CPTnet
11 January 2005

AT-TUWANI REFLECTION: When reality becomes stranger than my dreams

by Christy Bischoff

As we approached the woman sitting by the 102 olive trees that settlers cut
the night before, I saw the tears rolling down her face as she stared ahead.
We were coming to pay our respects--it was a funeral, a graveyard where the
thirty-year-old trees were slaughtered. All the next day, people walked
slowly through the field of broken trees.

I often have strange, vivid dreams, but since I have been here in At-Tuwani
I have woken many times not sure if it were my dreams that were more strange
or the reality. Is it real that a man with a two-year-child must wait for
two hours in the rain just to cross a road from one Palestinian area to
another Palestinian area? Do children as young as five have to wait over
two hours in the morning and afternoon to get to and from school, curling up
beside rocks because of the cold wind, waiting for an army escort home? Did
a nineteen-year-old soldier tell me that he must sometimes hit little girls
trying to get to school in Hebron because they kicked him, and that he too
is a child?

Is it reality when rave music comes from the road in the night, and Israeli
soldiers and settlers are having a disco party, not aware of their
immediate surroundings or Palestinians trying to sleep? Or when an Israeli
military bulldozer comes every few days to push rocks and dirt to block the
dirt road that is the only access for the villagers to hospitals, market,
families, schools?

The stories could go on and on--and this is after I have been here only a
few weeks. I pray for the day when my dreams once again become stranger
than the reality here. That a space where people live freely without fear,
without intimidation will become reality. I pray this for the people in At
Tuwani, but also for the people in Israel, in North America, Europe, etc.
May all of our dreams be stranger than reality.