Yamina and Yair Lapid reached an agreement, according to which their leaders will respectively take turns as Prime Minister for the next five years. Both leaders will have a mandate of 2 years and half long.
The fight against the occupations in Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood continued throughout the whole month: many people were arrested and, in the middle of the month, the road to access the area was blocked with concrete barriers. The police constantly monitored the district, raiding several times and removing people from the neighborhood.
May 11th is the so-called Jerusalem Day, commemorating the establishment of Israeli control over the Old City after the "6-Day War". On that day, Israeli military forces threw grenades into Al Aqsa Mosque, causing a fire. The police broke up the Muslim believers by sticks, rubber bullets and tear gas.

When it’s been so long since you hugged a loved one and then finally you find her in front of you and you can hug her again, the emotion is very strong, wherever you are on this round earth.
"Would you accompany me to visit Mariam? I would love to see her so much... but I don’t dare go alone, I’m too afraid of what might happen. But if you were there, it would be different…".
Sometimes we as volunteers are bitterly surprised that, in a place already so full of pain, relationships can become even more complicated and conflicting, as if the external conditions were not enough to make life hard.
Randa has been stuck in the same refugee camp for eight years.
She is Syrian from Bab Amer, a suburban and overpopulated neighborhood of Homs.

At-Tuwani - Palestinian minors in the Israeli prisons

“Run at the Sumud Freedom Garden, there are soldiers!”, screamed to us a child. We find Hafez, his brother and his son Amoudi with some soldiers. The situation is calm, when other jeeps of army arrive. The commander starts to make some questions to Amoudi, in a bad and pushing way. A soldier comes in a threatening way near the children, he is looking for the provocation. We don’t have time to exchange words between volunteers when two soldiers grab Hafez for an arm and take him away. His daughters start to scream.
The situation gets worse in a second, we turn in a moment hearing someone screaming: the hands of two soldiers are on the neck of Amoudi as bolt cutters. Our throat is closed when we see the small Hussem running behind the jeep where there is his father inside, handcuffed and blindfolded. Angry, we stop a soldier who is running behind him and who took his arm. Sometimes it’s difficult remembering that there is a man under the uniform.