A Teacher Under Occupation
Audeh, Ida
A Teacher Under Occupation By Ida Audeh Qalandia, north of Jerusalem, is a major checkpoint between Ramallah and Jerusalem. The wall isolates 30,000 Palestinians in Kafr Aqab and Qalandia. One of...
...But we have no choice...
...It was very loud...
...At the end of June, and I remember it was a Friday, soldiers came and stayed on our roof for two nights...
...Then I take public transportation from the Qalandia checkpoint to the Dahiya checkpoint...
...For about half an hour, we all hid in one room...
...There are continual battles going on here...
...Where should we go...
...I have to walk about a half kilometer to get to the checkpoint...
...We were afraid to get close to the windows...
...We've had to replace our windows several times...
...One of those is Fatima Assad...
...If you want to step outside, first you have to check to see whether there is any shooting...
...At the beginning of the Intifada, they bulldozed about 1.5 dunums...
...This is her account, which she gave me on August 28 of last year: "I am a teacher in Jerusalem, and I live in Qalandia...
...My eleven-year-old boy likes sports, and in the present situation there are no clubs where he can play He wants to go outside...
...The Israelis took about 1.5 dunums [a dunum is a quarter of an acre] from our land...
...I leave home at 6:15 and I arrive around 8:00...
...Sometimes they add another checkpoint beyond the usual one...
...Resistance isn't just a matter of confronting the army...
...He asks me, check to see whether the soldiers are here, so that I can go outside if they're not...
...We could get shot at any moment...
...I walk to the Qalandia checkpoint and then cross it on foot...
...When I look at my students, many face the same struggles that I face, so I feel very sorry for them...
...The others couldn't be replanted...
...Last night, there was shooting...
...I went out and started to yell at them...
...She went to the West Bank in August for three weeks to visit family and to learn more about the effects of the wall on the lives of ordinary people...
...So I have to walk...
...In the morning, I have no time to do anything for my kids or in the house...
...So he bounces his ball indoors, and he is upset...
...But after they put their separation barrier up, our home became beyond the fence...
...We said, why are you doing this...
...No matter what they do, we won't leave...
...In the afternoons, we don't leave our home...
...This upset me a lot, and I yelled and cursed them...
...One morning, at 10:30, we saw a big army bulldozer...
...When you raise a tree all your life, you raise it like your own child...
...My husband's brothers and sisters and their families, all of us ate from those trees...
...They said, we have military orders, so we don't need written official papers...
...That left a third parcel...
...We are rooted in our land...
...Sometimes I have to walk all the way to work...
...I have to wait at the checkpoints an hour or two or three...
...Every day, there is shooting in the neighborhood...
...Little kids come and throw stones or get close to the fence...
...In the afternoon, he can't even go outside the front door...
...When you go through these hardships just to go to work, what state are you in when you finally get there...
...One-and-a-half years ago, they bulldozed more of our land...
...The fence has harmed us a lot at home...
...The distance is no more than seven kilometers...
...The Israelis were surprised...
...It was uprooting our trees...
...The next day we hired a bulldozer, and we smoothed the land, and we dug fifty pits, and we replanted the olive trees they uprooted...
...Nevertheless, we try, and I'm sure all schools try, to get something positive out of all this struggle...
...A much longer version of her account of life in the shadow of the wall appeared at electronicintifrada.net...
...They uprooted about 300 trees...
...My husband and I have five kids, and we are part of a large family...
...There is a lot of damage...
...They said, we have military orders...
...Imagine your feelings when they uproot it right in front of your eyes...
...At each checkpoint, I wait in line...
...Their excuse was that kids throw stones at them and then hide between our trees...
...We responded quickly...
...We also had six dunums planted with trees-olives, almonds, figs, grapes, apples-anything you might desire, we had...
...You should have official orders if you are going to do this...
...I rush and barely make it to work on time...
...We watered them, and most are doing well...
...Now I can't drive my car...
...Our water tanks are bullet marked so we've put screws in to close the holes, and our satellite dish has been shot at, too...
...In the past, it took me no longer than seven minutes to drive to work...
...Ida Audeh, a Palestinian from the West Bank, works as a technical writer in Boulder, Colorado...
...Having soldiers on your roof is very disturbing...
...We live in terror...
...I tell my sons to wait in Ramallah until evening, when things quiet down...
...I'm tired, I take ten minutes or so to get something to drink...
Vol. 68 • April 2004 • No. 4
